ABin5

I'm not eating bread - at least right now anyway. Husband and I are about halfway into the yearly Awakening fast. Sadly the fast doesn't include bread. But I found this bread recipe that I wanted to make right now! So  I managed to bully mom and Dan into being test subjects. After two loaves, they don't appear to regret it.

Yesterday, Mom and I made the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes recipe. It's a bread recipe that has you make four loaves of bread that you bake when desired over the next two weeks. The dough stays in your refrigerator until you're ready to whack off a chunk and bake it. The recipe has easy and clear instructions except when it came to the shaping and scoring step. Luckily, shaping and scoring bread have tons of tutorials on the web. 

On day 2, I just shaped into a baguette straight out of the fridge. You don't have to worry too much about manhandling this dough it's pretty forgiving.

Scoring is a bit of an art that I haven't mastered yet. I usually end up deflating the dough rather than allowing it to expand further but I'll get it one day! Before I attempted to score the dough, I sprayed it with some oil to make it easier to score. The oil also makes sure the crust doesn't get too hard.

The finished loaf has a nice golden brown color which is partially due to mom's super awesome steam oven. The broiler pan steaming method works well enough but it's not the same as having a semi-professional appliance. The bread was really delicious as well as being easy to make and bake. The same authors have a ~70% whole wheat dough that I'm going to try next time.

You don't have to do all that shaping and scoring business if that doesn't appeal to you. You can just form it into a rough cylinder and put it into a greased loaf pan. I'm going to bring some dough to Vi's one day to try baking it in her bread maker.

Broccoli Dal

David has been a bit irrational lately. I think he might have entered that "terrible two" phase. I'm at a loss trying to predict what might tempt his gourmand palate. After striking out on my last two attempts, I was getting mildly frantic about what to do. The doctors want him to be a fat kid and I can't make something he wants to eat! So I was a tad panicked while I was cooking yet another dish for my little man. He may have just been starving from my preceding failures but tonight I finally won the David dinning lottery. Success!


Broccoli Dal (adapted from here)
1.5 cups Red lentils
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp cumin, ground
2 tsp mustard seeds
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5 cups Broccoli, finely chopped (original recipe for pictures)
4 cups Broth
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1 can Coconut Milk
1-2 Tbs Lemon juice
0.5-1 Tbs Crushed Red Pepper
1.25 tsp Garam Masala 
0.5 tsp Ginger, ground (if using fresh grate it and add with the first group of ingredients)
1 tsp Tumeric


Saute the first group of ingredients(red lentils to mustard seeds) over medium heat in oil until the mustard seeds start to pop (~10 minutes). Stir in the second group (broccoli and broth) cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir in the third group (coconut milk to tumeric) and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Makes 7 cups.


Failure one was this without the milk or yeast. Normally David is a HUGE fan of spinach but I think it was a little too garlicy for him.
Failure two was a red bean hummus based on this but I forgot to add the tahini. I think the lack of nut butter offended him.
As a blog note, I've decided to post how I mutilate other people's recipes as well as posting the recipes I make up myself. 

Whole Grain Focaccia!

I've gone through a ton of failures in my quest for a whole grain focaccia. Most of my attempts ended up as giant cracker-like things that were very strong tasting. Icky. What I wanted was a light and fluffy focaccia but whole grain. Finally. Success.

Whole Grain Focaccia

7 oz Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

8 oz Millet Flour

8 oz Oat Flour

1/2 cup Wheat Gluten

2 tsp Salt

1 Tbs yeast

1/2 cup Olive Oil

2 cups Water (bottled water works best)

1/2-1 cup Herb Oil (zap some herbs and garlic in some oil in the microwave for 30-60 seconds)

Stir together the dry ingredients. Add the water and oil (not the herb oil). Beat in a mixer for 7-12 minutes. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper then pour 1/3 of the herb oil in the pan. Plop the dough in the sheet pan and dimple the dough into the edges of the pan. If the dough doesn't stretch/dimple into the edges that's fine. Pour another 1/3 of the herb oil over the dough and cover the dough with 3 layers of plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or up to 3 days.

Take out 3 hours before you want to eat it. Remove the plastic wrap and pour the last of the herb oil over the bread. If you want to add other toppings to the bread, do that now. Let the bread rise for an 1.5 hours (90 minutes) - preheat your oven to 500F 30-60 minutes before baking. It should look like this right before it goes in the oven:

It might even rise a little higher. Anyway, pop your bread in the oven; turn the temperature down to 450F and bake for 10 minutes. Turn the bread 180 degrees and bake another 10 minutes. Remove from the over and either leave in the pan (if you want the crust soft) or remove to a baking rack (if you want the crust crunchy/hard). You MUST leave the bread alone for 20 minutes because it's continuing to bake even after you take it out of the oven.

Low-Fat Note: You don't really need all that oil to make focaccia. You can leave it out of the dough recipe when you make it. You do need to spray the bottom of your sheet pan; brush the dough with oil before it goes in the fridge; and brush the dough with oil when you take it out of the fridge. The oil you brush on both before and after refrigeration lets the dough rise since the oil keeps the surface from drying out.

Herbs and Mix-ins: You can add herbs to the dough recipe or grilled onions, bacon, or whatever. It just makes the bread more delicious. Although if you add crunchy things - like bacon - they won't stay crunchy.

Breads

I make up new recipes all the time. I try to cut out all the stuff that isn't absolutely necessary to make that dish function. I want a recipe that I can modify and tweak to go with everything. So I REALLY like recipes that can go in either the sweet or savory direction.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with adding fruits and veggies into baked goods to make them low fat. We could all stand to eat less fat. I get quite excited about eating more cookies and less fat. So cookies, cakes, and now finally breads have fallen prey to my tampering.

Quick Veggie/Fruit Bread
1.5-2 cups Pumpkin or any Fruit or Veggie puree
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
2.5-3 cups Whole Wheat Flour

Combine the puree, salt, soda, and eggs. Add the 2.5 cups of flour, stir until combined. Add more flour if the batter is runny. Bake @ 350 for 1 hour.
-Vegan Variation: Substitute 1 tbs ground Flax Seed and 3 tbs water per egg (3 Tbs Flax & ½ cup water for this recipe). Let the flax mixture soak for 5 minutes before use.
-Pumpkin Spice Variation: Use pumpkin puree and add 1 cup sugar, 1.5 tbs cinnamon, ¾ tsp ginger, ⅜ tsp nutmeg, ⅜ tsp allspice.
-Banana Spice Variation: Use banana puree and add ½ c sugar, ½ tsp cloves, ½ tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp cinnamon. Optional add ins: ½ cup chopped nuts, ½ cup chopped dried fruit, 1 tsp coffee, ⅛ tsp fresh ground black pepper.
-Cranberry Walnut Variation: Use orange puree and add 1 cup sugar, 1 cup cranberries, and ½ cup chopped walnuts.

Fruit or Veggie Yeast Bread
1.5-2 cups Kale or any Fruit or veggie puree
1 tsp salt
½ tbs yeast
3 eggs
2.5-3 cups Whole Wheat Flour

Combine the puree, salt, yeast, and eggs. Add the 2.5 cups of flour, mix until combined. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. Knead dough for 10 minutes - I either do this in the food processor or mixer. Sometimes I put the dough in a plastic ziploc bag and knead through the bag. It’s less messy and you can add more flour a little bit at a time to make the dough not stick to the bag. Shape into a loaf and let rise in it’s pan for 2 hours (or a doubling in size). Bake @ 350 for 1 hour.
-Vegan Variation: Substitute 1 tbs ground Flax Seed and 3 tbs water per egg (3 Tbs Flax & ½ cup water for this recipe). Let the flax mixture soak for 5 minutes before use.

I haven’t tried many types of the yeast bread recipe so I’ll add variations to this post as I make them up.

Guest Post

While I've been neglecting creating my own recipes, I've been tampering with other people's recipes resulting in a guest post at HappyHerbivore.com.