Sun Bread

Winter is making its last (well, we can hope!) stand here just two days before Spring arrives, grey-ing the sky and dumping snow over the newly green grass, bright forsythia blooms, and tender daffodil blossoms.  A great day for sun bread.

A few weeks ago a mysterious package arrived at my parents' house.  For me!  An early birthday present.  Really early.  But I'm not one to wait on opening a package that has my own name clearly printed on the front.  It turned out to be the book "Sun Bread" by Elisa Kleven.  I've only read the book once before at my brother's house.  Mere coincidence?  Or a clue as to who the sender was?  Hmmmmm . . .

We used the recipe on the back of the book (also found on Elisa's website activity page here, if you want to try it too) and divided the recipe into 4 pieces so each of us (minus baby) could shape our own small bread.  I used considerably more flour than the recipe calls for (about an additional cup which was probably too much), and wish I had added more salt.   In any case we ended up with a lovely afternoon snack that added a little warmth and brightness to our day.  And everyone loves their own signature bread!

Thanks Philip and Betsy (?) for putting a little sun in our snowy sky!

Croissant Attempt

It seems like every cooking blog that has a post about croissants has the same story, and mine is no different.  Yes, I have thought of making croissants for awhile, but was too intimidated to try.  Yes, I did look at many recipes, videos, pictures, etc. before finally working up the nerve to do it.  Oh, and yes, they didn't come out perfect so I have to try again.  Sometime.

Actually, I can't complain too much.  It was an overcast, nothing-much-planned sort of day, and I enjoyed the challenge of a new baking project.  They came out looking beautiful and they tasted good too, even if the shape and texture weren't textbook perfect (as far as shape, I intended to make them straight as you see, but I didn't get them rolled quite as many times as is "correct").

Apparently, you can't judge a croissant by its cover.  The crumb is what makes it, and mine was a bit doughy with a few large air pockets rather than a nice, uniform honeycomb.  If you're interested, see nice croissant crumb pictures here.

Anyhow, there they are.  Or were, I should say.  All but the last two.

For future reference, I used 1/2 of this recipe and made 9 medium-sized croissant.  I've got several ideas for improving my croissants which I will share next time.  Don't hold your breath, though.  It could be a month or even a year off.  I welcome advice!

Birthday Fare

One of my birthday treats to myself this year was making a favorite Turkish meal of mine (thanks to my sister-in-law keeping an eye on the kids!): red lentil soup, pogaca (with a literal twist!), and a nice salad of mixed greens, cucumber and green onions.

lentil soup (this needs its own post sometime)

& the pogaca with a twist

You may or may not remember a post I did back in December on these little cheese-filled Turkish pastries (complete with a pronunciation guide, by the way).  What often keeps me from making them is that it just takes so much time to prepare all the little individual pastries, especially when I have two kids who always seem to need/want a lot of attention between 4 & 5 o'clock.  I just cannot focus with a baby crying and clinging to my legs!  

Anyhow, as you can tell from the picture, I decided to simplify the process and hopefully get the same flavor by rolling the dough out as for cinnamon rolls, sprinkling with the feta cheese and parsley and baking it as a loaf.  Viola!  The texture and taste were spot on, and it took oh-so-much less time!  See the original "Pogaca" post for a link to the recipe I use.  And happy (birthday) cooking!

Three Kings

Do you get stressed out over the winter holidays?  Does Christmas seem to sneak up on you too fast, and you find you just can't get all the things done that you wanted to before it arrives?  My friends, I have a solution:  Three Kings' Day.  Apparently we like to borrow traditions around here.  This one is from Latin America and some parts of Europe.  The celebration takes place on January 6 and commemorates the arrival of the wise people seeking the Christ child in Bethlehem.  

In a way, you're just stretching out the holiday season, so it might seem like more stress to add another one.  But believe me, it is SOOO relaxing to celebrate a holiday that no one around you knows about or pressures you to observe in any particular way!  We choose to give our gifts to each other on Three Kings' Day because it just seems to make more sense to connect the gift giving with those wise people.  Plus, this way we can enjoy the Christmas celebrations with our extended families without having to squeeze our own family time in sometime, somewhere, somehow.  We have our own Christmas season traditions that make the time special for us without the presents.  

Since we've borrowed Three Kings' Day from another culture (and some cool families we know), we don't try to be all authentic with it or anything (in fact, we celebrated a week late this year on January 13--who cares?!?  it's just for us!) but this year I did look up some traditional foods for the holiday and decided to make a "rosca de reyes"--Three Kings' Bread. 

 

I won't tell you how many pictures I took trying to make this look more appealing.  That would be embarrassing and seem contrary to the nature of this blog (which my husband is always accusing of not being "uncensored" enough in that I don't post every single dish I ever make).  But for the record, I think it would have looked better if I had taken some sort of icing application class or just not put any of those Princess-Leia's-hair-like loops of icing on it.  YET, the added sweetness was a definite bonus (I flavored the plain icing with cinnamon!), so I'll try not to be too vain about it. I also would forgo the orange slices which I put on along with the colored sugar for some festive flair.  It just meant that the bread was soggy underneath and not slathered with yummy hair-like loops of icing.

The bread is eggy, lightly sweet, and lightly spiced with cinnamon and orange zest.  I pretty much followed this recipe.  Which is pretty much the exact same thing as the Easter bread I made last year (just switch out the orange zest for lemon zest and swap the baby Jesus for an egg!  viola!).  We didn't really put in a baby Jesus figurine since we don't celebrate Candlemas on February 2 (whoever bites into the figurine treats everyone to tamales at Candlemas apparently).  

So you see, we pretty much do our own thing, incorporating bits and pieces of the tradition that we like.  We took the bread over to my in-laws' that evening and "caroled" for them ("We Three Kings", of course!) before sharing the bread and hot chocolate together.  That in itself was fun enough to make this a true tradition for our family by doing it again next year.  Maybe we'll even hit the right day!

Pogaca

Pogaca are little cheese/herb-filled Turkish pastries that I got a sudden hankering for last week.  My sister-in-law has never been afraid of making Turkish foods that she loves, so I was inspired to try these even though I'd never made nor seen them made before.  

First off, we must work on our pronunciation.  It might be tempting to look at "pogaca" and want to say "po-gak-a".  Um, no.  I apologize for not having Turkish characters (or not knowing how to access them), but the "g" should have a curl on its head (making it silent, drawing out the preceding vowel) and the "c" really needs it's tail (making it a "ch" sound).  Thus, we say "poh-ach-a" with a kind of dip in the voice after the "o".  All right, then.  Practice makes . . . good enough.

I found a great recipe online that yields a dough with a kind of flakiness.  It was very easy to work with and the pogaca were delicious--cold or re-heated--several days following.  The only changes I made to the recipe were to make a 1/2 batch (which I made into 20 pastries) and to use a mixture of feta and cottage cheese rather than all feta to make the inside a little creamier.  I think next time I would even go 1/2 and 1/2 on the cheeses; I would also make a 1/4 batch and do something like 15 pastries to get more of a two-bite size rather than a four-bite. 

I shaped mine by taking the ball of dough in both hands, sticking my thumbs in the center and turning it as if making a vase or cup on a pottery wheel.  You don't have to kick your foot as you do this, though.  Once I had the "walls" of the dough thin enough I put about a TBSP of filling in, pinched it shut, then turned it over and smoothed it back into a ball shape. 

As the recipe says, there is no need to pre-heat the oven (fun!), but I would recommend checking on them after about 25 minutes to see if they're browned to your liking.  I thought 35 minutes got them a little too dark for my taste.

If you're looking for an easy, fun pastry project that tastes delicious and keeps well, try making pogaca!  Did you remember to say "poh-ach-a"?

Bread in Between

So the season of Lent just happened to be when we decided to move three hours north of where we lived. And then go back to the old place two different times. The first was a short weekend, and I sorta cheated on the bread thing by getting a biscuit mix ("just add water!") because my cupboards looked like this:

Cooks word: Fresh = yum! Leftover the next morning = ugh!

The next trip south was for two weeks, so I went armed with flour (white and whole wheat), yeast, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar. Just in case I needed to make bread or something. However, I was still short on the kitchen gadget end of things. I had to borrow a can opener and grater from two different neighbors. Other things could be approximated like a cup for a biscuit cutter (my husband actually scoffs at the "need" for a biscuit cutter but, hey, it's my grandmother's vintage one!) or a smooth-sided canning jar for a rolling pin:

I ended up using this jar quite a bit and it turned out some lovely tortillas as well as this stack of pita: (I'm really into colons at the moment)

One of the funniest (and of course, un-photographed) genius ideas was a rigged up pancake spatula from a canning lid and wooden scraper. It fell apart in two seconds and after two grubby, mangled pancakes I had the brilliant insight to make miniature cakes my wooden scraper could flip smoothly. Did that make sense? Small scraper. Small pancakes.

While the challenge of living in a minimally-stocked kitchen was fun for a week or two, I'm glad to be heading back into my regular quarters with all my lovable familiar gadgetry. Ah!

Daily Bread Continues . . .

I have to admit it. This discipline I've chosen for Lent has turned out to be a struggle some days. Originally, I thought "oh, this'll be a great way to consciously meditate on God's daily goodness to me while enjoying a passion: bread". Well, yes, sometimes it has worked out like that. Then there are the day(s?) where I hurriedly mixed up a few tablespoons of flour, a bit of oil, and some water to fry and eat at 11:00 pm. Or that other day when I woke my husband from a couch nap at 10:30 (PM!) to make him eat some fresh, homemade soft pretzels with me. There was also that weekend traveling that I simply bought an "add water only" biscuit mix to make my daily bread with (hint: these are okay fresh but pretty much yuk the following day!).

Mixed up with all of that has been the gigantic headache of turning our house inside-out for extermination purposes, the disappointment of not getting internet access at our new home (at the outset of this bread thing, I was planning to blog every day as part of my discipline), the scare of a smoking--yes, SMOKING!--washing machine, and a few trips between new home and old home (the second time I remembered to pack flour, salt, and my arsenal of leavens along with a week's-worth of clothing for the family). Ah, yes, and we're going camping this weekend. Have I really decided to make fresh bread every day?!? It's beginning to feel like a discipline rather than a pleasant exercise, and the whole being-mindful-of-God's-goodness thing has become a lot more relevant (read: "difficult") too.

But I suppose that's the point of a discipline, eh? Sticking with something no matter what happens to make you want to quit it. And I have been, actually.

Some days I've really needed the reminder that God is good and is going to take care of my needs. My husband and I have joked about all the calamities that have been striking us, but we're both healthy; we have a beautiful baby; we get to spend time with our families; materially, we're not in need; we have plenty of food to eat and lots of good friends to share it with; our new neighbors are great . . . I could really go on and on. Do I need to worry about getting renters for our old house or sob over some of the disappointments of our new place? Maybe a little. But I think my faith in God can supersede those things. One day at a time.

SO! This is a cooking blog, right? And maybe you're wondering about the picture I started off with.

One of the delightful meals I got to make this month (the 1st of March to be exact) was a pork pot pie with a soda bread crust (that satisfied the daily bread requirement). I browned, then stewed a half pound of pork tenderloin with some onions and garlic, then added cooked potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peas to it along with a vegetable gravy to thicken it up. The vegetable gravy was made with a roux (melted butter and flour) to which I added a veggie broth I made by boiling the veg skins I had from the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions. I also added some veg bouillon to deepen the flavor. The filling all got dumped in my cast iron skillet then covered with the soda bread crust (recipe from an Irish cookbook I have) and baked until the crust was done. YUM! Only things I would change are less salt in the crust and a bit thicker/chunkier filling (I had a limited veg selection on hand). I also think this could easily be made all in the skillet rather than three different pans. Don't you like the cute country hearts on the crust, though? =)

Rosemary Potato Bread

Yay! It turned out this time, and I'm ready to give you the recipe! I added some garlic powder this time and really liked the final flavor. The recipe I started from is found here.

Rosemary Potato Bread
(yield (3) 8 1/2 inch loaves
or (2) 9-inch loaves and (1) small round loaf
or (3) equally-sized round loaves)

1 cup warm water*
2 TBSP active dry yeast
4 TBSP honey or sugar
6 - 8 cups flour**
1 cup warm milk
4 TBSP melted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup mashed potatoes
2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 TBSP ground rosemary
1 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

Instructions: Dissolve yeast and 2 TBSP sweetener in the warm water. Stir in 1 cup flour and let rise 15 - 30 minutes. In another bowl combine milk, butter, other 2 TBSP of sweetener, mashed potatoes, eggs, salt, and spices. Stir in risen batter. Add flour until your bread holds together and is still soft and slightly sticky. Coat with a few TBSP oil, and let rise until doubled (this dough rises faster than others I've worked with!). Shape into loaves (I have done 2 9-inch loaves and one smaller round loaf--I really like the texture of the bread baked on a pizza stone). Let rise until double again. Bake at 350F for 35-45 minutes. Cool on wire racks. I dare you to resist cutting into a loaf while it's still warm!

Cook's Word: this bread has a lovely flavor, made interesting by the occasional bite of black pepper. It makes excellent buttered toast, even five days out from baking. Experimental possibilities with other herbs/spices abound, so be creative!

* Note on water: if you mash the potatoes just for this bread the original recipe suggests saving the cooking water for dissolving the yeast in. I have been using potato flakes, so never had this chance.

** Note on flour: sorry for the inaccurate measurement. I hardly ever measure flour for bread anymore, just adding it in by cup until I get the consistency I want. The original recipe calls for 6 1/2 cups regular flour and 2 cups bread flour. I think my flour supply is bread flour. Also, I have used some whole wheat and some white flour which changes the quantities a little.

Currently eating for lunch:

pumpkin-shaped pasta with broccoli and a creamy white cheese sauce (leftover from last night's soft pretzels). It's actually surprisingly tasty--maybe because of the fresh-ground black pepper I added. Can you tell I've been obsessed with fresh-ground black pepper recently? Getting a pepper grinder really added a new dimension to my cooking. =)

Flop, sorta . . .

Okay, all you Uncensored Kitchen peeps. Are you ready for a flop? Actually, it was kinda the opposite of a flop . . .

I made bread. Delicious potato bread with rosemary and black pepper. The dough was soft; it rose beautifully. The scent of it baking was simply heavenly. I cut into it when it was still hot, and slathered a slice with butter. Wow. Tender crumb, crisp, flaky crust. Double wowow. We ate that loaf all up.


And here's the one I was going to take for sister-in-law's wedding feast.

Uh, maybe not.

The texture and flavor were still there, but this was a flop (or an over-rise). Not sure if I just formed these sloppy or if I let them rise too long, but these loaves weren't quite wedding caliber (wording there supplied by my taste-tester). And that other loaf? Why the major difference? It happened to be a well-formed round loaf baked on stoneware. I'm not sure you can preserve the flakiness of a bread crust once you've cooled, sliced, frozen, and thawed a loaf, so I guess it's good we ate that one right away anyhow.

I'm going to try this again, tweak the seasonings and flour a little, and get back to you with a recipe. Before the wedding. Because I better have perfected it by then.

Doughnut French Toast

It was somewhere between asleep and awake--a weird mix of dreams, the breaking dawn, and NPR's Morning Edition program. I was asleep one moment and the next I was catching a snippet of conversation between Steve Inskeep and Nigella Lawson concerning Lawson's "Doughnut French Toast". (I think this must have caught my one awake ear because a few months back one of my sisters had posted about this particular french toast, and I had watched a video clip of Nigella making it.) And in the next moment, I was dreaming about being a chef in a nice country hotel . . .

Later on, I wondered if I had really heard a Morning Edition clip, or whether I had just dreamed it all. I went to NPR's website and found proof that I hadn't been totally in la-la land. And did I have stale-ish bread on hand at that particular moment? Why, yes! And was I having a morning at home with time to make french toast? Absolutely!

Mmmmm . . . this french toast was really good. I think it had a bit much vanilla, and not enough (none at all, in fact) salt. But I loved the egginess and the instructions to soak it as long as it said. My bread could have used even more of the wet stuff, but I had used whole grain bread when the recipe called for white. I also noticed later that there are two recipes (at the NPR site and here)for this toast online in which one calls for double the amount of milk. Now that would make a difference!

Cook's Word: A good, solid french toast. I think I would add a dash of salt to the egg mixture as well as a little sugar. I didn't care for all the sweetness being on the outside. I think I'd also cut the vanilla a bit if I make it again.

Mini Cini's

Here's a fun, easy way to do cinnamon rolls. I made a batch of bread dough, then used one loaf's worth for cinnamon rolls. I wanted to make them small for camping, so I rolled them to about 3-in thickness, sliced, and placed them in well-greased muffin tins. So cute! They got a little glumpy after sitting in a container for three days, so I'd recommend eating them right away!

Basic Bread

Last year I went on a "basic bread quest". Not limiting myself to cookbooks I owned, I also borrowed from the library and found recipes on the internet that seemed to my liking. I was looking for a basic whole-wheat bread (but not ALL whole wheat) that wasn't too complicated and would give consistent results. Each time I made bread I used a new recipe, trying some a second time if they seemed promising. But for all my searching, it came back to the beginning for me. Esther Shank.

For some of you the name "Esther Shank" is totally meaningless. For others, it is roughly synonymous with a warm, busy kitchen where economy and good-sense reign; nothing is wasted, least of all pounds off the cook's middle. The back of her cookbook (titled, "Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets") effuses with some charming rhyme: "Mennonite homemaker Esther H. Shank . . . has collected and perfected good recipes and food tips for 25 years. In this remarkable collection of more than 1,000 recipes and hundreds of hints for success, she shares her legacy of kitchen know-how". Indeed.

While there are some wonderful standard recipes (most of them marked by tell-tale oil or cocoa stains) that I can personally vouch for--Basic Pancakes, Delicious Chocolate Cake, and Buttermilk Biscuits for example--many of the recipes and ideas in the book seem outdated and unusable. The "Party Foods Recipes" section in particular takes my "Whoa-There!" cake. Besides "Surprise Hamburger Muffin Cups" and "Hot Dog Treats" (okay, so I admitted to liking hot dogs, but they either have to be from the diner downtown or sizzled to perfection over a campfire), there is the inscrutable "Elegant Party Loaf". The idea behind this is to take a loaf of bread, cut it into four horizontal slices, and slather each layer with a highly-mayonnaisized salad, chicken, egg, and ham. The loaf then gets cut so that each slice has layers of bread and salads. Elegant, no? From the first time I laid eyes on this page, I have been puzzled and repulsed.

But despite these occasional culinary ditches, I keep going back to Esther Shank for invaluable advice (on such varied topics as mattress-rotation and egg-poaching) and some of those standard recipes that will never go out of style. My basic bread recipe happens to be one of those. I have actually paper-clipped page 60 so that I can easily find it when the bread-baking urge hits.





My only changes to the recipe have been to use a 1-1 ratio of white to whole wheat flour rather than 2-1, respectively. I also have found that baking my loaves for the recommended 40 minutes results in a dry, crumbly texture rather than soft and moist how I like my bread.

Between the two of us, here's what I end up making (a half-recipe that yields two loaves):


Basic Whole Wheat Bread

1/2 cup warm water
1 1/2 TBSP yeast
1 TBSP sugar
3/4 cup hot milk
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 TBSP molasses
2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cups water
3 cups white flour (plus enough to gain the proper texture)
3 cups whole wheat flour (I often substitute one cup of another whole grain flour, such as rye tonight)


Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water and let sit. In a large-ish bowl dump oil, brown sugar, molasses and salt. Pour milk over all to dissolve. Add 1 1/4 cups cold water. Stir in yeast mixture. Add flours and knead until dough is sticky-smooth. I leave it a little sticky, not kneading too long. I then remove the dough from the pan and dump in about 2 TBSP of oil, returning the dough to the bowl and turning to coat. Cover and let rise until double. Shape loaves (2 9X5) and let rise again until double. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Once the bread comes out I use my mom's old trick to keep the crust soft: cover with towel, then a layer of plastic (a grocery bag usually covers both loaves), then another towel. Let cool. Before it's completely cool, I generally can't resist slicing into one of the loaves to "test" it. With butter and honey. YUM. I think my taste-tester said something like: "That's good, honey".

All in a Day's Cooking

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon cooking up a storm. I only wished I could've cooked up some rain to go with it!

It started with a 50 cent pack of frozen okra at the discount grocers. Okra. I think "gumbo." Oh, and I have those two potlucks this weekend to contribute something to. Whey from making (failed) yogurt last week. Potato flakes we've had in the cupboard for far too long. Potato bread. And while the oven is hot, I might as well whip up a batch of scones . . . Do I really wonder WHY I'm tired after a meal?!

The potato bread turned out lovely, moist and delicious with a little butter on it. I made two plain round loaves, and two garlic-rosemary free-form "baguettes" for the two potlucks. I also had to do a miniature of each variety for us to try while it was hot and fresh. I didn't use enough garlic powder or rosemary. I'll have to play with it some more before posting a recipe.

The okra gumbo came from allrecipes.com. I basically followed this recipe minus the file powder since I didn't have any, and plus a dash of ginger. I also only used half the amount of mushrooms it called for since I might want some of them for pizza later. I found it a bit on the salty side, and I don't mean expensive! The okra only cost 25 cents, after all, and the canned tomatoes were a gift from the new neighbors. =) We ate it over brown rice.

Then there were the Chocolate & Fig Scones. All I can say is, "yummy, yummy!" I meant to take a picture of them after they were baked, but I didn't have the memory card in. By the time I realized my mistake, the last one was in my tummy. Deliciously buttery and dark-chocolate-y. I may have to post the recipe . . .

Bon Apetit!

Bagels

Too much fun! Bagels have become one of those things that we just buy and never think about making at home. While many recipes are involved and complicated, my sister found one that you can whip out in an afternoon (or morning). I won't post the recipe here, just a link to the original. I added some whole wheat flour, of course, and dipped mine in sesame seeds just before baking. I also made 12 instead of 8 bagels, and found that they didn't need to bake 10 minutes on each side. I'll try 6 or 7 minutes per side next time.

The dough gets formed into little balls that rest.
Mine rested a l---o---n---g time because I had
two other projects going on at the same time.

After it rests 20 minutes, the dough gets shaped
into bagels which rest again another 10 - 20 minutes.

The bagels are boiled before being baked. It
was surprisingly easy and not messy (though boiling
did make them a little sticky). I coated them with
sesame seeds prior to baking. Turned out really great!

I had to run out for some neufchatel cheese
so we could eat them hot and fresh that night!