Over the holidays we were gifted some pretty amazing things. There are two new special tools I am specifically referring to right now, a KitchenAid! and a Calphalon Dutch Oven!!! Oh my! Could it get any better?! The year has already started off much much better than last, I couldn’t be happier. Both Joe and I are employed with jobs we like and we’re in good health (crowd cheers) plus, we’re set up to bake anything and everything we want. I’m ready to make 2010 a great year full of fresh bread & happiness. Cheers to all and thanks for taking a moment to look at my little site, a project that I desire to keep growing into something beautiful.  And thank You (M&D and B&R) for gifting tools that will help us grow (up & out;) as well.

Of course we had to break into our new toys immediately to take them for a spin. First stop — rosemary bread. We combed the internet for the recipe we would bake first. We landed on a recipe from ThePioneerWoman.com.

This recipe was adapted from
ThePioneerWoman.com

Rosemary Bread

20 oz. of bread flour (all purpose is okay, too) – about 4 cups.
8 oz. of water (or 1 cup).
4 oz. melted butter with chopped herbs of choice (we used rosemary).
2 teaspoons salt.
1 teaspoon active or instant yeast (if active, it would be best to sprinkle yeast over the water to let it start to work before mixing it in).

In your KitchenAid stand mixer (with dough hook) sprinkle yeast over the water before mixing in the rest of the ingredients.  Mix together on low speed for about 10 minutes or so until you can achieve a windowpane with the dough- this is something I never knew about until I followed their instructions. Achieving a windowpane is when you can pull off a small chunk of the dough you’re kneading and stretch it gently to see if it is somewhat translucent. If you can do this without it tearing, it’s ready.

Once this elasticity has been achieved, allow the dough sit out with plastic wrap over it for 1-4 hours to double in size. After it’s gotten bigger, it should be kneaded for a minute or two so that the yeast can redistribute – Once we kneaded the bread, the dough seemed to return to its original size and become more dense.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut a large ‘X’ into the surface of the bread dough so it can bloom!

Bake inside a covered cast iron pan after coating the rounded dough with olive oil and sprinkling with kosher salt. Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on, then remove lid to finish it off for another 15 to 30 minutes.

The bread can get brown on the bottom if it’s too close to the heating element; if that happens, just slice it off with a sharp knife.

We baked ours for the 30 minutes covered and an additional 20 without the lid- next time we’ll do the additional 30 minutes because our dough was a little too moist although it was still very delicious.  Our outer crust was beautifully perfect, this was an excellent first experience with both our KitchenAid and cooking with the dutch oven. We can’t stop thinking about mixing up our next batch of bread!

It’s exciting to think about how much easier the bread making process will be, the possibilities just opened up. Looking forward to finding more recipes to try.

A bread that takes less than 3 hours to make from scratch! Yay! It’s not always easy to find a bread recipe that you can rise within 2 hours and cook in about a half an hour.  I found this peasant bread recipe about a month ago on RealMomKitchen.com and have already baked it 5 times! It requires very few ingredients and very little effort. It’s a perfect bread to eat with soups or simply dip into oil, awesome right out of the oven and will last a few days as well.

Ingredients : flour, sugar, salt, water, yeast, butter, cornmeal

The peasant bread recipe below was found on
RealMomKitchen.com

1 package dry yeast
2 cups warm water
1 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups flour
cornmeal
melted butter

Place yeast, water, sugar, and salt in bowl and stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir until well blended. Do not knead. Cover and let rise until double in size (about 1 hour). Remove dough from bowl and place in 2 rounds on a greased cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Let rise an additional hour. Brush top on dough with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Serve warm.

– I found this dough to be extremely wet (which means easy to stir by hand!). The first time I used this recipe I followed the exact instructions and got a moist yet delicious bread with a crispy crust.  However, because it was so wet, It was very tricky and sticky to get the dough from the bowl to the pan.  The next few times I made it I used 4 generously heaping cups of flour instead and got nice results as well; it was still very wet and not too much easier to handle the dough. Although I think it helped the texture a bit and I will continue with the heaping measurement.

When you are transferring the dough on to the pan you will basically just be plopping two dough blobs down. Because the dough is so wet it may end up merging back to one — no big deal.  Don’t skimp on the butter brushed on top; I think this is one of the best parts, it will add to your crispy golden crust and overall deliciousness. Cooking time will vary slightly depending on your oven. After a few times I found that cooking it (in my oven) a few extra minutes until golden brown is how we like it.

Aside from this bread being easy to make and virtually impossible to screw up, it is also very inexpensive. Nothing beats freshly baked bread!

Average Cost :
flour- $0.56
butter- $0.10
sugar- $0.01
salt- $0.01
yeast- $0.80
Cornmeal- $0.02
water- priceless

Total Cost is about $1.50!

Hoping to find more and more easy bread recipes!
Let me know if you have one for me to try…

Fall is slowly moving in on us and with it comes the urge to bake more bread! Joe and I love making bread. We don’t have much experience or a stand mixer, but we love to try out new bread recipes. While searching for ideas on how to use our fresh sage from the garden I stumbled across this Cheddar Sage Bread recipe.  Cheese, bread, & herbs… Yep- sounds good to me!

We have been growing sage all summer and haven’t done anything special with it (until now). I love the flavor of sage but just don’t know much about using it. I was excited to find this recipe because I have never tasted a sage bread before but it sounded delicious to me. We changed a few small things in the recipe and it turned out great! It wasn’t too much work and the rising time was only a couple of hours.  Sometimes when we make bread it feels like the rising time takes twice as long as it says it should. With this recipe I felt like everything went according to plan.

Cheddar Sage Bread
This recipe was found on thathomesite.com
(we slightly modified it in order to use ingredients on hand)

½ teaspoon dry mustard or 1½ teaspoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons fresh sage, minced
3-3½ cups flour (we used bread flour, but all purpose will work just fine)
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 cup milk
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar or 3oz of other cheese
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter

Dissolve mustard in 1 teaspoon warm water – we didn’t have any dry mustard so we substituted it with 3 times as much yellow mustard (this recipe calls for ½ teaspoon dry mustard, we used 1½ teaspoons of yellow mustard instead).

Combine 3 cups flour with salt, pepper, and sage. Warm the milk.

In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, yeast, sugar, and oil. Stir or process to combine. Add the egg and mix well. Add mustard and flour mixtures, adding more flour as necessary so mixture forms a stiff dough and comes together in a ball.

Incorporate cheese into the dough — This recipe called for 3oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese; we used what we had on hand instead- which turned out to be about 4oz of a Gruyere & Colby cheese mix.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour as necessary, about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a lightly buttered bowl and turn to coat top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Punch down, shape in a loaf, put in buttered loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, another hour.

Heat oven to 375°. Melt butter. Brush loaf with melted butter and bake until loaf is golden brown, about 50 minutes  — 50 minutes was just right for us. The bread seemed to turn a golden brown rather quickly and looked like it could be done after about 25 minutes, but we waited until it baked for the suggested amount of time and it turned out perfect. Cool on a rack before cutting into it.

While it was baking the whole house smelled amazing! It tasted just as nice!  We used it all week to eat as a simple toast and for a few breakfast sandwiches as well.

We don’t have much experience in making loaves of bread. So, we have decided to start baking them more often to learn different methods.  When it’s time to make a new loaf we prowl the internet to find a recipe that sounds good to us.  In the past month we have made this jalepeño cheddar bread twice; we found it on epicurious.

One loaf of this bread takes almost 7 hours to make with only about 20 minutes of your actual attention.  It would have been much easier if we owned a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but with our simple wooden spoon and metallic bowl we managed to get through it just fine.  The bread was delicious both times.  The first loaf turned out well but we thought it should be more spicy so the next time we added more jalepeño and more seeds; we may have put a bit too many peppers the second time even though it was still not very spicy.  The flavor, however, was great in both cases and we will make it again according to the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon active dry yeast (less than a 1/4-ounce package)
1 3/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon warm water (105-115°F)
4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped fresh jalapeño, including seeds and ribs, plus 2 tablespoons
chopped fresh jalapeño, without seeds and ribs (from 3 medium total)
5 ounces coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1 1/2 ounces finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (3/4 cup)
1 large egg, beaten with a pinch of salt

* Special equipment: a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment

Below are the instruction from the original recipe along with our observations of the process….

Stir together yeast and 1 tablespoon warm water in a small bowl; let mixture stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If it doesn’t foam, discard and start over with new yeast.) °° We did this a few times and it never foamed so we decided to move on.  I was worried that it wouldn’t rise properly since the instructions specifically say to start over.  Well, we did start over and it never foamed for us ;( but it in the end it didn’t seem to matter much at all.
Mix together flour, salt, oil, yeast mixture, and remaining 1x cups warm water in bowl of mixer at low speed until a soft dough forms. Increase speed to medium-high and beat 3 minutes more. Add jalapeño, 1 1/2 cups Cheddar, and 1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano and mix until combined. °° This is where a stand mixer would have been extremely helpful!

Scrape dough down side of bowl (all around) into center, then sprinkle lightly with flour. Cover bowl with a clean kitchen towel (not terry cloth) to keep a crust from forming and let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. (Alternatively,let dough rise in bowl in refrigerator 8 to 12 hours.)

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and gently form into a roughly 11- by 8-inch rectangle with floured hands.

Fold dough in thirds (like a letter) with floured hands (dough will be sticky), pressing along seam of each fold to seal.

Put dough, seam side down, in an oiled 9- by 5-inch loaf pan. Cover pan with same clean kitchen towel and let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until dough completely fills pan and rises above it slightly, 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F.

Brush loaf with egg, then sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons Cheddar and remaining 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano down center of loaf.

Bake until bread is golden and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Run a knife around edge of pan to loosen loaf, then remove from pan to test for doneness. °° The Bread turned out to be beautiful after almost an hour of cooking.  I can’t say we tapped on the fresh out of the oven loaf to hear the hollow sound but it looked done to us and it was.

Return bread (not in pan) to oven and turn on its side, then bake 10 minutes more to crisp crust. Cool completely on a rack, about 1 1/2 hours. °° We didn’t do this step on the first loaf but we did on the second; I didn’t notice much of a difference.

We enjoyed this jalepeño cheddar bread all week in many fashions.  We made a delicious grilled swiss cheese with a mustard seed spread, garlic bread, and an eggs Florentine.   A flavored bread is definitely a nice way to spice up your everyday meals.  This makes me want to try more!

There are lots of banana bread recipes in the world; they all have similar ingredients yet some are better than others. We make banana bread quite often, we love to keep bananas in the house for an easy and healthy snack, but they brown quickly so instead of throwing them away we use them in breads or muffins.

A few years ago my friend Amy gave me a recipe for the most delicious banana bread. I’m definitely glad that I held on to it for so long because I haven’t found another I like more. This recipe is different than most, it calls for yogurt.  The bread turns out to be full, fluffy, and moist. It’s less dense than a lot of other banana breads I have tried.  For fun, we added cardamom powder and cinnamon sugar on top.

2 cups flour
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cardamom powder

3 ripe bananas mashed
¼ cup yogurt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 Tablespoon butter- melted and cooled
1 ¼ cup walnuts

cinnamon sugar

•Preheat oven to 350°, butter a 9×5 baking pan
•Whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl
•Combine Mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, vanilla & butter and fold into dry
•Pour into bread pan and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top
•Bake for 55-60 minutes

I’m always pleased to find croutons in my salad. I love the extra hint of flavor and the additional crunch. However, what I don’t care for is struggling to stick my fork into the commonly crunchy croutons, they seem to either crack or stubbornly stay whole but rarely accept the fork graciously.

The past couple times we visited my parents, my dad made salads that included a tasty and practical alternative to the standard crouton. It’s basically a crumble to top your salad. It’s made from day old baguette; it’s always good to have a plan for that bread you couldn’t finish in time. The Crumble has a nice crunch with a bit of flavor and it scoops up easily with your salad bites. The ingredients are simple and it takes little time to prepare.

Ingredients :: bread, butter, kosher salt, garlic, and nutritional yeast.

The nutritional yeast is my addition to the way my dad makes it… I’m always looking for excuses to use it and it works nicely with this concept!

• You will need about 6-8 inches of a standard baguette to yield 1+ cup bread crumbs.  The loaf should be slightly hardened.  Use a coarse grater to create your crumbles.  This step, according to me, is not very much fun but it doesn’t take long and I believe it’s worth the small amount of effort.

• In a frying pan over low heat melt 3 tablespoons of butter and add 1 clove of crushed garlic, cook for a moment until garlic mellows and begins to turn golden. Add your breadcrumbs to the garlic butter and stir.   Add kosher salt to taste and 2 teaspoons nutritional yeast to the mix as well.  Fry up the mixture over medium heat until crumbles are golden brown and crispy.  Serve these crumbles mixed into and on top of your salad right off the stove for best result.

This is a really simple addition that adds a nice texture to your salad.  To make a crumble all you really need are breadcrumbs and butter.   Salt, garlic, and nutritional yeast are optional but a delicious addition.  Imagine what else could be added to something like this!