English Muffin Bread

I stumbled on this English muffin bread recipe the other day and decided that I neeeeeeeeded to make it ASAP.  I haven't had English muffins in about a year and a half, whereas when I was in the States, they were a breakfast staple...

The recipe was super simple: no knead, basic ingredients... however, I think it was perhaps a little too good to be true.  It toasts well and has an English muffin-y flavor, but is not quite right texturally.  My bread came out too dense for my taste, and didn't replicate the nooks and crannies of a good English muffin, which is really what I was hoping for.

This recipe, however disappointing, did spark my interest in making legit English muffins, though.  The kind that are cooked on a griddle with cornmeal.  Alton Brown's recipe has rave reviews.... perhaps my next project?  Gotta get me some milk powder first.  Because nothing beats an egg sandwich on an English muffin, although an egg sandwich on a biscuit is a close second.

Adventures in Challah Stuffing

One half batch of my favorite challah dough... two loaves of challah stuffed with various delicious ingredients... two explosions in my oven.

First:  almond stuffed challah.

I got the idea after impulsively buying a bag of almond meal (finely ground almonds).  I thought that maybe I could make a filling for the challah that was reminiscent of the sugary almond paste that they put in those buttery, delicious almond croissants.

I made the filling according to this recipe and wrapped it into my usual no-knead challah dough.  Apparently I didn't wrap it tight enough, though, because after a few minutes in the oven it looked like the explosion you see below:

Luckily, all of that sweet, toasted almond shrapnel was pretty tasty, and a good amount of the filling stayed in the bread, creating a subtle swirl of almondy goodness throughout:

Second: spiced apple stuffed challah.

This one was to use up some Malang apples I had sitting in the fridge... I wanted to follow this recipe from What Jew Wanna Eat because I found her blog title and premise to be really hilarious, but I worried that the raw apples wouldn't cook sufficiently inside the bread and I wanted to make sure the spice flavors came through... so instead I sauteed 2 large peeled and diced apples in a teeny bit of butter, a couple dashes of cinnamon, a sprinkle each of cardamom and nutmeg, and about a tablespoon of honey.  Then I wrapped them up in the remaining challah dough, braided it and stuck it in the oven, at which point, you probably guessed, it exploded.

This one didn't have as much leakage as the almond challah, but was still bursting (literally) with apple pieces.  Tasted pretty damn good, though.

The next day it was a little soggy from the moisture of the apples, but a quick warming in the oven took care of that.

Lettuce, Avocado, Tomato and Tempeh Sandwich

I want to preface this blog post by assuring my loyal readers that we have in no way turned our backs on bacon.  Delicious, delicious bacon.

With that said, this week Tim and I tried a new, healthier version of the BLT sandwich made using ingredients easier to find in Indonesia.  Specifically, this sandwich substitutes tempeh for bacon.  I am sure that statement will elicit many eyebrow raises, but this sandwich is actually pretty damn good (despite my weak photo).  You can't really think of it as a BLT substitute, but a new and interesting sandwich in its own right (Heidi from 101 Cookbooks calls it a TLT sandwich, but I think it's more accurate to call it a LATT, don't you?).

The tempeh is marinated such that it has a slightly sweet, salty, smokey flavor, and is then pan fried so it's crisp on the outside.  Layer it in the sandwich with creamy avocado, crunchy lettuce and flavor-concentrated roasted tomatoes... not bad, not bad at all. Good enough that I plan to make it again soon.

I followed the recipe for the most part, although I skipped the brown sugar when roasting the tomatoes, as I thought the tempeh had enough sweetness.  Give it a try!

Stove-top Naan

Tim and I went to our favorite Indian restaurant last weekend for lunch.  We love the food there, but it's not somewhere we could feasibly go on a weekday, as we could be stuck in Jakarta traffic for 2 hours there and 2 hours back, possibly.  As such, I decided to also order some of my favorite dishes (chana masala and saag paneer) to go (dibungkus, which means wrapped up, a useful phrase to know) to eat later in the week.  

I was planning to make rice to accompany the leftovers, but honestly, we're a little sick of rice.  Naan it is, then!  I made this recipe from Aarti Sequeira, which is a simple stove-top version made in a cast iron pan and then brushed with butter at the end.  Pretty good! The dough is ridiculously sticky and I knew trying to use my rolling pin would be a disaster, so I shaped the loaves with my hands.  They're probably not as thin as they could be, but still quite awesome.

First attempt at bread making - boules!

I decided to try out Meg's favorite technique for baking fresh bread (from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book).  Not bad.  Maybe a little under-done. Will go get a thermometer to see if my oven temp needs to be adjusted.  

Basic ingredients ready to go

Dough mixed and ready for rising

Growing

Using plastic cutting board as a pizza peel

In the oven

Two.  Two wonderful boules!!   Mwa ah ah...

Thinking of making pizzas with the remaining dough along the lines of what Jim Lahey made in his kitchen at Co. on the Anthony Bourdain No Reservations "Obsessed" episode.

Low Brow Know How

This week saw some pretty low-brow, but quite tasty recipes grace our kitchen.  Sorry for the terrible low-light photos!

1. Pineapple BBQ pulled chicken:

This recipe is embarrassingly easy, so easy that it almost doesn't require a recipe (but I got the idea from this website): pulled chicken made with pre-made BBQ sauce jazzed up with hot sauce, pineapple and onion, all melded together care of the slow cooker. I'm not normally a jarred BBQ sauce person, but we were the recipients of a bottle of Jack Daniels Spicy Original when Ben and Erin moved, and it's that bottle of sauce that sparked this idea.

Place boneless (or bone-in if you're feeling sassy and don't mind picking out bones later) chicken breasts (would probably be even better with thighs) in slow cooker, cover with a roughly chopped onion and pineapple (you could use drained canned pineapple, but I used fresh because I live in the tropics and that's how we roll), top with BBQ sauce and hot sauce (I used Sriracha, tentu saja) to taste.  Turn on cooker, cook for 3-4 hours, shred chicken with 2 forks, cook for a little while longer so chicken soaks up sauce, eat.

We served the chicken in wraps with a little bit of lettuce and cheese, but you could put it in buns, too.  

We also served it with a side of crunchy jicama and carrot slaw:  matchstick jicama and carrot mixed with raisins that had been soaking in lime juice, a squirt of hot sauce, a teeny bit of oil, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper... I also added matchstick yellow pepper, but would leave that out next time as it was too watery and its flavor was overpowering.

2. Chipotle egg salad:

Egg salad made with a little bit of mayo, some Dijon mustard, adobo sauce (from a can of chipotle in adobo), minced green onions, minced dill pickles, chopped parsley and S&P.   Served on slices of homemade 100% whole wheat sandwich bread a la Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Buttermilk Bread

Using leftover dough from my cinnamon raisin swirl bread (the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipe makes enough dough for 4 loaves, I made a half recipe and got 2 loaves out of it), I baked up this awesome buttermilk bread.  

Super tender from the buttermilk in the dough, but still it is sturdy enough to brave the toaster and turn out some kick-ass toast.  The toast is so good- it reminds me of the Pepperidge Farm Toasting White Bread that my Grandma McCarthy always used to have on hand.... not sure if they make it anymore, but this buttermilk bread is a really good substitute!!

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread

I have been on a raisin kick recently for some unknown reason (maybe I need iron?), and, after my bread-making success a few weeks ago, I decided to combine my raisin obsession with my bread making skillz. 

I popped open my trusty Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book and found a recipe for cinnamon raisin swirl bread made with a buttermilk dough base.  So good.  So, so good.  And so, so easy to boot since it's a no-knead recipe.  Tim and I could barely wait for it to cool before cutting into it and then subsequently ate almost the entire loaf in one sitting.

I haven't seen buttermilk here in Jakarta, so I used ye olde whole milk + lemon juice trick.  Also, I brushed the bread with butter and sprinkled it with a little bit of sugar right before popping it in the oven, which made for an awesomely crispy top crust.

Challah with Red Bean Paste

One of the more fun things about living in Indonesia is seeking out and experimenting with new ingredients.  One ingredient that I love, but had not yet used myself, is red bean paste.  Sweetened red beans are used in lots of Asian desserts... dumplings, pancakes, buns, icy desserts.  Sounds weird, but it's good stuff... sweet, but kinda earthy in a way.  My favorite red bean dessert is deep-fried, sesame-covered red bean balls.

I found a bag of red bean paste at the grocery store and bought it immediately.  Next was to figure out what to do with it...  I wasn't quite ready for the sesame balls (haven't yet figured out which of the many exotic flours at the store is the glutinous rice flour, plus deep frying scares me), but I was inspired by some bread that Tim brought home for me from the Japanese grocery store by his office... sweetish, soft white sandwich bread with swirls of red beans throughout.  Mmm.  

Mini oven.  Big flavor.

I decided to go for something similar to the Japanese bread; a fusion of something I know how to make, sweet challah bread with sesame seeds, with my new ingredient, red bean paste.  Boom.  I fused the crap out of it. It was pretty awesome.

To get the thick red bean paste into the dough (the basic challah from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day), I split the dough into 3 equal(ish) pieces, rolled them out into long, thin pieces, then topped each with a long, thin log of red bean paste.  I rolled the dough around each of the bean paste logs to encase them and then braided them together in the normal fashion.  This worked pretty well, but ultimately the bean paste wasn't spread out through the dough enough for my taste- it was limited to 3 big blobs in each slice:

On my second try, I rolled the dough out the same way, but rather than logs of bean paste, I flattened it out to the extent I could and spread it across the dough, then rolled each of the 3 dough pieces (kinda like how you add the nuts and cinnamon sugar to make the spirals in cinnamon buns) and then braided them together.  The red bean paste was better dispersed through the dough using this method (I think... I sent the second loaf to work with Tim without cutting it open and thus did not see the inside).

UPDATE: I know you were all waiting with bated breath... Tim took a photo of the bread swirled with the red bean paste using the second methodology... bean disbursement is much better:

 

Belated St. Patrick's Day Treat: Irish Soda Bread

Inspired by this Endless Simmer post on "authentic" Irish soda bread and with memories of my grandmother's version in my head, I baked up a loaf for St. Patrick's Day. I took a middle route, a hybrid approach somewhere between the authentic version and the version I ate as a kid.

I basically followed the directions from Endless Simmer, with a few modifications:

1) I used about 1.5 cups of cake flour, with the addition of approximately 1 cup of all-purpose unbleached flour because I a) ran out of cake flour and b) found the dough to be super sticky, wet and unmanageable without additional flour

2) I threw the loaf directly onto a pre-heated baking stone rather than use the cast iron pot

3) Finally, in deference to my grandmother's recipe (which I'm sure was only remotely related to the recipe above- yogurt not being a resident in her fridge), I threw in about third of a cup of raisins.

It came out pretty delicious! More moist than I remember, but still with that crusty, craggy top. Mmmm. And, yes, I drank some stout whilst mixing up the ingredients for this tasty treat.

Greek Style Meatballs, Homemade Pita, Lemon Dill Hummus, and Cucumber Yogurt Dipping Sauce

Since Chuck moved out, we've been doing alternating Sunday "family dinners" (a la The Jersey Shore). So far we've avoided chicken parm and sausage n' peppers, focusing on more interesting, yet equally comforting culinary endeavors. We also avoid Ron Ron Juice, leopard print, and fist pumping, mostly. Mostly.

A couple weeks ago, Tony made a great slow-cooker chicken curry. This week, I tackled a Greek/Middle Eastern meal: feta and dill meatballs, lemon dill hummus, homemade pita bread, and a cucumber yogurt sauce. All parts of the meal came out really awesome...Here's how I did it:

I used this feta meatball recipe from The Other Martha, but made it my own by substituting the oregano with a generous handful of fresh dill, some minced parsley and a sprinkling of lemon zest. Plus, since ground pork was conspicuously absent from 2 of my local grocery haunts, I ended up using half ground chuck (not to be confused with Chuck) and half ground turkey. Despite my liberal mutilation of the recipe, they came out pretty awesome. Dipped them in the sauce recommended by The Other Martha, to which I also threw in some fresh dill.

The hummus was basically my usual recipe, care of Ina Garten, with extra lemon juice and zest, as well as, you guessed it, more fresh dill.

I made the pita by thinly rolling out the extra dough from my whey bread, using this technique from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Soooo easy and soooo good. I loved watching the little pitas poof in the oven. Delicious!

Homemade Bread Made with Whey

After making cheese last weekend, we ended up with several quarts of whey, which is the milky by-product of cheesemaking. It's protein and vitaman rich, so it seemed a little silly to just throw it out. A quick Google search let us know that you can substitute whey for water in bread making, so we decided to give it a try.
We used the whey in place of the 3 cups of water in the master recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The bread came out really tasty, with a slightly sour tang. Good use of this by-product! I froze some of it, as the internets also told me I could use whey to cook beans, or to replace stock or water in soup recipes, among other uses.

Happy Blogiversary! Pumpkin Brioche, Meh.

So this past week was my 2-year blogiversary... two years of trying new recipes, crafting like crazy, and sharing the results with friends.
My first blog post back in February of 2009 was the lovely braided challah from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, so, to celebrate, I thought I'd make another sweet bread recipe from their newer book, Healthy Breads in Five Minutes a Day: pumpkin brioche.

Sadly, although I have nothing but raves for the challah, the pumpkin brioche only gets a "meh" from me. My issue with the bread is not with the flavor, but with the texture. It is a yeast bread, so I was expecting it to be fairly light, but it came out pretty dense- not much different than a pumpkin quick bread. When I made french toast with it the next day, it was almost overwhelmingly heavy. Oh well!

Butternut Squash, Kale and Cheddar Bread Pudding

The flavor of this bread pudding was really great... very appropriate for fall! I liked this, as did Tim, although Chuck was not enamored. I've taken note of her dislikes over the past couple years and, by my calculations, it appears she doesn't like custards... oh well!I switched out the baguette for the heels of a couple loaves of whole grain sandwich bread, which I think gave the bread pudding some heft, and definitely some healthy. Also, for extra flavor, I threw a couple cloves of garlic in when I sauteed the kale.

Pumpkin Bread

I have had this huuuuuge can of pumpkin puree sitting in my cabinet for over a year... I had a panic moment in the midst of last year's canned pumpkin shortage, because I was worried I wouldn't be able to find any to make Chuck's beloved pumpkin pie around Thanksgiving. Lindsay came to the rescue and donated the big can to my cause, but I was also able to procure a couple cans in the meantime. Thus, we had a plethora of canned pumpkin, and after Thanksgiving was over, I temporarily forgot about pumpkin, and the big can sat, and sat, and sat, and sat.

I was feeling the fall vibe this week, and thought I'd put that big can to use in some pumpkin bread. Turns out a 29 oz can of pumpkin puree makes 3 full sized loaves of bread! I had one for home, one for work, and one to send to Chuck's work. Excellent.I followed this recipe to a T, with one exception: I used half brown sugar and half white. Brown sugar is the best. Anywho, this was a pretty typical pumpkin bread recipe... soft, sweet, spicy, rich. Yum.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

I needed some bread to accompany my chicken sausage lasagna, and I didn't feel like buying bread, particularly in light of how terrible the bakery options are in Columbia Heights. So I decided to make some rosemary bread... not too bad!The crust doesn't get super crispy, but the flavor is good- herby and fresh. I didn't have any whole wheat flour, so I used all AP flour to good results.

Panzanella

Made this panzanella salad with cukes and mini-tomatoes from the CSA- yum! Very summery and delicious. I used a combination of the ingredients in this recipe and Ina's methodology and vinaigrette.
Awesome- it was a hit.I plan to try other panzanellas in the future... maybe in the fall I'll try a winter panzanella with butternut squash and brussel sprouts.

Crostini with Mushooms, Prosciutto, and Gorgonzola

These crostini with mushrooms, prosciutto and Gorgonzola are a rich and filling appetizer... nothing special to look at, as you can see from the photo, but delicious nonetheless. Good as a starter at a fancier dinner party, for sure.

Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

I had some bananas getting a serious sun tan on the counter, so I thought I'd make some banana bread. I wasn't quite in the mood for regular banana bread, though, so peanut butter, banana and chocolate chip bread it was. The combination reminds me a sundae I always used to order at Friendly's as a kid... they discontinued it early in my childhood and I never forgave them. Jerks.

This bread is really good- really rich, though, more like a cake. I bet you could cook it in a shallower cake pan or pie plate and cut it in wedges. A great flavor combo.

Onion Rosemary Focaccia

Made this focaccia with rosemary from our rooftop garden, onions from the CSA, and the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Pretty tasty - soft and herby!