Hot Pretzels
Posted: May 28, 2012 Filed under: Baked Goods, Snacks/Appetizers 4 Comments »
If you make mustard, of course you need pretzels to go with them!
These are wonderful soft pretzels, better than the mall, and without questionable origins!
Top them with just salt. Or poppy and sesame seeds. Dip them in cheese sauce, or mustard, or even peanut butter
Your mouth will thank you!!
Recipe : (adapted from the wonderful Alton Brown)
3/4 C warm water
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp yeast. Active dry or instant, it makes no difference here!
1 tsp salt
11 oz(approximately 2 1/4 C) all purpose flour
2 tbsp coconut oil or butter, melted
5C water
1/3 C baking soda
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tbsp water
coarse salt
Combine sugar, water, salt and yeast in a bowl and let it sit for 5 minutes, or until the yeast begins to foam. Mix in the flour and butter or oil, and knead by hand or in a stand mixer, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a covered bowl and let it sit for an hour, or until it has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 450 and grease a baking pan. Combine the baking soda and 5C water in a pot and bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, punch down the dough and divide it into 6 equal parts. Roll each part into a rope, shape it into a “u”, and then take then ends, twist them once, and press the ends down on the bottom of the “u”. Voila, pretzel shape!!
Now take the pretzels one by one. Gently transfer a pretzel to a large, flat spatula and lower it into the boiling water for 45 seconds. Carefully lift the pretzel out with the spatula and put it on the baking sheet. Repeat until all the pretzels have been boiled.
Brush each pretzel with the egg wash and sprinkle on some salt. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, or until they are delicious and golden brown. Try to resist eating them until they are cool enough to handle!!
Makes 6 pretzels
Cheesy Bread Pudding
Posted: May 14, 2012 Filed under: Baked Goods, Breakfast, Main Dish Leave a comment »
This is one of the things I ate growing up. It’s still a fallback meal. Come home from a bad day? Cheesy bread pudding. Sick and nothing in the kitchen? Cheesy bread pudding. Cheesy bread pudding cures all ills. It’s delicious hot, cold or in between and all you need is a veggie or fruit to make it a meal, and can be eaten at any time of day.
I’m giving the basic recipe, but you can add whatever you want in the way of different cheeses, herbs and spices and so on and it will always turn out awesome. A little mustard powder is great to point up the cheesiness, but not essential. In the pudding pictured I used half cheddar and half swiss cheese, a small onion, chopped and sauteed, a touch of mustard powder and smoked paprika and topped it with a sprinkling of sesame and poppy seeds. Another good variation is swapping out some of the milk for tomato sauce, using parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, garlic, thyme and red pepper and topping it with a bit of shredded mozzarella.
Experimenting is encouraged!!
Recipe:
2tbsp butter
4C bread, stale or toasted, cubed(any fairly good bread works. Just stay away from anything exceptionally airy or dense)
2C milk, warmed slightly
1 egg
1 tsp salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1 1/2 C grated cheese, any kind with a strong flavor
Preheat the oven to 350
Grease a pan. I used a deep dish pie pan, but a large cast iron skillet, 8×8 square pan, or anything with a similar volume will work equally well.(it’s also great baked in muffin tins) Layer in the bread cubes and cheese, and any other ingredients you would like to add.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg into the milk, and add the salt and pepper(and any other spices you choose). Pour this over the bread and cheese and let it sit for at least 5 minutes, up to overnight. You can add a topping, if you wish.
Bake until the custard is set and the top is nicely golden brown, 35-45 minutes.
Serves 4-6
Dark chocolate cake with Vanilla Bean Heirloom Frosting
Posted: April 9, 2012 Filed under: Baked Goods, Desserts 2 Comments »
You want to try this cake.
Seriously, you really, really want to try this cake. (Despite the awful picture!)
This is everything that is wonderful about cake and everything that is wonderful about dark chocolate turned into one fantastic dessert. All of the subtlety you want out of chocolate cake. And the frosting is really, well, the icing on the cake, in a literal sense. Heirloom frosting is my favorite frosting because it’s not too sweet or rich, but with real vanilla bean in there? Blew my mind.
Best of all, this is a cake of manageable size-a 9×9 square pan. And contains one stick of butter in the cake and frosting combined. Think it can’t get any better? It is simple as can be to throw together.
Yeah, this cake is awesome. Eat it.
Use the best cocoa powder you can for this cake, the darker the better. And don’t be afraid of the coffee-it’s undetectable in the finished cake, it is just there to help round out the chocolate flavor. I hate coffee, and I can’t even tell that it’s there!
Recipe:
The Cake:
4 tbsp(1/2 stick) butter
3/4C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup brewed coffee, or instant coffee dissolved in water
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 325 and grease a 9×9 square pan. Set aside
In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Once it’s melted, stir in the cocoa powder and cook until fragrant, about a minute. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the coffee, buttermilk and both sugars until they’re dissolved. Whisk in the egg and vanilla, and slowly stir in the flour mixture.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 30 minutes(Do not overbake! This is crucial!) Remove it from the oven and let it cool.
The frosting
1/2 C milk
3 tbsp flour
1/3 of a vanilla bean
4 tbsp(1/2 stick) butter
1/2 C granulated sugar
pinch of salt
In a pot, scald the milk. Slice open the vanilla bean and scrape out the insides. Add the pod and scrapings to the milk and let it sit for 10 minutes.
Fish out the pod. Over medium heat, whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is very thick. remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature.
Now cream the butter and sugar together til light and fluffy. Add the salt and the room temperature flour mixture(If the flour mixture is at all warm, it will melt the butter and ruin the frosting) and beat until it is fluffy.
Spread the frosting on top of the cooled cake, grab a slice, and enjoy!!
Saturday bread
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: Baked Goods, Sides 2 Comments »
This is Eric’s favorite bread. I’ve always loved baking bread, and Eric isn’t a huge fan of bread in general, so I took it as a personal challenge to find and adapt a bread recipe he would love. He calls it “Saturday Bread” because it takes all day, so i usually only make it on weekends.
It is a fantastic bread. Light and soft and slightly chewy. Wonderful for serving alongside soups or making rustic sandwiches-it’s now my favorite bread, too! As an added bonus it’s one of the easiest breads I’ve made, very suitable for a first time bread baker.
It’s based on a method for french bread, letting dough sit around and stirring it every so often. As long as you’re around the house all day, it’s a very easy bread recipe. No
This is what the dough looks like just before the final stir and shaping
kneading involved. You do have to weigh the flour and water, though. I have tried converting it to cups and it never comes out right. You also must use bread flour. All purpose flour will not produce a very good bread with this recipe, though there are plenty of other bread recipes all purpose flour works great in.
Recipe:
500G bread flour
365G warm water(it’s the right temperature when you run it over your wrist and it doesn’t feel hot or cold)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp dry yeast
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. It won’t look like very good bread dough at this point, it will be lumpy and shaggy looking. That’s fine. Cover it and let it be for three hours.
Uncover and stir the dough, folding it over on itself each time. You want to get all the air bubbles out so the yeast have to start over again. Cover the bowl again and leave it for half an hour, then stir again. Repeat twice, until you have stirred the dough 4 times total.
Cut the dough in half and (with wet hands! The dough is soft and sticky, and will be difficult to handle with dry hands)shape each piece into an oval loaf. Put both loaves on a baking sheet that has been greased or lined with a silpat. Cover and let rise for an hour.
Half an hour into the rise, preheat the oven to 460. Once the bread has risen, uncover it. It may look a little flat. that’s OK. It’s a soft dough, it’s going to ooze sideways a bit. Once the bottom sets in the first few minutes of baking it will rise up some more. Put the baking sheet with the dough in the oven on a rack close to the middle, and bake for 20-25 minutes, until they are lovely and golden.
Take them out of the oven and let them rest 15-20 minutes before slicing. the crusts will come out rock hard, but soften as it cools. If you want a crisp, hard crust, put a pan of water in the oven before you turn it on, and leave it in while the bread it baking. The steam makes a crisper crust.
makes 2 loaves.