This recipe is not so new, basically a repeat post, but I had to share it again with only  slight change from the first Jalapeño Bread. Really there are only two differences from this time to the last. First is the cheese; this time we used swiss instead of cheddar. And second is that this time we were able to use a stand mixer which totally made a difference in effort ;) So so so much easier! Barely any effort at all when you don’t have to put your back into it.  Regardless, the bread was delicious as expected… hopefully you’ll catch a glimpse of inspiration to make your own.

This bread recipe is adapted from one of our favorite bread recipes:
Jalapeño Cheddar Bread

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon active dry yeast (less than a ¼-ounce package)
1 ¾ cups plus 1 tablespoon warm water (105-115°F)
4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ 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 swiss cheese (1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1 ½ ounces finely grated parmesan (¾ cup)
1 large egg, beaten with a pinch of salt

* Special equipment: a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment (we used the bread hook attachment – we’re new to the whole stand mixer set up)

Prepare jalapeños, shred and measure out cheeses.

Combine yeast and 1 tablespoon of warm water in a small bowl. Allow it to stand and work for about 5 minutes.

Add flour, salt, oil, yeast, and the other 1 ¾ cup warm water in your mixing bowl. Mix on low speed until a soft dough forms and increase speed to medium high for another 3 minutes.

Add jalapeños, 1½ cups of shredded swiss cheese, and ½ cup grated parmesan. Mix until well incorporated. This is the part where your arms thank you for having a stand mixer! A good old wooden spoon and metal bowl works too.

Scrape dough down to the center to form somewhat of a ball (I broke my spatula here! and now we have half a spatula that we still use;). Lightly sprinkle with flour and cover with a clean linen towel to help it stay moist. Set bowl in a warm and draft-free area and allow to rise for about 2-2½ hours or until doubled in size.

Turn the sticky dough out onto a well-floured surface. With floured hands form into a rectangle about 8 x 11 inches. Fold in thirds like a letter, pressing along the seam of each fold to seal.

Butter a 9×5 loaf pan. Place dough in in seam side down. Cover with same kitchen towel and let it rise again until dough rises above the pan, 1-1¼ hours.

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

Brush loaf with egg and sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons of swiss and ¼ cup parmesan down center of loaf.

Bake for 50 minutes to an hour or until golden. Loosen loaf from the pan with a butter knife if necessary and remove it from the pan. The original recipe suggests to return the loaf to the oven for an additional 10 minutes with out the pan to crisp up the crust. I’ve done it with and with out that step and liked it either way. If you are unsure if it is cooked enough, this step will reassure you.

Place on a cooling rack and allow it to sit for about 1-1½ hours. This might be that hardest past of the whole process – it smells so good, you’ll want to dig in immediately!

I love crackers but have not made them myself until recently. I noticed that we haven’t purchased many, if any, crackers in the past year and when I came across JoyTheBaker’s post called Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers, I knew what I had to do. So, I made crackers and they were delicious. In fact they were so nice that I have made four batches in the past 2 weeks and I’m already thinking about making another! This marks the start of my cracker hunt — must find more recipes.
Cracker recipes, where are you?

This recipe is surprisingly simple to make, it requires very few ingredients and about 10 minutes of your active time with 30 minutes or so to bake. It also lends itself to be modified with other spices and flavors. I’ve only just begun to experiment with these.

The recipe below was found on JoyTheBaker.Com
Joy found it in The Complete Book of Cookies

Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers

makes 20 crackers
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon butter, cold and cut into 6 small chunks
1 Tablespoon poppy seeds
6 Tablespoons half and half
sea salt & additional half and half for the topping (I used kosher salt instead)

Preheat the oven to 300° F. Sift together the flour, salt and sugar.  Add the butter and, using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is in tiny bits and dispersed throughout the flour mixture.

Stir in the poppy seeds.

Add the half and half and mix to make a stiff dough.  Place on a lightly floured surface and roll out to about 8×10-inches.  Cut into 20 squares.

Place the dough squares on an ungreased baking sheet lined with parchment or foil.  Brush sparingly with half and half and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp but still pale.  Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container.

So far the original recipe stands to be the best (of course) but I have started experimenting with adding other flavors which promise to make a nice cracker as well. I will post about them in the future. The additional ingredients in question are crushed red pepper, cumin, and sesame seeds… stay tuned for more cracker fun and dip ideas!

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…

Radishes are not something I often buy, not because I dislike them rather I’m not always sure what to do with them. Sure you could always dip them in something or just eat them, what else do people use them for? On a quick search I found a popular use was as simple as sliced radishes on bread with butter and a dash of salt. Hmmmm, ok I can do that! So, I tried it out and this is how it went…

Ingredients : sliced radishes, bread, butter, salt, and radish sprouts.

The day before we had this snack we made the bread, it was a french bread recipe found on The Thrifty Gourmet.  I’m not going to elaborate on our experience making this bread yet, I think we need another try for ultimate success — it didn’t rise properly for us this time.  But, for a first attempt at french bread, it turned out pretty good and was great for this snack. Check out their site for instructions and a great how to video demonstration if you want to give it a try.  I think most fresh breads would be great for this treat.

To make this snack, simply start off by preparing your ingredients. Slice your radishes and bread, pick your radish sprouts.  If you haven’t tried radish sprouts before keep an eye out for them; they’re quite tasty.  They would be great on sandwiches or in salads for an extra kick.

Toast and butter your bread.
Lay radish slices and sprinkle salt.
Top with radish sprouts and snack!

I also made radish chips! Still on a search for other ways to use them… any ideas?