Archive for the 'bread' Category
“It’s like a small salad, only bigger… with lots of stuff in it.”
- Elaine Bennes
Today was a bit sad and stressful, and at 7pm we realized we had no dinner and no time to make the chicken, white bean and pesto stew I thawed a package of chicken thighs for. No matter. We tore open the tub of organic spring greens ($5 for a giant plastic tub at the Superstore - and like foam stuffing, it seems to expand as you pull it out) and started tossing things in: the last of the deli ham, grape tomatoes, a few shriveling mushrooms, toasted pecans, and the last third of a jar of spiced pickled beets I bought at the market.
The best part was, I used the sweet, spiced brine as a base for a salad dressing, with balsamic vinegar, a squirt of grainy mustard, some canola oil and a drizzle of flax oil (1 tsp. has more omega 3s than a 3 oz. filet of salmon!) - shaking it all up in one of my IKEA oil & vinegar bottles.
After dinner I made hot crossed buns for CBC tomorrow morning - this time I revamped them a bit from the traditional version using those candied fruit bits by adding orange (in the form of grated zest and candied peel) and chocolate chunks. When they come out of the oven, I’ll cross them with chocolate - place a small handful of chopped chocolate or chocolate chips in a ziplock baggie, seal and put in a bowl of warm water until it melts. Snip a small piece off the corner and squeeze the chocolate out onto the buns.
Hot Crossed Buns
1 pkg. (or 2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water, milk or a combination of both
4- 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
pinch allspice
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or non-hydrogenated margarine, melted
1 large egg
1 cup golden raisins, currants or a combination
1/3 cup mixed peel (extremely optional)
Paste for crosses:
3 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. water
Glaze:
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. water
Place the yeast, a bit of the sugar and the milk in a bowl and let it sit for 5 minutes to make sure the yeast is active.Sift the flour with the spices and salt, and add almost all of it to the yeast mixture along with the butter, remaining sugar, egg and dried fruit. Mix until you have a sticky dough.
Take the dough out and place it on a floured surface. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding more flour as you need to if it gets sticky, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Knead for another minute for good measure and an upper-body workout.
Place back in the bowl, cover with a towel and let rise for an hour, or until it’s doubled in size. If you want to bake them fresh in the morning, put the bowl in the fridge overnight to slow the rising.
Divide the dough into 12 balls and place in a 9”x13” baking dish or on a cookie sheet – space them close together if you want them to rise and touch and be soft, pull-apart buns, or space them further away if you want them to have a baked crust all the way around. Cover with a towel or loosely with plastic wrap and put them in a warm place for another half hour to an hour. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Mix the flour and water for the crosses, put the mixture in a zip-lock bag and snip a tiny piece off the corner. Pipe a cross onto the top of each bun and bake them for 25-30 minutes, until golden and well risen. If you want to glaze them, combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves (alternatively you can do this in the microwave). Brush this hot syrup generously over the tops of the buns while they’re still warm.
To make the Orange Chocolate Chunk version: ease up on the cinnamon a bit and omit the allspice; add the grated zest of an orange along with the melted butter and egg; add 1/2 cup chopped candied orange peel and 1 cup chocolate chips or chunks to the dough instead of the raisins and citron. Omit the paste for the crosses and instead bake them, cool them and cross them with chocolate - place a small handful of chopped chocolate or chocolate chips in a ziplock baggie, seal and put in a bowl of warm water until it melts. Snip a small piece off the corner and squeeze the chocolate out onto the buns.
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March 17 2008 | bread | 4 Comments »
I was home for dinner tonight! We taped overnight last night - 10:30 pm until about 11 am - so by dinnertime today a sane person might have considered ordering a pizza. Stephen, the Sound Guy on set, asked the other day if I ever get tired of cooking. I do. But not very often, and not for long. And for some reason the thought of pulling together dinner tonight was not at all daunting; after all, I didn’t need to tag team with Ned, or time everything right for the camera, or think of anything smart and witty to say about whatever it was I was chopping or cooking while trying to stand up straight and suck it in. The thought of pulling together a quick dinner for the three of us at home in my own kitchen in my PJ pants without talking anyone through it was a relief.
I made a sort of chile-spiced pulled pork goulash kind of thing back in January, and while rummaging through my freezer the other night in an attempt to locate something prepared and edible, unearthed a container and pulled it out. I threw it into a pot. Further rummaging revealed the last of the baked beans, which I figured would get along nicely with the pork. That went in too. And to serve it over, Sloppy Joe-style, some warm biscuits. This is my favorite biscuit recipe: made with olive or canola oil and half whole wheat flour, they take on any flavor you like very well. Had I had some in the fridge I might have added some grated cheese. On weekend mornings, I add a couple spoonfuls of sugar and throw in some fresh or frozen (unthawed) berries, or raisins, or chopped dried apricots and ginger. Brushing the top with a little milk will make them brown nicely. If you are making a sweet version, some plain or coarse sugar scattered on top is also a Good Thing.
Whole Wheat & Olive Oil Biscuits
These are made healthier with the addition of olive oil and whole wheat flour, but you can use all white flour if you like. To flavor the dough, add grated lemon or orange zest, ginger, fresh or dried herbs (such as basil or rosemary) or spices (such as cinnamon, star anise or fennel seed), or stir in a handful of grated cheese or fresh, frozen or dried berries.
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. sugar (optional)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive or canola oil
3/4 cup milk or buttermilk
Any additions you like (optional)
Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.
Put the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a food processor or into a medium mixing bowl and pulse or stir until well blended. Add the butter and oil and pulse or stir with a wire whisk or fork until crumbly. If you’re using a food processor, transfer the mixture to a medium bowl.
Add the milk and stir gently until the dough begins to come together. Add any additions (cheese, raisins, nuts, fruit etc.) as you stir the dough together.
For wedge-shaped biscuits, pat the dough into a circle that is about 1” thick and 8”-9” in diameter on the cookie sheet. (If they are sweet and you want a brown, crunchy top, brush them with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar.) Cut the circle into 8 wedges with a knife or pastry cutter and separate them on the sheet so that they are at least an inch apart. For round biscuits, pat the dough about 1” thick and cut it into rounds with a biscuit cutter, glass rim or open end of a can, rerolling the scraps only once to get as many biscuits as possible.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden. Serve warm. Wrap well and freeze any you don’t eat the same day. Makes 8 biscuits.
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March 03 2008 | beans and bread and pork and sandwiches | 1 Comment »
(I like this photo because it looks like Ned is being sucked up into the light fixture.)
I was on set all day and evening today too - there before 7:30 am, left at 10 pm. I’m not really sure what Mike and W ate for dinner, but they appear to have survived. Since we shot the Snacks & Finger Foods and Breads episodes today, that’s what I snacked on around dinnertime. Here are some of the things we made (try the beer bread!):
Cheddar Beer Bread
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated old cheddar cheese
1 bottle beer, at room temperature
2-4 Tbsp. melted butter, or canola or olive oil
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Add the cheese and toss to combine. Add the beer all at once, mixing as little as possible just until blended; the batter should be lumpy. Pour the batter into a 4″x8″ or 9″x5″ loaf pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and brush with the melted butter or oil. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes, or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean. Turn out onto a rack to cool.
Sticky, Sweet & Spicy Chicken Thighs
Instead of making chicken wings, which are mostly skin and fat (the fat resides under the skin), and very little meat, we like to make sticky chicken thighs or drumsticks – remove the skin and you have a much more meaty piece you can still eat off the bone with your fingers.
about 2 lbs. chicken thighs and/or drumsticks, skinned
½ cup soy sauce
½ cup maple syrup or honey
1-2 Tbsp. chili sauce
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp. grated ginger
Place the chicken in a bowl. Add all the sauce ingredients and toss it all about to blend and coat the chicken. Cover and refrigerate for a couple hours, or overnight.
When ready to roast, preheat oven to 375F. Spread the chicken pieces onto a rimmed baking sheet or in a large, shallow dish. Bake for an hour or so, turning occasionally and brushing with leftover marinade (making sure that you do this for the last time at least 15 minutes before the chicken comes out of the oven, to give it a chance to cook) until the juices run clear.
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February 25 2008 | bread and cheese and chicken & turkey | 1 Comment »
This morning my small group of friends who meet for a post-workout coffee every Monday, Wednesday and Friday gathered at my place instead, it being teacher’s convention and the kids out of school. Since there were 5 children of varying ages, the 4 of us and Mike, I made a whole sheetful of tuna melts, using a loaf of good crusty no-knead bread. Lay slices on a cookie sheet and toast at about 400F while you mix tuna, chopped celery and light mayo; divide among the toast and scatter with grated white cheddar (if you have it, or really any cheese you think would go well with tuna) and return to the oven until the cheese melts. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how to make a tuna melt.
But then only one of the kids wanted one, and all of my friends were full of the cinnamon sticky biscuits I had made to go with the coffee.
So Mike and I munched on tuna melts throughout the afternoon, and then kind of cruised through dinnertime without really being hungry. Which works out well, actually - my friend Sue is arriving from Vernon at any minute, so I roasted some peppers, tomatoes, garlic and chilies for a goat cheese gratin, which is waiting to be popped into the oven to heat through and get all bubbly around the edges when she walks in the door - a perfect late-night snack-slash-dinner, curled up on the couch with a bottle of wine. My only regret is that all the good bread was used up for the tuna melts.
The cinnamon sticky biscuits is a good recipe to have though, so here it is:
Cinnamon Sticky Biscuits
Try laying thin slices of these biscuits on top of a dish of peaches or apples tossed with sugar, then bake at 350° F for 20-30 minutes for a phenomenal fruit cobbler.
Stickiness:
2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tbsp. honey or corn syrup
Biscuits:
2 cups flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
Filling:
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup raisins and/or chopped pecans (optional)
Preheat oven to 400° F.
Combine butter, brown sugar and honey in a small saucepan or microwave-safe bowl and heat until melted and smooth. Pour over the bottom of an 8”x8” baking pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add the milk and canola oil and stir by hand just until you have a soft dough. Do not overmix!
On a lightly floured surface, pat or roll the dough into a 9” x 14” rectangle. Sprinkle with brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins or nuts. Starting from a long side, roll tightly jelly-roll style into a log. Cut into 9 biscuits using dental floss or a serrated knife, and place cut side down in the pan.
Bake for 20 minutes, until golden and bubbly. Invert onto a platter while still warm.
Makes 9 sticky biscuits.
Per biscuit: 270 calories, 9 g total fat (2.2 g saturated fat, 4.4 g monounsaturated fat, 2 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.6 g protein, 44 g carbohydrate, 7.7 mg cholesterol, 0.9 g fiber. 30% calories from fat.
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February 15 2008 | bread and snacks and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
It’s becoming evident that trends are going to start appearing on this site - like everyone else in the world, there are the usual standbys we pull into service on a regular basis. Pizza is one of them, usually made with our standard whole wheat crust recipe. Which has always worked out just fine. But tonight, I got home from Edmonton at dinnertime with two batches of the no-knead bread dough bubbling away in their bowls, and thought, why not slap some onto a baking sheet and see how it works for pizza? I’m glad I did - the result was a chewy, bulbous crust like the ones you get at the Italian Supermarket on Saturday afternoons (minus the smoky charred bits they get from the wood-fired oven. When I win the lottery, I’m having one installed in my back yard. Seriously - the Canadian rep for Italian Magnaini wood-fired ovens is in Black Diamond!)
Fridge-cleaning pizzas always seem to end up better than any others, because you use up things you wouldn’t necessarily plan on combining: it appeared at first that we were out of luck in the sauce department, but then located half a jar of pesto (one of W’s favorites, despite the fact that it’s green - the kid will eat falafels and pesto but won’t touch apple juice or potatoes), which we spread over the crust. It took about a minute to cook a Spolumbo’s chicken sausage, adding the second half of a can of diced tomatoes and the last of a bag of baby spinach to the pan to let it wilt after the sausage cooked. On top, part-skim mozzarella.
Now, I’m assuming that anyone reading this has heard of the no-knead bread phenomenon - if not, you must. I’ll tell you right now that this is probably the most worthwhile recipe you’ll collect from this site. (If you go to only one movie this year, bake this bread recipe.) It was written about by Mark Bittman in the New York Times a year ago November, and it turned out to be the most emailed story in the history of the Times. Every food blogger in the known universe has tried it, and documented it. It’s absolutely fantastic. The original recipe says 12-18 hours, but I usually leave mine for 24, or however long it is between stirring it up and when I want to bake it.
If you want to turn this into pizza dough, you don’t need to flour it and let it rest on the countertop; it should be fine just scraped out of the bowl onto the pan. Either way.
No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey at the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for dusting (or whole wheat, or half and half)
¼ teaspoon instant yeast (I use about 1/3 teaspoon regular active dry yeast)
1 teaspoon salt
In a large bowl stir together the flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a plate and let it rest on the countertop for 18-24 hours at room temperature.
The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice, then roughly shape into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour. Fold it over the bread or cover with another cotton towel and let it sit for another hour or two.
While the bread is resting, preheat the oven to 450°. Put a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and flip the dough over into the pot; it may look like a mess, but that’s OK. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 10-15 minutes, until it’s nice and golden. Eat up!
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January 22 2008 | bread and one dish | 8 Comments »
No offense, pizza guy.
We’ve rented The Bourne Ultimatum, and instead of ordering Inglewood Pizza, which I always eat too much of despite my best intentions, we’re going to make some using the jar of sun dried tomato pesto I bought earlier in December for some reason I can’t recall. (It’s alongside the regular pesto, beside the pasta sauce at the grocery store.)
We make pizza all the time, probably at least once a week. Mixing together the dough takes hardly any time at all, and you only need to let it rest on the counter for an hour while you figure out what to put on top. Usually it’s a fridge cleaning affair; tonight we’ll get rid of the tomato pesto, a couple bison sausages, the last of the feta, some grated part skim mozzarella, and anything I can coax off that rind of Parmesan. Although shrimp would be great too - one of my favorites is a combo I stole from Earls - pesto, sun dried tomatoes, cooked shrimp and crumbled feta. Yum.
Basic Pizza Crust
Pizza dough is a wonderfully versatile thing. I know you can buy pre-baked crusts at the grocery store for a few dollars, but pizza crust made from scratch is far better, costs practically nothing, and I find the process of mixing and kneading the dough by hand therapeutic. (Besides, Mike does it most of the time.) Once the dough has risen it can be twisted into bread sticks or pretzels, patted into focaccia, or topped with whatever you like and baked into a pizza or flatbread.
1 cup lukewarm water
1 pkg. (or 2 tsp.) active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar or honey
2 1/2 - 3 cups flour - all purpose, whole wheat, or any combination of the two (I usually use about 2 3/4 cups)
1 tsp. salt
a drizzle (1 tsp. - 1 Tbsp.) olive oil
In a large bowl, stir together the water, yeast and sugar; set aside for 5 minutes, until it’s foamy. (If it doesn’t get foamy, either your water was too hot and killed the yeast or it was inactive to begin with – toss it and buy fresh yeast or try again!)
Add 2 1/2 cups of the flour, salt and oil and stir until the dough comes together. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for about 8 minutes, until it’s smooth and elastic, adding a little more flour if the dough is too sticky.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and turn to coat all over. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for about an hour, until doubled in bulk. If you want you can let it rise more slowly in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours.
Punch the dough down, cover again and let it rest for 5 minutes. Divide it in half and shape each into a circle (or make individual mini pizzas) and place on a cookie sheet that has been sprinkled with flour or cornmeal.
Spread the pizza dough with tomato sauce, sprinkle with desired toppings and bake at 450 F for 15-20 minutes, until bubbly and golden.
Makes enough dough for 2 - 9” pizzas, or one big rectangular one (I do these on a large rimmed baking sheet).
Per slice (based on 12 slices): 111 calories, 0.7 g total fat (0.1 g saturated fat, 0.3 g monounsaturated fat, 0.2 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.2 g protein, 22.5 g carbohydrate, 0 mg cholesterol, 1.1 g fiber. 6% calories from fat.
To make flavored pizza dough: add a generous pinch of chopped fresh or dried basil, rosemary or oregano, a clove of minced garlic, a few finely chopped olives or sun dried tomatoes (if they come packed in oil, use it in place of the olive oil) or 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper along with the flour. Flavored pizza dough makes great breadsticks – roll the risen dough into sticks as thin or fat as you like, sprinkle with coarse salt or grated Parmesan cheese and bake until golden.
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January 05 2008 | bread and one dish | 4 Comments »
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