Red pepper-sunflower seed bagels

Our second batch of bagels was a success. They were also gone in just a day or so, but we will probably make a larger recipe next time. This time I used sunflower seeds and some whole wheat flour to get the bagels denser and red pepper for some color and flavor. Most of these were eaten with cream cheese, but one was the base for a tuna salad sandwich.

Red pepper-sunflower seed bagels

Makes 8 bagels

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/4 cups bread flour

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

1-2 roasted red peppers

2 tsp yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg white

2 tsp water

Place egg, milk, oil, sugar, salt, flour, sunflower seeds, red peppers, and yeast in bread machine. Set for "dough."

When dough is ready, remove from bread machine and punch down. Divide dough into 8 pieces. Roll pieces into balls, then pinch in middle to make a hole and roll around in your hands until it is bagel-shaped. Cover and place in a warm spot to rise for 15-30 minutes.

Bring 2 quarts of water and 1 tsp sugar to a boil. Place bagels, a few at a time, in boiling water. Boil for 1 minute, then flip over and boil the second side for 3 minutes. Drain and place on pizza stone or baking sheet. Repeat for all bagels.

Combine water and egg white and whisk a little to froth it up. Brush over bagels. Bake at 400 F for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

Spinach-parmesan bagels

We made bagels for the first time on Saturday, and they were great! I used a bagel recipe from The Bread Machine Book and added some spinach and cheese. I was a little concerned that it wasn't a good idea to make flavored bagels for my first time making bagels, but they turned out great. I reduced the liquid in the recipe a tiny bit because the spinach was wet, but that was all I did. These bagels are really light with a chewy outside. I think the classic bagel is supposed to be pretty dense, but I'm no purist-these were great! The spinach flavor really comes through, so much that Jon suggests lowering the amount of spinach next time. I don't really get much of the cheese, so I might either increase or omit it next time.

We ate the first bagel hot out of the oven with a little butter. Then for lunch I had a bagel with cream cheese and roasted red pepper strips. I think these would be good for bagel sandwiches, too. I was really pleased with how well this recipe worked, and I even have a parmesan-roasted red pepper-sunflower seed batch in the breadmaker right now. I'm just sorry it took me so long to start making bagels.

Spinach-parmesan bagels

Makes 8.

4 oz spinach, or less to taste

1 egg

Scant 1/2 cup milk

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups bread flour

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 tsp yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg white

2 tsp water

Wash spinach and steam with water on leaves until wilted. Cool, then wring out as much water as possible. We ended up with a scant 1/2 cup of cooked spinach.

Place egg, milk, oil, sugar, salt, flour, cheese, spinach, and yeast in bread machine. Set for "dough."

When dough is ready, remove from bread machine and punch down. Divide dough into 8 pieces. Roll pieces into balls, then pinch in middle to make a hole and roll around in your hands until it is bagel-shaped. Cover and place in a warm spot to rise for 15-30 minutes.

Bring 2 quarts of water and 1 tsp sugar to a boil. Place bagels, a few at a time, in boiling water. Boil for 1 minute, then flip over and boil the second side for 3 minutes. Drain and place on pizza stone or baking sheet. Repeat for all bagels.

Combine water and egg white and whisk a little to froth it up. Brush over bagels. Bake at 400 F for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

Chocolate chip bread pudding

My friend Katherine sent me a recipe for the pecan bread she uses for French toast. (Side note: she is vegan and uses a chickpea flour batter for French toast. It's awesome.) My bread machine didn't do a good job of distributing the pecans, so the bread was good, but not quite what I was hoping for, so it didn't get completely eaten before it started to get stale. Luckily, there's this awesome little thing called bread pudding. When the bread was all torn up, the pecan distribution didn't matter. I went with a chocolate chip bread pudding, slightly modified from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. It was tasty and held up surprisingly well in the fridge over the course of the week we took to eat it. I think it would be really good with bananas in it too, so we'll probably add them next time.

Chocolate chip bread pudding

3 cups milk

1/2 cup sugar, or more to taste

4 tbsp butter, plus butter for the pan

Bread, enough to fill the pan (we used pecan bread), torn into bite-sized chunks

3 eggs

3 oz chocolate chips or chunks

1/3 cup chopped pecans (I estimate that this is about how many pecans were in there, so you should add it if you aren't using pecan bread)

Put the milk, sugar, salt, and butter in a small saucepan over low heat and warm until butter melts.

Meanwhile, butter an 8- or 9-inch square baking dish.

Put the bread in the baking dish and pour the milk mixture over it. Let it sit for a while, poking it now and then to submerge the top pieces of bread. Stir chocolate chips and pecans into mixture.

Bake at 350 F for 45-60 minutes, or until the pudding is set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (Bittman suggests using a bain-marie, but I forgot to do it, and it was fine.)

Buttermilk bonanza: baby, it's cold outside edition

Of course, it was a requirement to try buttermilk biscuits during our buttermilk bonanza. There are a ton of biscuit recipes out there, but we settled on Alton Brown's because we like him. We split the work on this one: Jon did the measuring and mixing, I did the shaping and baking. They were really good fresh from the oven, but they didn't age well. We probably should have halved the recipe. I included a picture of the spread on our table that night because it makes us look sophisticated: biscuits, lentil-kale soup, grapefruit-avocado salad, and grapefruit-gin spritzers with rosemary.

The day after we made the biscuits, we took a day trip to the Indiana dunes. I am filled with trepidation about my first winter in the midwest, and I am trying to take opportunities to enjoy the outdoors in the cold so I will not become a lump on my Ikea chair during the winter. We packed a nice picnic, including a thermos full of buttermilk potato soup. I based it on this recipe from Homesick Texan, but I basically made it less interesting by omitting the jalapeno, bacon, and cilantro. I did add a bit of smoked paprika to get some of the bacon smokiness, but I wasn't sad that the soup wasn't popping with flavors. It was a nice, warm, thick, creamy potato soup that made a picnic on a snow-covered picnic table much more delightful. For those keeping score, the soup called for 1/2 cup of buttermilk. By the way, we had a fantastic day at the dunes. If you like looking at goofy pictures of us, you can look at our facebook album of the trip here.

Buttermilk in today's recipes: 1 1/2 cups

Buttermilk bonanza total: 6 cups

Liptauer cheese spread

I saw this spread on 101 cookbooks months ago and have been wanting to try it since then. I finally got around to it a couple weeks ago. It is delightful on this thinly-sliced rye bread we like. I call it German health bread, but I don't think that's its technical name. We changed the recipe a little bit because we don't care much for capers, and we had green onions instead of shallots. The spread ended up a little salty. I think next time I will see if I can find a less salty goat cheese. I didn't add any salt, so that and the pickle were the only sources.

Liptauer cheese (adapted from 101 cookbooks)

8 oz goat cheese, room temperature

4 oz butter, room temperature

2 tsp smoked paprika

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp carraway seeds

1 green onion, sliced

1 tbsp diced pickle (we used standard dill, but I think a sweet pickle would be nice too)

Mix goat cheese and butter in a medium mixing bowl. Add paprika, mustard, and carraway seeds. Fold in green onion and pickle. Serve on bread or crackers.

Personal salad focaccia

Jon had the brilliant idea of personal focaccia salads, so we made that for lunch today. I don't think I cooked them quite enough, but they were pretty good. We saw figs on sale, so I sliced one up and put it on the focaccia before it cooked, along with some goat cheese. I also sliced one up for the top. Honestly, I felt like the cooked ones might have been a little too desserty. I'm on the fence about it. The concentrated sweetness was a little weird with the other salad ingredients, but the fig and warm goat cheese thing was pretty great. Maybe make one with and one without, and see how you like them.

Personal Salad Focaccia

Delicious lunch for 1.

1/4 recipe focaccia dough

2 figs, sliced

Goat cheese

Mixed greens

Basil leaves

Sliced avocado

Sliced red pepper

Sliced cucumber

Sunflower seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Prep dough according to directions in this post. Before baking, put one sliced fig and some goat cheese on dough. Bake at 450 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, or until dough is golden. Top with the rest of salad ingredients. Dress to taste with oil and vinegar.

Grape-rosemary focaccia

This recipe from smitten kitchen had been on my to-make list for a long time. We moved into our new apartment last week, which means I finally had access to my stand mixer again. When I saw Concord grapes at the grocery store, I knew it was time to make this recipe! I made one for dinner on Sunday, and we took the other one to a concert in Millennium Park on Monday. They were delicious! It's more work than using the bread maker, mostly because you have to plan on being at home to do various stuff to the dough on a schedule. But darn it, they were tasty. They might work in a bread machine, too. I'll have to try.

I was initially disappointed with the Concord grapes I bought at the store because they didn't taste as Concordy as I thought they should. But the heat of the oven concentrated the flavors, and they were so good with the salt, olive oil, and rosemary. I'm not going to post the recipe because you can just follow the link at the beginning of the post. I made a few changes: I didn't have milk, and yogurt seemed to make a fine substitute. Water probably would have worked, too. I also added about twice as much rosemary for the second one. I thought the rosemary flavor was overwhelmed the first time. Next time, I'll probably add some rosemary to the dough as well. I baked mine on my pizza stone, and I think that (and the olive oil) made the crust really nice and crispy on the outside, but not hard through-and-through. We will probably use this recipe for other focaccias in the future.

I think I have mentioned my friend's blog The Weekly Pizza. Well, we've been inspired, and we're going to try to make weekly pizzas too. I love having structured projects like that, and one that leads me to eat more pizza is an extra bonus. Even though this is focaccia, I've decided that it counts as our first weekly pizza. Thanks for the inspiration, Golda!

I think I should close by gushing about how the kitchen smelled. While the dough was rising, there was a delicious yeasty smell in the air, which gave way to a buttery/olive oil-y bread-baking smell once it hit the oven. It was divine!

Don't expect leftovers.

Two things to do with radishes

A few weeks ago, The Weekly Pizza got me thinking about radishes. I don't do that very much. I don't dislike radishes, but I have never felt compelled to eat them much. To me, they are basically boring crunchy, slightly peppery things that I ignore at salad bars. Then I saw this sugar snap salad recipe with radishes, feta, and sumac in the most recent Bon Appetit and decided to give it a try. I have also heard that slicing radishes and putting them on buttered bread is good, so I had that on the side for dinner.

Slicing radishes is really fun. I was pleased with how thin I could get them. I actually had to keep myself from slicing as thinly as possible because the flavor was more pronounced with thicker slices. They made me feel like a knife skills champ.

The salad was pretty good. I think my sumac is a bit old, so fresh sumac would probably have even more punch. And my good olive oil was very nice in this recipe. I will definitely keep it in the summer potluck rotation. I've been using my lentil and quinoa salads a lot, and it's nice to have something else to toss in there. I am a leftover fan, but the leftovers of the salad weren't great. They weren't bad, but the radishes lost most of their crunch, and the pink leached out of their skins, so the feta was a weird rosy color. So I'd recommend making just as much as you think you can eat in one sitting.

The buttered bread with radishes was good, but I don't think it was any better than buttered bread without radishes. So if you feel the need to eat some radishes, both of these dishes are good, but I still don't think I like radishes enough to spend money on them on a regular basis. I haven't tried the radish leaves yet, though. I think they might be a nice addition to a regular lettuce salad. Perhaps I'll start buying radish bunches just for the leaves. I kind of do that with beets already. Beets are good, but I like beet greens even more.

I'm not including the recipes because I followed the magazine recipe basically word-for-word, so you can just use the link above, and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to slice up radishes and put them on buttered bread without a recipe.

Two things to do with olive oil

As I mentioned in a recent post, we got some really good olive oil recently. It's this stuff from California.

In the past, I've mostly stuck to imported Greek and Italian olive oils, but they had samples of this out at a local grocery store, and it's a great finishing oil. It's fairly bitter and grassy and assertive, but still fresh. While dousing bread in olive oil and balsamic is awesome, I've been trying to highlight this excellent oil in other ways as well. Here are two recipes I made this week that tasted good and let the olive oil stand out. The bulgur salad is a variation on something we do pretty often. The crostini came about because I saw a pickled cherry recipe in a recent Bon Appetit and just had to make it. (By the way, I didn't pit the cherries before pickling them, and I think they're fine.) It's pretty good, but I'll probably tinker with it when I make it again. I find it a little too acidic, and I feel like the cherry flavor would stand out more if I left them in the hot liquid for a shorter amount of time and decreased the vinegar a bit. But the rosemary is great in there! This seemed like a logical way to use up some pickled cherries. I think the crostini would be even better with a nice creamy chevre in place of the feta, but feta was what I had.

Bulgur salad

1 cup coarsely ground bulgur

pinch of salt

3/4 cups halved grapes

1 celery rib, thinly sliced

a big spring of mint, leaves julienned

juice of 1/2 lemon

olive oil

Bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Add the bulgur and a pinch of salt, turn off heat, and let bulgur steam until the water has been absorbed. If all the water has been absorbed and the bulgur isn't tender enough, add another 1/4-1/2 cup of water, bring to a boil, and turn off heat to let it steam a little more. In the meantime, place the grapes and celery in a medium mixing bowl. Add the cooked bulgur and dress with mint, lemon juice, and oil. Serve by itself or over a regular salad with lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers, and cucumbers, like I did.

Pickled cherry and feta crostini

Makes 1. Increase as necessary.

1 slice Italian bread

2 tsp crumbled feta cheese or a big smear of goat cheese

4 pickled cherries, pits removed and cherries chopped into 8ths

Black pepper

Olive oil

Toast the bread. I don't have a toaster, so I spread a little butter on it and fried it for a few minutes in a skillet, but toasting/grilling/broiling would work too. (I didn't want to use the oven for just one piece of bread.) Place cheese on bread and add cherries to the top. Sprinkle with black pepper and pour a little olive oil on it.

Panzanella

We impulse-bought a loaf of nice Italian bread one evening last week because we got some great olive oil and wanted to have an excuse to sop it up. The next day, the half we hadn't eaten was rock-hard, so we made this panzanella to use it up. I have always been wary of panzanella and fattoush, a Middle Eastern bread salad, because I don't like soggy bread. One of the only dishes Jon has made that I have disliked to the point of not eating it was a gazpacho that was thickened with bread. Yuck! (I'm not wild about cold soup anyway, which I probably should have mentioned when he suggested a gazpacho. I want to like gazpacho, but I just prefer my soups hot.) But last year, my friend Bridget brought a panzanella to a potluck, and I really liked it, so when life handed me really stale bread, I decided to try it.

I used the dressing recipe that Bridget did, which was Ina Garten's, but I improvised the rest of the ingredients. The dressing called for raw garlic, which I usually shy away from, but it was alright. I might try sauteing the garlic next time to take the edge off. This was a nice light supper, and we managed to eat the whole thing. I don't think leftover panzanella would be good.

Panzanella (source: Ina Garten, via my friend)

Dressing:
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
1 pinch salt
Ground pepper to taste
Dried basil, thyme, and oregano, to taste

Salad:
1/2 loaf stale bread, cut into 1-inch cubes (about 6 cups)
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, cut into 1-inch chunks
8 Kalamata olives, halved
2 tbsp feta cheese, crumbled

Combine dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Combine salad ingredients in a large bowl. A few minutes before you want to eat, dress the salad and stir it around to distribute. Let it sit for a few minutes, then serve.

Job application food

I am in my final year of my Ph.D. program, so I am applying for jobs right now. It is somehow difficult, tedious, and scary all at the same time. That, combined with the fact that Jon is not here most of the time, means that I haven't been cooking a lot of blog-worthy meals. I noticed that I've been going to the egg+grain+green formula quite a bit on busy days. I find it very comforting. Here are two incarnations, both of which I found very good. By the way, if you're thinking about hiring a mathematician, let me know!

Egg and kale sandwich

Butter for frying an egg

1 egg

2 slices of bread

A few shaves of parmesan cheese

Za'atar

2 leaves of kale, thick stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped

Heat butter in a small frying pan over medium heat. When it's hot, crack the egg into it and fry it. (I cook it for a while on one side and then flip it and cook for just a little bit on the other side.) While you're doing this, you can toast your bread. Place the egg on one slice of bread with some shaves of parmesan and a healthy helping of za'atar. In the remaining butter, saute the kale until it's wilted. Put it on the sandwich and close it up.

Bulgar and mustard greens with poached eggs

This will make extra bulgar. I got a total of three meals out of it.

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup bulgur

Vegetable oil for sauteeing

1/2 small onion, diced

1 bunch mustard greens, thick stems removed, leaves chopped

1 egg

1 lemon slice

Za'atar

Heat 1 1/2 cups water and salt to boiling. Stir in bulgur, turn off heat, cover, and let cook for about 30 minutes. It's no big deal if the bulgur is a little wet, as long as it's tender enough. In a saute pan, heat the oil over medium. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the mustard greens and cook just until wilted. It's OK if they're not all the way wilted because the bulgur will wilt them the rest of the way.

Combine bulgur and greens in a large bowl. Put a blob of it on a plate.

Poach egg. I'm not an expert egg-poacher, so you should probably just do it your own way, but here's how I poach an egg. Fill up a medium saucepan with water. Heat it until it's close to boiling but not quite there, and try to somehow keep the temperature there. There should be little bubbles coming up and the water should look active. (Good luck.) Crack the egg into a small bowl and dump into water. Don't touch it for a while. After about 3 minutes, loosen it from the bottom and see if the white seems to be all the way cooked. Once it is, remove it with a slotted spoon and put it on top of the bulgur.

Squeeze some lemon juice and sprinkle some za'atar over the bulgur and egg.

Veganized Banana Bran Bread

My first experiment with veganization was a resounding success! I have never veganized an already-vegetarian recipe before, but one of my goals this month was to try some simple substitutions, and this one worked very well. About two weeks ago I made the standard recipe for Jeanne Lemlin's banana bran bread from Vegetarian Classics. It was a great bread. It is less sweet than standard banana bread, and the bran gives it a nice chewiness. Both aspects make it more breakfasty and less desserty than normal banana bread. As written, the recipe contains eggs and melted butter. I made it as written first to make sure it was a good recipe before I started messing with things. In the vegan version, which I made last week, I used flax seeds mixed with water in place of the eggs and vegetable oil in place of the butter. I was worried that my naive substitutions would mess up the chemistry completely, but when it came out of the oven, it was great. I didn't have a piece of the first batch to compare it to, but it didn't seem to suffer at all from being veganized. Hooray! I look forward to using the flax-egg substitution in the future. Flax has a lot of fiber and omega-3's and is much lower in calories than eggs, so it is a good healthy alternative.

Veganized Banana Bran Bread
You can probably substitute whole wheat pastry flour for the all-purpose flour with no problems. I was out, so I didn't.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat bran
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg, optional
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
2 tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 6 tbsp water
2-3 mashed ripe bananas
6 tbsp vegetable or nut oil

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Use shortening or oil to greast a 9x5-inch loaf pan. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients and mix. In a medium bowl mix together the flax mixture, bananas, and oil. Scrape into the flour mixture and stir just to combine. Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from the pan. If you have superhuman self-control, cool completely before slicing.

More crackers

Jon loves my crackers, so I'm trying to keep them around. I first wrote about them here. The basic recipe is 1 cup flour, 2 tbsp fat, 1/2 tsp salt, and enough water to make a dough. I also like to add some nuts or seeds and flavorings. I discovered that a pizza stone is WAY better than a baking sheet. I tried that on Jon's suggestion on Saturday, and it was awesome. No burned or undercooked spots! Below are three combinations I've made recently.

Hazelnut-wheat:

1/4 cup hazelnuts
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter

Chickpea-pumpkin seed:
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp dry rosemary
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Parmesan-herb:
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp Italian seasoning, or a blend of oregano, basil, thyme, and marjoram
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp heavy cream

Process nuts or seeds in food processor until they are coarsely ground. Add flour, salt, seasonings, and butter or oil. Pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. For the Parmesan-herb recipe, add 2 tbsp cream. Otherwise, add 1/4 cup water. Pulse to combine. Add water in tablespoon increments, processing briefly after each addition, until dough forms a ball.
Turn dough out onto generously floured surface. Roll to about 1/8 inch thickness. Carefully transfer to floured pizza stone. Score lightly with knife or pizza cutter and bake in 385 F oven until golden on top. Start checking around 10 minutes and watch it carefully after that.

A tale of two pizzas

Not much of a recipe here. I just like pizza and want to share two pizzas Jon and I made a while ago. Our dough recipe makes two pizzas' worth of dough, so we usually do two days of pizza at a time. In case you need it, the dough recipe is in this post.
The first pizza starts with an eggplant. An eggplant that we grew on our balcony.
We decided to do an eggplant pizza with mozzarella and tomatoes. The eggplant was small, so we sliced it very thinly to get as much of the pizza covered as possible. The seeds made an angel pattern in the middle of each slice.We brushed the eggplant slices on each side with some olive oil and broiled in the toaster oven until they were brown before layering them on the pizza with tomato and mozzarella slices.
Jon put some mushrooms on his half before it went into the oven. After baking for about 20 minutes, it was done.
We scattered some basil on it right after it came out of the oven. Yum! The eggplant slices were good, although all the other goodies probably diluted the eggplanty awesomeness.

The next night we had pizza again. This time we wanted to use up some eggplant-tomato sauce I had made earlier in the week. On a whim, Jon suggested putting some kale on top too. It was a brilliant idea! We put it on in the last five minutes or so of cooking. Jon's half, once again, has mushrooms on it. I elected just to go with just sauce, cheese, and kale. Kale dries out very quickly in the oven and gets a nice chewy consistency, with little patches of crunchiness near the curly ends of the leaves. And the flavor is concentrated by the oven. It works very well.

Jalapeno-serrano cornbread with honey butter

This was the winning entry at the iron chef party. It's "just" jazzed-up cornbread from a mix, but it really hit the spot.

Jalapeno-serrano cornbread:
1 large poblano pepper
2 small serrano peppers
2 Parade instant cornbread mixes
2 eggs
4/3 cups milk
1 tbsp sugar
handful frozen corn kernels
1 cup pepper jack cheese, divided

Char the peppers. Place under broiler and turn often until they are black on all sides. Put the peppers in a ziploc bag in the fridge until they are cool enough to handle. Peel off the skin and discard the seeds unless you want really spicy cornbread. You might want to wear gloves if you have sensitive skin. Dice the peppers. Mix everything except 1/2 of the cheese together and pour into a greased loaf pan. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese on top. Bake at 425 F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Honey butter:
butter
salt
honey

Let the butter come to room temperature. Add salt and honey to taste. Spread thickly on warm cornbread.

Focaccia!

Yesterday Jon and I made the rest of our pizza dough into tasty, tasty focaccia. I served it with a Caprese salad (tomato, mozzarella, basil, black pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar) and used the bread to sop up the tasty juice leftover from the salad. When that was gone, I switched to pouring olive oil and balsamic vinegar onto the bread. Probably not the healthiest meal I could make, but it was delicious. I have a real weakness for bread dripping with good olive oil. Jon and I just switched to a better EVOO (he hates it when I use Rachael Ray-isms), and it made a real difference. For the record, it's Iliada brand. In case you were wondering about the weird tomato distribution, Jon wanted to try it, but I wanted to take a more minimalist approach.

Focaccia:
1/2 recipe pizza dough
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 thin slices yellow or white onion, separated into rings and chilled or soaked in cold water*
1 tsp coarse salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
tomato slices, if desired

Preheat oven to 400 F. Sprinkle pizza stone with cornmeal. Roll or toss or otherwise stretch pizza dough into a round that's a little thicker than you would make for pizza. Brush with olive oil, distribute onion rings on dough, and sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake for 15 minutes. Add garlic, rosemary, and tomato and cook for 3-5 minutes more, until crust is turning golden. Tear off pieces and drown them in olive oil.

*Chilling the onion rings or soaking them in cold water will keep them from burning too quickly in the oven. You could also put them on later. I used part of an onion that had already been cut and was being stored in the fridge, so I didn't do anything special.

Pizza!

I made pizza from scratch for the first time yesterday. I love pizza. It is easily my favorite food, but it's always seemed like too much work to do at home. Now that I have the bread machine, however, I decided to give it a try. I would start earlier next time because the pizza dough cycle is 55 minutes long and it has to rest another 30 minutes after that, but other than that it was really easy. Plus, the dough recipe makes enough for two crusts. We are having either another pizza or making focaccia tonight for dinner. I went with the basic white pizza crust for my first time, but I am planning on experimenting with whole wheat and maybe even other grains in the future. I had some eggplant-tomato sauce leftover from pasta on Saturday, so that was the sauce we used. You can see in the picture that the basil got pretty wilted. I will probably put it on at the very end next time, as I indicate in the recipe. We ate this out by the pool with St. Arnold's Spring Bock and a bulgur salad, which Jon might post about later.

Evelyn's first pizza recipe:
1/2 recipe of pizza dough* or prepared pizza dough
cornmeal for the pizza stone
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup eggplant-tomato sauce**
2 small-ish balls of fresh mozzarella, sliced
black pepper
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
10 leaves fresh basil

Preheat the oven to 400 F.
Roll or toss the pizza into a nice round. Mine wasn't that round. Oh well. Sprinkle cornmeal on pizza stone and transfer the dough to the stone. If you've got a pizza peel, you'll probably do a better job than I did. Brush dough with olive oil and then with tomato sauce. Place cheese rounds on top of pizza and bake for about 15 minutes. Add black pepper and parmesan and cook until parmesan is slightly brown, about 5 more minutes. Remove from oven and throw the basil leaves on. Enjoy responsibly so as not to burn your tongue on molten cheese.


*Pizza dough recipe (from bread machine manual):
1 cup tap water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp powdered milk
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp dry yeast (I used 2 tsp because I have old, stale yeast)

Put the ingredients in the bread machine and set it for "pizza dough". Wait 55 minutes and retrieve the dough. Put it in a large bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Wait 30 minutes.

**Eggplant-tomato sauce recipe (I made this one up, so amounts are my best estimates):
1 tbsp olive oil, not extra-virgin
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3/4 lb eggplant, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1 tsp Italian seasoning (or a blend of any or all of the following: basil, oregano, marjoram, thyme, rosemary)
1/4 cup red wine
1 14-oz can whole tomatoes with juice
black pepper

Saute onion, garlic, and eggplant over medium heat until onion starts to turn translucent. Add pepper and Italian seasoning and cook until eggplant is soft. Add red wine and let it simmer for about a minute. Add tomatoes. If your tomatoes are salt-free, add maybe a teaspoon of salt. Otherwise, they have enough salt. Cook for a few minutes so the sauce reduces slightly. Transfer to a blender or food processor, or use an immersion blender, to puree the sauce. Add black pepper to taste. This recipe probably makes 2 cups of sauce.

Whole wheat pumpkin seed bread

I made a third loaf of bread in the bread machine the other day: whole wheat pumpkin seed bread. Once again, I increased the yeast, and it rose a lot more than the first loaf. It wasn't as tall as the white loaf, and I think next time I make it, I'll add some gluten. I have heard that just adding a couple tablespoons of gluten to wheat bread dough can make it a lot lighter. This bread was delicious, especially fresh from the machine slathered in butter. Most of the pumpkin seeds were ground up pretty well, but there are enough to give a little texture to the bread. It is slightly sweet but would probably still make good savory sandwiches. I haven't tried yet. I've just been toasting it and spreading some butter on it. Predictable but delicious. It uses milk instead of water, and I have whole milk in the fridge right now, so it's not a low-calorie bread by any stretch, but it's probably just as good with skim milk. The recipe came from the instruction manual for the bread machine.

I'm having one problem with homemade bread. Well, two problems. The first is that it's so delicious that I'm eating way more bread than I usually do. But that's not a bad problem. The second is that I'm terrible at slicing it. That's the reason I haven't made sandwiches with it yet. I end up with a lot of slices that are too thin to have any structural integrity and a few that are way too thick to use for sandwiches. I've just been slicing as I go along, and I wonder if it might be better to slice it all at once when it's cooled most of the way. Is that a good idea? Any slicing tips?

Whole wheat pumpkin seed bread:
1 3/8 cups milk
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp dry milk
1 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp yeast (I increased to 2 tsp)
3 tbsp pumpkin seeds

Put it in the machine and cook on the large whole wheat loaf setting.

The mixing paddle got stuck in the loaf.

My homemade breakfast

I had an excellent breakfast today, and it was almost all homemade:

1 slice of homemade yogurt bread with (not homemade) butter
Fresh homemade yogurt with homemade granola and (not homemade) dried raspberries

Homemade fruit smoothie: banana, orange juice, carrot, frozen strawberries, frozen raspberries, and frozen pineapple.

In case you're wondering, yogurt is easy to make. Heat 1 quart of milk on high heat, stirring constantly, until it gets really steamy and foamy. When it comes down to about 110 F, add it to a bowl with a couple spoonfuls (spoonsful?) of yogurt with live cultures (Dannon has worked best for me) and keep in a warm place 8 hours or so. I kept mine in the oven with the oven light on, and by the morning, the temp in there was 116 F, which is a temperature that makes the little lactobacilli very happy. Homemade yogurt is super-delicious just after you make it, before refrigeration, so it was a real treat to have some of that this morning.

My granola contains: oats, dried cranberries, dried cherries, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, and honey. I'm not going to put up the recipe because, although it's pretty tasty, I am still trying to figure out an ideal cooking time/temperature. My oats didn't get very cooked when I made it, so it's somewhere in between granola and muesli.

2nd bread machine loaf: a success!

Yay! My second loaf of bread machine bread rose and tasted fantastic! I made a white yogurt bread. Because I am ridiculous and cheap, I elected not to buy new yeast and instead increased the yeast. I used 2 3/4 tsp instead of the 2 tsp in the recipe. In order to increase my chances of success, I also decided to go with a white loaf and didn't use the delay timer. I will branch out a little more now that I know that success is very possible. I may have used too much yeast, as the bread is a little spongy, but it really is delicious, so I am not at all disappointed. The recipe is from the instructions that came with the bread machine (Hitachi D-102).

1/2 cup tap water
1 cup plain yogurt
3 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tsp dry yeast (I increased to 2 3/4 tsp)

Put ingredients in breadmaker in the order suggested by the manufacturer (in my case, in the order shown above). Press "Start".