Lazy Bread

I don't do a lot of elaborate cooking especially after my failure with individual Beef Wellingtons last year.  When I do cook these days it tends to center on an Artisan style loaf of white bread.


Yup, that's me at 1:00AM covering a slice of still warm from the oven bread with unsalted butter and honey.


It seems that I can never start my day with fresh baked bread because my lack of time management skills means that these little feasts take place at very odd hours.

I call this Lazy Bread because it takes almost no skill or ability to make an excellent loaf of bread.

Yum, Yum!


Here's how I make my Lazy Bread:


Yield - one nice sized loaf


Ingredients:


3 cups of bread flour
1 1/2 cups of warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons of sea salt


Method:


Mix all the ingredients into a cohesive ball in a large bowl.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and wait for a couple of hours for the lump to double in size.  Once doubled, put the whole thing into the refrigerator for about 10 hours.


Take the bowl from the refrigerator and scrap the dough onto a floured surface.  Sprinkle more flour over the top of the loaf push and pull the lump into a loaf shape by pulling the edges under the bottom of the loaf.  Remove to a parchment covered cookie sheet.


Cover lightly with a slightly damp towel and let the whole thing come to room temperature.  This can take over an hour so be patient.


Preheat the oven to 450o with a large shallow pan in the oven.


When the loaf has come to room temperature and the oven is ready, put the cookie sheet in the oven, quickly pour a cup of water into the preheated pan and quickly shut the oven door.


Bake for about 25 minutes, until it is a nice color.


Remove the loaf from the oven to a rack and let cool for at least 30 minutes.


Just before you can't stand it anymore, slice and enjoy. 


I store it in the microwave covered in plastic wrap for 3 - 4 days... if possible!


You can make a lot of additions and substitutions like using some whole wheat flour, or adding nuts, herbs and raisins but I usually don't bother.


There are a zillion recipes available on-line that I used to develop my lazy bread like Five minute bread, Artisan Bread Baking website and, the often intimidating, the Best Bread Recipe website.

Apps - Part One

This may be the only part of a series on Applications available for our various electronic devices but I think this one is particulary fabulous.

Cook's Illustrated magazine has a free app with 50 of its most popular recipes plus some product reviews.  I put it on my IPod and was prepared to just browse it whan I needed a domestic goddess tweak.

I was mistaken.

I don't cook a lot but I do like a good omelette so the Perfect French Omelette called my name.

This is not a typical egg recipe.  You actually cook the eggs twice with a rest period in between.

The egg mixture includes three yolks, two whites and a half tablespoon of frozen butter.

Weird or what!

I tried it this morning and the results were wonderful.  It was tender, flavorful and it even looked like the picture.

Now on to the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies or New York Coffeee Cake or ......

Try this app or become a one day member of Cook's Illustrated and you too could impress your friends and family with a new breakfast treat.

Donut Pudding

When my friends and I get together to quilt, knit or sew we tend to bring a lot of snacks to keep up our energy. It seems that at least one of us brings fresh donuts each time. Last Saturday I picked up a dozen basic glazed yeast donuts and came home with almost all of them. After a couple of days of snacking on them I put them in the microwave, supposedly, to keep them from getting stale, and forgot all about them until today.



They were very ,very stale... hard as hockey pucks....useful as components of Improvised Explosive Devices...suitable for long lasting chew toys. I think you get the point.






I love glazed donuts so instead of tossing them out or providing them to the dogs as a snack food I decided to dig out my Joy of Cooking and see what I could do with them.



After discovering that Irma Rombauer did not produce a recipe that used stale donuts as a key recipe ingredient I took her bread pudding recipe, made a couple of changes and came up with the following.




Ingredients:


5 - 6 stale glazed yeast donuts

3 cups warm milk

3 beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

sugar - to taste ( I used about 1/4 cup)

ground cinnamon (optional to spinkle on top)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F




Take your stale donuts and slice them up into nice chunks. Place in an oven proof dish.




Pour warm milk over the donuts and let the donuts soak it all up.( I still had a little milk left over but that didn't seem to matter)


Beat the eggs with the vanilla, nutmeg and sugar. Stir the egg mixture into the soaked donuts.


Sprinkle cinnamon on top.


Place pudding dish in another dish with about one inch of hot water in it.



Place both in the oven and cook about 45 minutes or until almost firm. (mine could have done with another five minutes but I was getting very hungry.)
Cool in the fridge and serve.



I like mine with a little warm maple syrup. YUM!


DO NOT EAT IT ALL IN ONE SITTING!

Variations - Substitue various juices or liquors for some of the milk, add nuts, raisins or dired fruit, serve with jam, fresh cream or other things Irma suggests.


Lesson learned - when you are down to the last sixteenth of an inch of your nutmeg nut, start on another one rather than start grinding off your finger tips. If you put the last little bit of your nut through the food disposer in your sink your house will smell like nutmeg for a least an hour.

Have a great weekend!

It's a miracle!

Today I went to a Christmas party for the Sewing Friends ASG neighborhood group. In general it was a pot luck luncheon at the home of the amazing Carol Lane Saber. You may remember my raves about her trunk show earlier this year of Japanese textiles and her incredible garments. Her home was filled with many wonderful textiles and other Japanese items. I wish I had brought a camera so you could enjoy the beautifully decorated and spotless rooms of her home. Since my home is close to a toxic waste dump right now, I really enjoy visiting homes like hers just to get away from the piles that need to sorted out from my Dad's Forida apartment.

That was not the miracle, the miracle is that I actually made something from scratch for the pot luck lunch. While we were clearing out my Dad's Florida apartment I found my mother's recipe box. Most of the contents were menu cards with desert recipes. Just what the post WWII bride would need to have a happy home. The rest were hand written file cards from the late 40's and early 50's. One that I found was for Peanut Butter Squares. I'm not sure when it was from but it is attributed to Hazel Goodwin, a neighbor from when we went to a cottage on Georgian Bay for the summer.

Here is the original recipe... with key amounts erased by some fluid spill:

Here is the result - the one piece that was not falling to pieces by the time I got home:

The women at the party all seemed to love them and, even though the icing became like a rock, I must admit they are delicious. Here is what I interpreted as the right amounts and the process:

PEANUT BUTTER SQUARES

1 cup smooth peanut butter

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

Melt these ingredients together in a large bowl over a pot of boiling water as a make-shift double boiler. Do not boil the results.

Remove the big bowl from the pot and stir in:

2 cups corn flakes

1 cup rice crispies (yes, these are beakfast cereal and I used generics)

Once well mixed (it takes a lot of strength to get everything well blended) press the results firmly into a well greased 9" x 13" cake pan. I used a canola oil spray but I bet mom used Crisco.

When cool, top with the caramel icing below.

Caramel Icing

1 cup dark brown sugar

3 tablespoons heavy cream

2 tablespoons sweet butter

Combine in a pot over medium heat and boil for one minute.

Have your mixer handy. Remove the pot from the heat. Quickly beat in about 1 1/2 cups of sifted icing sugar and enough vanilla to make it all combine properly.

Spread on top of the peanut butter base. To serve, cut into squares.

ENJOY!

In our family my mother made these for my younger brother as a special treat. She made pineapple upside down cake for my older brother as his special dessert. Today, someone asked me what she made for me and all I could remember is how she once made me boiled cabbage as part of a special back-to-school meal. YUCK! Maybe my brothers will remember my special dessert or maybe, like many women I know, as long as chocolate was part of the description I was happy.

PS - I think I will try these again with more corn syrup so that the cereal mixing will be less difficult.