I cooked one of my homegrown pumpkins to make a pumpkin pie this year. I still have 5 more to cook! The pie was fantastic! Everyone that tasted it commented on how good it was. Shall we just say that real cream and fresh pumpkin tastes way better than canned milk and canned pumpkin? I…
Breads
Bread is expensive! So making bread is a great way to save money. There are two basic kinds of breads: yeast breads and quick breads.
Yeast Breads
Yeast breads scare some people but don't let them scare you. Typically, you will mix together the dry ingredients, including the yeast, then add the wet ingredients. Yeast and cold don't get along so you want your liquids to be lukewarm. You may or may not knead the bread before setting it somewhere warm to rise. If it's a cold day, turn your oven on low for 1 minute, then turn it off and let the bread rise in oven that's now slightly warm.
Quick Breads
Quick breads use baking soda and/or baking powder to accomplish the rise. They don't need to be kneaded and they are ready to pop in the oven as soon as you mix up the ingredients.
Olive Loaf with No Knead Bread
Using the no-knead bread recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking I made an olive loaf for dinner last night. I had an opened jar of kalamata olives in the fridge and used about 1/4 cup of them to make this bread. It went great with the…
Jamie Oliver’s Pizza Dough (4 pizzas)
I picked up Jamie Oliver’s older book, The Naked Chef, and found a recipe for pizza dough I really like. It makes 4 medium sized pizzas but I’ve been doing as he suggests and prebaking the extras for 5 minutes, then freezing. Makes it very easy to pull out a pizza shell, top it and…
Chapati: Indian Bread
These are like corn tortillas but made with whole wheat flour. I got the recipe from The Everything Indian Cookbook: 300 Tantalizing Recipes–From Sizzling Tandoori Chicken to Fiery Lamb Vindaloo (Everything: Cooking). I halved the original recipe because I’m only cooking for two (plus lunch leftovers). Save Save
Recipe: French Bread the Slow Rise Way
As opposed to my last bread post on no-knead artisan bread, I found myself on a lazy Sunday afternoon wanting to knead bread. Okay, really wanting to eat bread but I hadn’t mixed up another batch of the no-knead stuff and I wanted to compare kneading and rising with no-knead. I pulled out Brother Juniper’s…