The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Summer Focaccia

Going away party/dinner for Joe, our nephew, who was being sent to Afghanistan the following Monday

PLUS

Surplus of summer squashes

EQUALS

This post.  A bit after the fact. 

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Something had to be done.  We've been picking zucchini on a daily basis now, and so far we've been using everything in savory dishes...grilled zucchini, for example.  But there's only so many times a week (or a day) we want to eat it after a while, so I said I'd make zucchini bread to use up some of the excess.

Soft White Bread

(Adapted from a recipe by Bernard Clayton.)

I've posted a couple of bread recipes lately - one post was entitled "Gooder than Sushi" Bread and the other was a simple French bread recipe, or Pain Ordinaire.  Both are made from rather lean doughs, with little or no fats included in the ingredients.  This tends to produce a chewy bread that is best eaten the same day it's baked.  The "gooder than sushi" description came from my 6-year-old son, who absolutely LOVES sushi, but (that day) liked the bread even more. 

Big Chicken Sandwich

So, what do you do when you've got a loaf of bread that looks like a really big bagel?  And you've got some leftover beer can chicken? 

You make a really big chicken salad sandwich.

Pain Ordinaire Careme (A Daily Loaf)

On one uncomfortably hot day at the end of June, I baked bread and made two batches of cheese.  No, I don't know why I must do these things, but do them I must.  If you want to read about the cheesemaking part of it, take a look over here.  If you want to read about the bread-baking part, stay right where you are.

"Gooder Than Sushi" Bread

(mice?  no...that was my daughter)

A couple of days ago I wrote that I'd baked some bread and that Alex had pronounced it "gooder than sushi."  Those of you who know of my just-turned-six-years-old son's absolute passion for raw fish will understand that he can bestow no greater compliment on a food and its cook.  Holly, at Phe/MOM/enon asked if I was going to post the recipe, and so here it is - later than I'd planned, (sorry Holly!) but at least I'm only late by a couple of days.

This bread recipe is from Bernard Clayton's pheNOMenal tome Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.  If you don't have any bread-baking books, and you want an incredibly comprehensive one, then go get this one.  NOW!

Okay, you have your copy now, right?

I wanted to just make a basic white bread.  Mr. Clayton starts you off with a chapter called "The First Loaf," in which you are taken, step by step, through the production of your (ostensibly) very first loaf of yeasted bread.  I've made that one before, and I wanted to try something different, so I picked the first recipe in his "White Breads" chapter - one called "Thirty-Minute White Bread."

The recipe makes 2 loaves (baked in 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pans) and I doubled the recipe and ended up making 3 good-sized loaves in 9" x 5" pans.

This bread is made a little differently than the usual mix, knead, let rise, punch down, shape, let rise, and bake routine. Mr. Clayton writes:

 

The panned dough for this light and airy loaf is placed in a cold oven, the heat is turned on for 60 seconds and turned off, and then the dough is allowed to rise for exactly 30 minutes (hence, the name) before the oven heat is turned on.  The dough rises only once (in the pan) before it is baked.

 

KitchenAid home economists created this loaf to demonstrate the ease of kneading with a dough hook.  It can be done by hand, of course.

Interesting, no?

So, without further babbling, here is Mr. Clayton's recipe and instructions from pgs 42-44 of his book, along with my photos, and my italicized notes in parentheses.  I urge you to give this recipe a try, particularly if you've never baked bread before - it's pretty easy and the smell alone as the bread bakes will fill you with pride.  And hunger pangs.

Oh, and keep in mind that when I made this, I doubled the recipe, so the photos won't exactly correspond with the amounts given below.

THIRTY-MINUTE WHITE BREAD

Ingredients:

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons vegetable shortening or butter

3 teaspoons salt

1 cup lukewarm water (105-115 F)

2 packages dry yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

6 to 7 cups bread or all-purpose flour, approximately

1 tablespoon butter, melted

Baking pans:  2 medium (8 1/2" x 4 1/2 ") loaf pans, greased or Teflon

By hand or mixer:

8 mins.

Warm the milk in a saucepan to soften the shortening or butter for a few moments.  Add the salt and the lukewarm water.  Add the yeast and sugar and stir to dissolve.

(I actually combined the water and milk and melted the butter in that, and then the sugar, and stirred it in my mixer bowl until it cooled down enough to add the yeast without killing it.  I added the salt when I added the flour, once the yeast had bloomed.)

Stir in 2 cups flour and beat for 3 minutes at medium speed in an electric mixer or 150 short strokes with a wooden spoon.  Gradually add 2 more cups flour, and continue beating for 3 minutes - or 150 strokes.

(Note:  While the entire mixing and kneading operation can be done in the electric mixer, I like to judge the feel of the dough by hand before turning the job over to a dough hook.)

Turn off the mixer and add about 2 more cups flour.  Work it in with a spoon, and when it becomes stiff, with your hands.  When the dough has a rough form and is cleaning the sides of the mixing bowl, turne it out on the floured work surface.

(I apologize - I don't have kneading pictures for this batch, but if you want to see the series of me kneading by hand, left-handed, while I took pictures with my right hand, go here and scroll down a bit.  It's a pasta dough, but still, kneading's kneading.)

Kneading:

8 mins.

Knead for about 8 minutes with a strong push-turn-fold motion.  Occasionally throw the dough hard against the work surface (stimulates the gluten).  Or replace the dough in the mixer bowl and put under the dough hook for an equal length of time.

By Processor:

10 mins.

Place 2 cups flour in the work bowl and then add the other ingredients, as above.  Pulse several times to thoroughly mix.  Remove the cover and add 2 more cups flour.  Replace the cover and pulse to blend.

Add the remaining flour through the feed tube, pulsing after each addition, until the dough begins to form and is carried around the bowl by the force of the blade.

Kneading:

45 secs.

Turn on the machine to knead for 45 seconds.

Shaping:

10 mins.

Divide the dough in half, and shape the balls. 

Let rest under a cloth for 5 minutes.

Form the loaves by pressing each (with your palm or rolling pin) into an oval, roughly the length of the baking pan.  Fold the oval in half (I kind of rolled it into a football shape), pinch the seam tightly to seal, tuck under the ends, and place seam down in the pan. 

 

Brush the loaves with the melted butter.

Rising:

30 mins.

Place the pans in a cold oven and turn heat to 400 degrees F for 60 seconds--1 minute, no more.  Turn it off!

Baking:

400 degrees F

45 mins.

About 30 minutes later turn on the oven to 400 degrees F and bake for 45 minutes, or until the loaves are brown.  When done, they will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom crust with the forefinger.

If the crust is soft, return to the oven, without the pans, for 10 minutes.

(If using a convection oven, reduce heat 50 degrees.)

Final step:

Place the loaves on a rack to cool. 

The bread is fine for sandwiches and toast.  It also freezes very well.

~~~~~

And that's the recipe.

This is the first loaf I set out to cool, and that is Alex, blowing with all his lung power at the loaf to cool it down so I'll cut him a slice.

And here is Mata Julia,

...planning her trip into the kitchen to steal some bread whether I've decided to slice it or not.  She's also "doing dishes" (that's her cover when she's a bread spy) which means I let her play with plastic containers in the sink and run the water for a little while and "wash" them.

But back to the bread.

This was incredibly easy and if you have any fear of yeast, first of all, you shouldn't, and second of all, making this recipe will change that for good.

That's my ringing endorsement right there.

Still not convinced?

Look at that face.  Pure, unadulterated bliss.

And look here...

Pretty as a sunset.  Now go make some bread.

Two Crumpet Recipes

"And tho' there's no tea-supping and eating crumpet - it's a fine life!"  - (from the musical Oliver!)

I knew the word long before I knew the food.  English muffins were not an uncommon thing, but I don't really remember having crumpets at all as a child.  And when I bought them in the store one time, the just looked, well, weird.  Holes on one side...do you slice it in half, like an English muffin?  No...you just toast them and butter them and eat them.  Oh, okay.  And they were good.  And that was that.  Years ago.

Much more recently, Jen of Alien Spouse asked me if I'd ever tried making crumpets.

Hm!

Potato Rye Bread with Onion and Caraway

  

I've added a new category - I might also include links to it under the recipe categories. 

The category is "Learning from Mistakes" and I'm including it because in baking and cooking - just like in every other facet of life, we make mistakes, and the best thing to do with a mistake is to learn something from it.

Herb Crust Pizza - One Crust, Many Toppings

I made a bunch of pizzas last night.  Just for fun, I added some dried herbs to the dough. 

Here's what I used for the dough:

Corned Beef Project: Day 8 - Royal Hibernian Brown Loaf

This one is from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, but I found this sort of recipe - a brown soda bread - in just about all of the bread books I was looking through.  I didn't find the American version until I checked in with King Arthur.  And it makes sense - raisins would be more likely used for special occasion breads, holiday breads.  And I don't even know if raisins were all that common an ingredient in Ireland long ago.  I kind of doubt it.

Corned Beef Project: Day 8 - Irish Whiskey Soda Bread

Could also be called American Irish Whiskey Soda Bread, because of the addition of carroway seeds and raisins (or in this case, because I was feeling wild and daring, I used half currants and half golden raisins).  The recipes I found for Irish Irish Soda Breads didn't have these extras.  I'll post one of those recipes as well.

Quick Onion Flat Bread

I tried out this recipe to accompany the Leek and Potato Soup I made the other night.  It's pretty simple to make, it cooks quickly, and is pretty tasty.  It's more like a biscuit than a bread in texture, and I think an improvement to the overall flavor would be to mix some of the the minced, sauteed onion into the dough in addition to scattering it on top.  That's just my opinion.

Okay, here's what you'll need to do.

Pizza Making

Well, even though the repair guys from Sears came out on Thursday to fix the fridge, over the weekend, things have gotten WORSE - now in addition to random things freezing in the fridge, now things on the door are freezing too.  And supposedly everything is fixed.  HA!  And also - the water line in there is frozen (I assume) because while the icemaker is working just fine, the water won't come out now.  It was working Saturday.  It did not work on Sunday.  Bill called the repair center on Saturday to get someone out here and Wednesday was the first available appointment.  I called again this morning, because of the water line, thinking that maybe I could get someone out sooner, but NO.  Wednesday is apparently the first available date.  Lovely. 

So instead of continuing to rant and rave about that, I'm just going to put up a few pictures of the kids from when we made pizza a couple of weekends ago. 

There.  That's better than my annoying refrigerator stories.

Easy Herb Batter Bread - (the first bread I learned to make)

My mom belonged to a local garden club when I was a kid - and well beyond that, actually.  They did a lot to make the town look nice - the trees planted along main street were their doing, for instance.  "Project Beautification" is a program I seem to remember...

Anyway, another project one year was a little cookbook called Indian Run Gardeners Cook Book.  The name "Indian Run" refers (if memory serves) to a little brook that runs parallel to part of Route 108 near Old Mountain Field.  All the members of the club provided a menu and at least one recipe for that menu. 

Here's the cover of my copy. 

Oktoberfest 2007 - Part 2 - the Onion Cake

As I mentioned yesterday, we had a dinner of German food this past Saturday night.  In my previous post I talked about the sauerkraut my husband made.  Next up is his mother's mother's onion cake recipe.

We found this recipe in one of the notebooks I "inherited" when my mother-in-law passed away almost five years ago.  The other recipes before it were various cookies - such as all the holiday cookies that she made every year and sent out to family.  There were also a few bread and cake recipes - all hand-written.

Let's begin.

Two Pizzas

I made two pizzas tonight.

Here's what I did:

Took two 16 oz packages of store-bought pizza dough out of the fridge about a couple hours before my projected dinner time.  Set them out on a counter - still in their packages - to come to room temperature.

Then I got the toppings ready...