Adventures in bread baking

(Just a note to start out with, I gave the ol' blog a little face lift over the weekend. I thought a new layout was in order — the side bar was too crowded and I was just ready for a change. I hope you like it!)

This weekend I was successful in making an edible object and not a fancy baked paperweight. You can start calling me Peeta now because I am a baker of bread.

I first started fiddling with the idea of baking my own bread when Scott, Preston and I went to Little Rock during the Christmas break. We went to Boulevard Bread for lunch and to get some bread to take back home. They had a delicious sourdough among the other equally enticing loaves, and maybe it's because we don't have an equivalent bakery here, but it felt so special to eat lunch there and then take home a piece of it to enjoy there. I wanted to capture that fun little family day in our ordinary lives.

So, enter Pinterest (of course). I started searching for easy bread recipes, and this one caught my attention. It was incredibly simple. Surprisingly simple. "I might be able to do this" simple, and that's pretty simple. It's not a sourdough, though, but I'm planning on tackling that next. For that, you need what they call in the bread baking biz a "starter," and apparently it's kind of like a goldfish or a plant in that you need to feed and take care of it. That's a lot of responsibility for a beginner like myself. And I never did that well with fish or plants.

The night before I planned to bake it, I mixed all the ingredients together into a dough like the recipe said, but I made two very big mistakes. One, I bought active dry yeast instead of instant, which is apparently what the girl sharing the recipe used. Apparently you have to "wake up" the active yeast, which I did not do the first time around, so it was just sleeping on the job. Two, I interjected "place the dough in the fridge overnight" into the original recipe, which wasn't anywhere in there, and the dough needs to be warm to rise like it should. So the next morning I woke up to exactly what I started with the night before. So that initial batch was tossed.

I remedied those first mistakes on my second attempt, and this time the dough did as it was supposed to. It went into the oven, and I was pretty excited when I pulled the finished product out. The house smelled great and the bread looked like bread. To my great happiness, it tasted like bread, too — crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, great to smear butter or jelly on or just eat plain. I even got a high-five of approval from Scott, who is — undoubtably — the cooking expert in the family. It might as well be a James Beard award in my eyes.

I'm looking forward to playing with the recipe now that I've figured out the basics. There are a lot of possibilities, like red onions and rosemary, garlic and cheddar, or cinnamon sugar and vanilla! I encourage you to try out this recipe if you're interested. Bread baking isn't as scary as I thought.

Super easy bread recipe

Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon yeast
- 1 1/2 cups water (I needed a bit more to moisten everything)

First, combine all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl. If you have dry active yeast like I did, activate it according to the package instructions rather than adding it here. Include the yeast and its water into the rest of the water and add to the dry ingredients, combining until there is no dryness.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave out for 12-18 hours. The dough will have grown a sizable amount in that time.

Remove the dough from the bowl onto a well-floured surface and form into a ball. Cover it once again with the plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes while the oven and the dish you plan to bake it in preheats to 450 degrees. I used my Le Creuset dutch oven.

Remove the baking dish from the oven and carefully place in the dough. Cover it with a lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until brown and toasted on top.

Take the loaf out of the baking dish and allow to cool on a wire rack or dive in and eat right then!

Monday miscellany

Hello, Monday.

I don't have a clever title or purpose for this post, but here are a few things I've been drawn to lately.

1. I graduate with my master's in December, so I've been planning for the most important part of this academic achievement: what I'm going to wear. Winter graduation has thrown me for a loop, wondering if bare legs are completely out of the question or how funny tights would look along with my regalia. I love this Anthropologie dress and think it could be a cute contender, but it's definitely out of my price range. Textbooks trumped the graduation outfit budget, so I'm still searching. Any suggestions for what would look good on its own but also under this.

2. Like everyone else on Pinterest, fall makes me want to bust out the crockpot. I love having the crockpot fairies cooking dinner while I'm at work, and chicken chili sounds like the way to go, too. That's definitely going on next week's dinner menu.

3. "Royals" by Lorde is everywhere right now, but I'm also addicted to "400 Lux." The whole album is good. It's worth a listen. I linked it below, just for you!

4. These brown booties may have found their way into a shipment from DSW to my house. I had been wanting a pair since Hannah's post on booties. I have a black pair that get lots of wear to work in the cooler months, but I thought a brown pair would be a nice to have. I typically wear my booties with skirts, but I'm going to bust out of my comfort zone with these and try them with jeans because, you know, I'm crazy like that.

5. The weather also influences my hobbies, and I've picked up my crochet hook again this month. I was making Preston a newsboy cap similar to this one, but when I went to try it on him, I'd made it too long/tall, so it looks more like MTV veejay Sway's hat (pictured below) than a cap. Since Preston doesn't have dreads (yet. If we keep avoiding a haircut, he might get close.), he really doesn't need a Sway hat. And when I mess up, I tend to give up. I've got to motivate myself to unravel the bottom third and start again.

6. Fancy sweatshirts. While it might sound contradictory, they are one of my favorite fall trends. There are days where I hate to get dressed because it's cold and I just want to be a bum. In a fancy sweatshirt, I can look cute on the outside but feel like a grumpy bum on the inside. Win!

Pudding remix

In the long history of my grandmother's banana pudding, there have been a couple of attempts to make changes and still get delicious results. One time, my dad tried making it with chocolate pudding to get a chocolate-covered-banana type result. It wasn't a huge success. 

Over the weekend, it was my turn to add a twist. In an attempt to fuse two delicious summer desserts (strawberry shortcake and banana pudding), I thought I'd add strawberries to the pudding instead of bananas. Afterward, I wondered why we hadn't done this sooner! It was delicious, if I do say so myself.

I followed this recipe, replacing the bananas with a large container of strawberries that I had sliced and sprinkled with sugar the night before, allowing them to macerate and create lots of strawberry juice. I drizzled the juice over each layer of wafers and strawberry slices so that they could soak up all the goodness and add to the shortcake taste. 

I highly suggest you try this before the summer's end!

Parmesan chicken with Caesar roasted romaine

When I cook, I leave billions of dirty dishes in my wake. The problem is that I hate doing dishes. So, in looking for weeknight meals, I try to find one-dish-dirting recipes. Slightly adapted from this Bon Appetit recipe, this recipe actually dirties only the plates you eat it on if you play your cards right, thanks to a prepackaged breadcrumb mix and nonstick foil.

What you'll need:
Skinless, boneless chicken breasts (the Kraft mix covers up to four pieces, but I only use two since it's just the two of us eating)
Kraft Fresh Take breadcrumbs and cheese bag in Italian Parmesan
Large hearts of romaine, halved lengthwise (1 heart = 2 people fed. You do the math.)
Salt and pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
Fresh chopped garlic or garlic powder
Caesar dressing
Lemon, cut into wedges

Take a sheet pan and line it with nonstick foil. Instead of moistening the chicken with water like the Kraft mix suggests, spread a thin layer of Caesar dressing on either side of the chicken then coat as directed on the pouch. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Remove and place the halved romaine hearts around the chicken, seasoning with salt, pepper and garlic with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the lettuce is wilted and charred. Serve with additional Caesar dressing and lemon.

Now, with all that time you saved, you can prop your feet up and watch DVR-ed episodes of "Gilmore Girls" in peace.

French dip crescents

There are two conversation starters Scott hates to hear me say: "You know what we should be for Halloween?" and "I found this recipe on Pinterest..."

I'm not a stellar cook, and whenever I find something to make on Pinterest, especially if it's not a baked good, I get my hopes set too high and, inevitably, it never comes out the way I hoped. Ever.

Now that I get off work earlier than Scott, I'm in charge of dinner. I usually get home at about 4:30 with Preston, and he's usually passed out by 7, so that gives me two and a half hours of consciousness with the little guy a night. I don't want to waste any of that with a lot of chopping, sauteing, and blanching. I am constantly looking for something quick and easy — really just something I need to assemble and put in the oven.

And that's where our dinner from last night comes in. When I pinned this recipe for French dip crescents, I was worried Scott would find it too ... well, Pinteresty*? Like that hotdog made to look like an octopus or something. But he was all for it when I suggested it.

And they were just what I had been looking for — an easy assembly job. You just roll the meat and cheese up into the crescent and bake as instructed. Instead of making the suggested au jus (I just didn't want to mess with it), I served them with horseradish dijon mayonnaise and lemon pepper green beans. I think this meal found itself on the "make again" list, and Scott and I spent the entire dinner naming other things we could roll up in a crescent. This could be good for our taste buds but bad for our waistlines.

As for what we should be for Halloween, I'm thinking that Preston could be a football, Scott a football player, and I a cheerleader — just in case you were wondering.

*Pinteresty: (adj.) When something looks really cute but is far too much trouble/time/money than it's really worth. "I thought I would paint the whole room with chalkboard paint, make tissue paper puffs, then cover my couch in burlap, but I realized that was too Pinteresty." See also: craftastorphe.

Four favorite pins: Snacktime

For the first few months of my pregnancy, I found myself nauseated at the thought of sweets — uncharted territory for a rampant sweet tooth like myself. But within the last month, the sweets cravings have struck, leaving empty chocolate chip bags and Nutella jars in its wake. So it's no surprise that my favorite Pinterest pins this week all center around satisfying my hunger for chocolate.

1. Chocolate heart peanut butter cookies: The traditional Hershey's kiss in the middle of this cookie gets the boot for a Dove chocolate heart, making these perfect for a Valentine's Day treat — or a Tuesday night cookie binge.

2. Nutella Rice Krispie treats: To use the logic of Joey Tribbiani, Nutella? Good! Rice Krispies? Good! Marshmallows? Good! With that deductive reasoning, there is no way that these could be bad. Plus, Feb. 5 is Nutella day, so I've got to start stocking up on my Nutella-based recipes now.

3. Elvis muffins: My friend Tasha posted these on her blog the other day and left my mouth watering. Three of my biggest cravings have been peanut butter, bananas and chocolate chips, and these muffins have all three! I'm already planning on making a batch this weekend. They probably won't last very long.

4. Brown sugar blondies: I really just think I want to make these because the Valentine M&Ms are so pretty. I also think a blondie is a nice alternative to a brownie.

Have a lovely weekend!

Last night's dinner: Loaded baked potato soup

I'm not the cook in the Hannigan household; that's no secret. Lately, though, I've been itching to get in the kitchen, and not just to raid the pantry and eat peanut butter out of the jar. I don't know if it's my maternal instincts kicking in, but I've been pinning lots of dinner ideas on Pinterest.

At the top of my "to eat" list was this loaded baked potato soup made in the crockpot. With my Tuesday night classes, dinner is a bit of a balancing act. Sometimes Scott will eat then make something for me when I get home, sometimes he'll wait, and sometimes it's a "grab whatever you can out of the fridge and make due" kind of night. I decided that this soup would be a good Tuesday night dish because Scott could eat it when he got home, I could eat it later, and it would still be warm and ready either way. Plus we have leftovers for Wednesday night before church.

Plus it incorporated my favorite kitchen tool: the crockpot. I love the crockpot. You dump all the ingredients inside that morning, turn it on and go. It's like fairies are making your dinner while you're at work.

This soup is perfect for those who are fans of O'Charley's version. We topped ours with cheese, ham (we didn't have bacon bits), and sour cream. I ate two bowls without shame. I knew I'd done well when Scott said, "Wow, honey, this is really good." It's a keeper!

Here's the recipe if you're interested!

Ingredients:
1 30oz. bag of frozen, shredded hash browns (I used Ore Ida)
3 14oz. cans of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1 pkg. cream cheese (This can't be fat free. It won't melt.)

Combine everything except the cream cheese in the pot. Cook for 6-8 hours on low heat (I did 10 because of timing, and it was just as good). An hour before you're ready to serve, add the cream cheese and maintain heat until completely melted. Serve with whatever baked potato fixings you'd like.

(Recipe source here.)

His and hers: Ice cream

Scott and I have very different tastes when it comes to the foods we like. He prefers the perfect mix of sweet and salty, while I want sugar with a side of sugar and a little sugar on top. This difference is best displayed in our freezer where we each have our favorite ice cream treats stored. His is Haagen-Dazs' butter pecan; mine is Blue Bunny's birthday party ice cream sandwiches.

Now, Scott's not here to tell you why he loves his, but I can go on for days about why the birthday party ice cream sandwiches are far superior. One, it has cake batter-flavored sandwich cake. Two, it has sprinkles in the ice cream. Three, it has blue frosting swirled around inside. Yes, I'll say it again, blue frosting! While my taste buds might not be the most mature in the world, they know what they like — and they like blue frosting.

(Can't get enough of my blogging today? Then click on over to the Harding magazine blog to read about the Searcy Summer Dinner Theater date Scott and I went on this weekend.)

Good Eats: Mimi's Banana Pudding

One of my favorite summertime desserts is my grandmother's banana pudding. Like her fudge is what Christmas tastes like, her banana pudding is what summer tastes like. And it would be rude of me to not share this wonderful warm weather treat with you.

What you'll need: 

2 boxes of Nilla Wafers (I like a lot of wafers.)

5-6 bananas

1 large box of Jell-O vanilla pudding (or 2 little boxes)*

1 can Eagle Brand Milk (I use the fat-free version and it tastes the same.)

16 oz. Cool Whip

3 cups of milk

*This time I used French vanilla because Scott asked for it, and whatever Scott wants, Scott gets — because he's the one who buys the groceries. 

There's no cooking in this. It's mainly an assembly job, but it's a delicious assembly job.

Step one: mix up the pudding and the milk, adding the Eagle Brand milk and half of the Cool Whip to the mixture. This is the pudding component. 

Step two: Take a 4 quart dish and line the bottom with the wafers. I stack them up the side, too, because, like I said, I like the wafers — especially when they've sat in the pudding for a while and get soft. Once you've added the wafers, layer sliced bananas on top. Then pour about half of the pudding over that. 

Repeat step two. Now you have wafers, bananas, pudding, wafers, bananas, pudding. I stick some wafers down the side again. For my dish, this is full. So I add one more layer of wafers, then the rest of the Cool Whip on top. Then I break up a few more wafers and sprinkle them on top. Let this set up in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

I always have pudding and wafers left over, so I make Scott little banana-less banana puddings because he doesn't like bananas. It's because I love him.

There you have it — summer dessert at its finest. Do you have a favorite seasonal sweet? If not, make this and you soon will!

Good Eats: Vanilla pound cake

Scott's not your sheet-cake-and-frosting birthday cake kind of guy. Instead of the usual chocolate groom's cake, he had cheesecake. There was much more of my cake leftover than his, which is OK with me because I love wedding cake and would happily eat the rest myself (maybe that's where most of my post-wedding weight came from).

So usually for his birthday I get him a cheesecake from a local bakery. This time, however, I decided I would try my hand at his other favorite cake — pound cake. I Googled recipes until I found this one by Martha Stewart and figured Martha could do no wrong and that her recipe would be a winner. While Scott was in a meeting with his class group members, I whipped up this pretty simple pound cake.

Ingredients:
1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

(My note: She didn't specify that the butter be softened, but I let it sit out and get slightly room temperature anyway.)

Preheat the oven to 325° and grease your 9x5 loaf pan. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl and set aside.

I got to flex my Kitchen Aid mixer muscles again for this cake, no longer with any fear that it is above me. Take that, arrogant kitchen appliance! Beat the butter until fluffy. "Fluffy" is a weird term to me because I feel like it's slightly relative. So, I whipped it until I thought it looked fluffy and took it two minutes further, just because I was unsure. What's the worst that could happen? Too fluffy? Fuzzy perhaps?

Once fluffy, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. The BFC (Barefoot Contessa) would be so proud of me because I cracked the eggs in a little bowl before adding them to the mix. I didn't want to ruin my fluffy butter. It was a good thing, too, as it enabled me to fish out some shell here and there.

After the eggs, add the vanilla and give it a stir. I took the bowl off the mixer at this point since I didn't want flour flying. Add in the flour mixture a cup at a time, mixing until incorporated each time, careful not to over mix. The pour into the pan.

Remember to place your loaf pan on a cookie sheet. I almost forgot one time and would've had all kinds of pumpkin bread mess in the oven if I had. Lick the spatula after you've spread the batter in the pan. The batter tastes really good, which is a good indication the cake will too, in my experience at least.

Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes to an hour and a half, depending. I did the full hour and 30 and kind of over did it, so I'll probably cut it to an hour 20 minutes next time.

While Martha says to let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before popping it out of there, I like to wait a little longer. One time, making another pound cake, I didn't let it cool long enough, and it fell apart. It still tasted good but looked like a gorilla had gone after it. Neither Martha nor the BFC would approve of that.

Good eats: Nutella almond cookies

After my post about the Kitchen Aid mixer, I got a lot of requests to share my Nutella almond cookies recipe. So here it is, by popular demand. Don't say I never did anything for you.

I must first give credit where credit is due. This is a tweaked version of a Giada De Laurentiis recipe.

Cast of characters (a.k.a. ingredients):

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup Nutella

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

3/4 cup slivered almonds

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

(Chef's note: You don't need every shape and size Lock-n-Lock to make these cookies. We just happen to be avid collectors.)

Once you've set all your ingredients out and photographed them like so (or not; it's up to you), put your flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium sized bowl and mix it around a bit. This is what those in the biz call your "dry ingredients." Also preheat your oven to 375. 

In another bowl (the bowl to your mixer or another larger bowl if you're using a hand mixer), plop the butter, sugar, brown sugar and Nutella. Nothing makes me feel more pro than when I remember to set out the butter beforehand so it gets all warm and soft. Go, me! 

Cream those ingredients together with your mixer for about 4 minutes. It's going to smell really good. Lick the spoon you dug the Nutella out with while it mixes. This is a very important step.

Once they're creamed together, add the egg and vanilla and mix for another 2 minutes. (Ina — you know, Ina, the Barefoot Contessa — would fall to the floor of her pretty little house in the Hamptons if she knew I cracked the egg directly to the the batter and not into a separate bowl to make sure the egg was good. But what Ina doesn't know won't hurt her. I'm sure Jeffery would catch her before she hit the ground anyway.)

Now mixing with a spoon or rubber spatula, mix in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in thirds until well incorporated. Add the chocolate chips and almonds and mix them in until combined. Side note on the almonds: I used to use sliced almonds until one day the store was out and all I could get were slivered. I actually prefer the slivered now because they don't get as overly crisp as the sliced ones do. I've also been tempted by chopped walnuts or pecans a time or two and thought they would add something special to these cookies. If you go that route, let me know how it turns out.

Using a tablespoon, scoop the dough into balls and place them on a cookie sheet thusly: 

The original recipe recommends baking them for 10-12 minutes, but I've found 8 to be the magic number. They get crisp on the bottom while remaining gooey in the middle. Once they've baked, let cool on a wire rack. You'll get about 30 cookies out of this recipe.

Eat one straight off the sheet. You'll thank me.

Now, go forth and bake. Have a happy weekend!