The Shadows on My Wall Don't Sleep

I was in the mood for "bread baked with stuff on it" so I played around with a recipe and came up with this.

I use a bread machine to make the dough.

1 c warm water
2 Tbsp olive oil
¹/₂ tsp salt
2 tsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp rosemary (I used dried, but you could use fresh)
3 c flour
1¹/₂ tsp dry active yeast

The resultant dough will be very soft and a bit sticky, so lightly flour your sheet pan and your hands before turning it out. I like to line my sheet pan with a piece of non-stick foil.

Give the dough a couple turns on the floured surface and pat it out into a rough 13x9" rectangle. Poke it with your fingertips to dimple the surface. At this point you can top it with whatever you like. I gave it a light coat of olive oil (spray, but you could brush it), some grated paremesan/romano/asiago blend, sliced black olives, and shredded colby.

Set in a warm spot to rise about 30 minutes, I heat my oven to about 80°F before I turned out the dough and then turned it off. By the time I was done slicing the olives it was just a bit warmer than the kitchen so I left the bread in the oven with the door ajar to rise.

Heat the oven to 400°F (remove the bread if you were rising it in there) and bake the bread for 20-25 minutes.

The result has a nice crisp crust and a fluffy interior. I may use this as a base for a bready pizza crust in the future.

11/16/11 - This makes excellent pizza crust. Just top it and bake it without letting it rise.

I've tried cutting down my family biscuit recipe to something more reasonable for two people before with marginal success. Tonight I tried a little something different and I like the results.

For about 4 biscuits:

Mix 1 tsp apple cider vinegar with milk to make 1/3cup and let stand 5-10 minutes

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp shortening (or lard)

Shift together the dry ingredients then cut in the shortening until it resembles cornmeal. Add milk mixture a dollop at a time until the mix just comes together into a dough. You might need either a bit more or a bit less liquid, if you need more just use regular milk. Do not handle the dough more than necessary.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and pat down so it is about half an inch thick. Cut into biscuits, reforming scraps gently.

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes.

I love it, the darker the better, and finally I have a good recipe for it using the bread machine.

1 ¹/₈ cup warm water
¹/₃ cup molasses
1 ¹/₂ Tbsp oil
1 ¹/₂ tsp salt
1 ¹/₂ cup all purpose flour
1 cup rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp dry active yeast

Run through your bread machine set for a 1.5 pound loaf on the whole wheat setting. This bread actually rises more than my normal white bread recipe and has a wonderfully fine crumb.

This recipe isn't as dark as I would like, but we were only able to find light rye flour, so it might be dark enough if I could get some dark rye. Also, the molasses on hand was black strap, which along with the cocoa powder might be adding a bit of bitterness that would be avoided with a less harsh variety of molasses. I like it fine as is however, and seeing as how I'm the one with the extra taste buds in the household.... :D

The original recipe is here if you want to see what changes I made.

More recipes, getting tired of them yet? This one is really easy but requires a tube pan (sometimes called an Angel Food pan), you could probably make it in a Bundt pan but I like the removable bottom of the tube pan.

Ingredients:

• Cornbread batter sufficient for 2 9x9" pans, divided¹
• Sausage, either links or loose, about a pound, you want enough to make a nice continuous circle in your pan
• Peppers and onions²
• Cheese, about 2 cups of grated mozzarella or whatever you like

Cook the sausage completely. Drain, reserving some of the fat to fry the onions and peppers.

Cook the onions and peppers in the sausage fat. Drain excess fat if necessary.

Grease and flour your tube pan.

Mix up one box of cornbread mix or one batch of a recipe, and pour it into the pan. Top with sausage and peppers and sprinkle with cheese.

Mix up the second box/batch of cornbread and pour over the filling.

Bake at 400°F for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cornbread comes out dry (and possibly cheesy at the end). Let it cool about 15 minutes before removing from the pan and slicing.

This is excellent right out of the oven and also sliced cold the next day and fried in a bit of butter (I also top it with a bit of maple syrup, but New Englanders tend to be a bit weird about that). It also warms up in the microwave nicely if you cover it with a damp paper towel.

1. I use Krusteaz Honey Cornbread mix, two boxes, because it's faster and easier than making my own from scratch and tastes just as good. You'll need 1 egg and 1 cup of milk per box.

2. Go ahead and save time by buying them cut up and frozen. Birdseye's Pepper and Onion stir-fry blend is excellent but the cheap diced onions and peppers will work just as well. If using fresh vegetables figure on one small-to-medium onion and two medium peppers, or 2-3 cups worth (uncooked).

If I had more icon slots I'd make a cooking one for these posts... something from Yakitate! Japan or Addicted to Curry or something....

Caution: Recipe still under development. Bake at your own risk.

This is based off the Ethiopian Honey Bread recipe I've posted about before.

2 Tbsp warm water (75-85°F)
1 egg, beaten, room temperature
6 Tbsp honey (this works out to ³/₈ cup if you have an handy ¹/₈ cup measure)
4¹/₂ oz warm milk
3¹/₂ Tbsp butter, softened
1 tsp salt
3 c all purpose flour
¹/₂ c instant oatmeal (or a single serving packet of unflavored instant oatmeal and a tablespoon or so of flour)
3¹/₂ tsp yeast

I had to watch this carefully while it mixed and added some flour so keep an eye on it and add flour or water as needed to get a smooth dough. It has a nice honey flavor but could use more oats in my opinion. It was a really nice loaf for a first try though. :)

2 oz warm milk
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp butter
1 egg
¹/₂ cup cottage cheese
1 Tbsp sour cream
¹/₂ tsp sugar
1¹/₂ tsp salt
2³/₄ cup flour
¹/₄ cup whole wheat flour
1¹/₂ tsp dry active yeast

You need to watch this one while it's mixing since the cottage cheese is variable in moisture content. I had to add water to get the dough to come together today (largely because we favor a very dry and slightly sharp variety of cottage cheese in this household.) I also subbed in milk for the sour cream (since I used the last of it for the chocolate bread) and with the dry cheese I figure the liquid property is most important.

Woohoo! I finally got it to work!

Seventh time is the charm on this one. The first time I made this the bread didn't rise much and ended up very dense but edible. The next five times it was a pleasantly scented brick. Some of those failures I attribute to old/dead yeast, others to the dough being too wet or too dry. After this success I think it was mostly insufficient yeast.

For a 1.5 pound loaf:
2 Tbsp warm water (75-85°F)
1 egg, beaten, room temperature
6 Tbsp honey (this works out to 3/8ths of a cup if you have an handy 1/8th cup measure)
4.5 oz warm milk
3.5 Tbsp butter, softened
2 tsp ground corriander
0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp salt
3.25 c all purpose flour
3 tsp yeast*

*The recipe originally called for 1.5 teaspoons for all machines other than Panasonic/National. With my experience I have to say just use 3 teaspoons for any machine.

[Edit: Just baked it again with 3.5 teaspoons of yeast which is perfect with this machine. It's still a fine crumb loaf but it's not as dense and is still an excellent loaf for slicing thin. :) ]

Today's Friendly Hostility made me crave French toast so I spent a couple minutes with Google and then adapted a recipe out of two that seemed interesting.

2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla (the real extract please, imitation vanilla flavoring is gross)
2 Tbsp honey
dash of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
3-4 slices of bread

First order of business, find a container that will fit at least one slice of bread flat in the bottom.

In your appropriately sized container, beat the eggs until frothy (I use a fork, which turned out useful.) Add vanilla, honey¹, salt, and cinnamon; beat some more. Add milk and beat once more.

Note: You could just put everything in and then beat it (I did) but be warned, the cinnamon will tend to clump and the honey will harden on the bottom of the dish because of the cold milk. Beating will take a bit and a fork is really good for scraping up the chilled honey.

Soak only so many slices of bread as you can cook at once. In my case it was one since I could only soak one at a time anyway.

How long to soak the bread depends on the bread and how "soggy" you like your French toast of course.

The only bread available to me today was Aunt Millie's™ Hearty All-Natural Whole Wheat. I had a bit more than enough egg mixture for three slices (but not enough for four) which worked out great since there is no way I could have eaten another slice.

Whole wheat French toast is... different... but not bad. I chose this recipe because I knew I'd have to work with whole wheat in the first place. I can't vouch for the recipe with white bread, if you try it let me know how it works out.

1. A tip that the experienced cooks probably know: honey is easier to measure if you first coat your measuring spoon with a bit of cooking spray. This trick obviously works for any sticky substance, such as molasses or corn syrup, as well. Be careful though, if for some reason you are measuring said sticky substance to mix with egg whites for whipping the oil will prevent the egg whites from reaching the stiff peak stage (and might prevent you from getting them to even soft peak stage.)