Pita Bread

When I was making a recipe based on the New York Times' Greek Nachos, I decided that I was going to be all super-motivated and make my own pita bread. Now, when I'm looking for a recipe, I might look on Epicurious or another recipe website, or I might look in my cookbooks, or I might look to another blogger for inspiration. In a case like this, when I don't want to wade through a million recipes and attempt to figure out which one is going to work, I turn to another blogger.


I suspected that Deb from Smitten Kitchen could provide me with a reliable pita recipe, and I was right. Her website is really worth checking out, so I won't reprint the recipe, I'll just direct you here so you can check it out for yourself. And I just want to mention that my pitas really were beautifully puffed when I first made them, before I smashed them all by piling them together. Really. They were.

Pumpkin Bread

Here's a nice little seasonal treat that you can whip up in almost no time at all. Is that why quick breads are called 'quick breads,' do you think?

Pumpkin Bread

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup mildly flavored walnut oil
• 1/3 cup unsweetened apple butter or apple sauce
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 16-ounce can solid pack pumpkin
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• Scant 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts 
• About 2 teaspoons turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter (or use non-stick cooking spray) and flour two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Beat sugar and oil in large bowl to blend. Mix in eggs, vanilla and pumpkin. Sift flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and ginger into another large bowl. Stir into pumpkin mixture in 2 additions.

Divide batter equally between prepared pans. Sprinkle the walnuts in a line down the length of the loaves. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the top. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Using sharp knife, cut around edge of loaves. Turn loaves out onto racks and cool completely.

Grill Bread

I love reading other people's blogs. They can be so inspiring, in the sense that they make me want to cook lots of yummy stuff, immediately. They can also inspire a fit of mopey doldrums in which I think that in comparison, my photos and writing suck. But that's enough of that talk.

In the inspiring arena is Molly Watson's grill bread. She posted the recipe on her blog The Dinner Files. and in this post, she likens this bread to crack. That right there was intriguing, as we recently deemed some blueberry bars 'crack.'

Now, we didn't really need any more crack in our lives, especially as we were given some delicious raspberry bars from a friend--they were 'crack's cousin.' But Molly also wrote that a friend of hers had begged her not to make this bread. That sealed the deal. I mean, it has to be awesome if someone is begging you not to make it, right? In this case, yes.

Well, this bread was rather crack-like. Especially the pieces that did not drip through the grill grates, meld themselves to the metal, and carbonize. Molly's probably got mad skills because her grill bread, in her beautifully shot photo, looks amazing. Ours, not so much. We found that this whole grill bread thing has a steep learning curve. But by the time we had gotten to the end of the (huge) batch, we had it pretty much figured out.

Here's what we learned:
The dough that I made was waaaaay too wet. If I make it again, I'll probably use 7 cups of flour. Or 3 1/2, because it makes a lot of bread, so I might cut the recipe in half. Or, I might just try kneading it a lot longer.
I was more successful when the dough was rather dry and firm, because otherwise it plooged down between the grates of the grill.

A good coating of flour helps prevent sticking.
Grill the bread, at least to start, over indirect heat. If you put it directly over the flames (unless you manage to stretch it really thin), the outside will burn before the inside is cooked. Thin is good, by the way. I made my pieces too thick, so it was difficult to get them fully cooked without blackening the outside.

This bread is absolutely heavenly with some olive oil. It's also good with a fresh tomato. I also made an herby bean dip, which I may post here later, that was a nice pairing.

Grill Bread

(From The Dinner Files)

• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 cup milk
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tablespoon kosher salt
• Olive oil for brushing
• Coarse salt for sprinkling (don’t kid yourself, this is *not* optional)

Dissolve yeast in 2 cups lukewarm water. Stir in 1 cup lukewarm milk.

Stir in flour and salt until a dough forms (this is great to do in a standing mixer with a dough hook, if you have one). If doing this by hand, you may need to turn the dough out onto a counter and knead it to work in all the flour.

Lightly oil a large bowl and put the dough in it. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let sit to let dough rise until doubled in bulk, 8 hours or overnight.

Punch down the dough and let it sit another hour.

Meanwhile, brush your cooking grate with vegetable oil. Heat your grill to medium to medium-hot. You should be able to hold your hand about an inch over the cooking grate for two minutes second or so before it just feels way too hot. Don’t worry too much about this, however. Grill bread isn’t fussy.

Divide the dough into ten pieces. Work with one piece at a time and stretch it into a disk of some sort – oblong is cool, round is fine, crazy-shaped is always popular. Lay whatever shaped dough disk you have on the hot grill. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough.

Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread

                                   

                        I've mentioned this method and recipe before, but I'm feeling the need to post the recipe. Why? Because every time that I bring this bread to a party, people rave about it. I tell them that I made it, and they say things like: "Oh, I hate you. I could never do that." Or: "I don't have time to do that."
But I promise them, and I promise you that you can totally do this. It's so easy and takes almost no active time. All you have to do is plan ahead a little bit.


And I've promised this before, but I swear that if you bring this to a party, people will love you.


Here's a little recap of Jim Lahey's explanation of the science behind this miraculous bread:


The long, slow rise brings the gluten molecules into side-by-side alignment, to maximize their opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this because the gluten molecules are more mobile when there is a sufficient quantity of water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the dough was stiff."
Basically, this results in a bread with far more flavor than any bread you'll find in a supermarket or in the Baltimore area. The bread has structure, chewiness, a large airy crumb, and a substantial crust. It's really worth a try.

THE BASIC NO-KNEAD BREAD

-3 cups or 400 grams bread flour
-2 teaspoons table salt
-1/4 teaspoon or 1 gram instant or other active dry yeast
-1 1/3 cups or 300 grams cool (55 to 65 degrees F) water
-wheat bran, cornmeal, or additional flour for dusting


In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, salt and yeast. Add the water and mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature, out of direct sunlight, until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled in size. This will take at least 12 hours and up to 18, the longer the better.

When the first fermentation is complete, generously dust a work surface (I like to use a large wooden cutting board) with flour. Use your hands or a spatula to scrape the dough onto the board in one piece. The dough will seem very sticky and wet at this point, and you may think that it doesn't seem right. It is, though, so don't add more flour.

Using lightly floured hands, lift the edges of the dough in toward the center. Nudge and tuck in the edges of the dough to make it round. Place a cotton or linen (not terrycloth) tea towel on the work surface and generously dust it with wheat bran, cornmeal, or flour. Gently lift the dough onto the tea towel so that the seam side is down. If the dough is tacky, lightly dust it with the bran, cornmeal or flour. Fold the ends of the towel over the dough and place it in a warm, draft-free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours. The dough is ready when it's almost doubled. If you gently poke it with your finger, it should hold the impression. If it doesn't, let it rise for 15 more minutes.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475 degrees F with a rack in the lower third of the oven, and place a covered 4-6 quart heavy pot in the center of the rack. If your pot has a rubber handle, cover it with a double layer of tinfoil with the dull side facing out.


Using pot holders, carefully remove the preheated pot from the oven and uncover it. Unfold the tea towel, lightly dust the dough with flour, cornmeal or bran, lift up the dough, and quickly but gently invert it into the pot, seam side up.


The pot will be very hot , so be very careful when you replace the lid and put the pot back in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on. Remove the lid and continue baking until the bread is a deep chestnut color but not burnt. Use a heatproof spatula to carefully lift the bread out of the pot and place it on a rack to cool thoroughly. If you're not sure if it's done, hold the bread with a tea towel and knock on the bottom--if it makes a hollow-sounding thump, it's done.


You'll be tempted, but don't slice or tear into the bread until it's completely cool, which usually takes about an hour.

CIABATTA

-3 cups or 400 grams bread flour
-2 teaspoons table salt
-1/4 teaspoon or 1 gram instant or other active dry yeast
-1 1/2 cups or 350 grams cool (55 to 65 degrees F) water
-additional flour for dusting
-optional: 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary


In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, salt and yeast. If you're using the rosemary, add it at this point. Add the water and mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled in size, 12 to 18 hours.


When the first rise is complete, generously dust a work surface with flour and scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the work surface. Dust the dough with flour and, with lightly floured hands, nudge the dough into roughly a 14 inch square. Fold the dough in half, then crosswise in half again, so you have a square, roughly 7 inches on each side.


Place the dough in a warm, draft-free spot, cover it with a tea towel, and let rise for 1 hour. The dough is ready when it's almost doubled and it holds the impression when poked with your finger. If not, let it rise another 15 minutes.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475 degrees F, with a rack in the center. On the rack should be a pizza stone and your 4-6 quart heavy-bottomed pot, without its lid.


Using pot holders, very carefully remove the hot pot from the oven. Using a dough cutter or sharp serrated knife, cut the dough in half. Shape each piece into a long flat loaf. Generously dust each loaf with flour.


Pick up 1 loaf with both hands, and quickly but gently stretch it to almost the length of the heavy pot, and place it on the stone. Using pot holders, carefully cover the loaf with the inverted pot and bake for 20 minutes.


Inverting the heavy pot is the trickiest part and must be done very carefully. I haven't yet burned myself while performing this maneuver, but I figure it's just a matter of time. So please be careful.


Uncover the loaf and place the pot on another rack in the oven in order to keep it hot for the next loaf. Continue to bake the first loaf for 10 to 20 minutes, checking the color of the loaf occasionally. It is done when the crust is a light chestnut color and it makes the hollow knocking sound.

Transfer the ciabatta to a rack to cool completely, and cook the second loaf the same way.

Daring Cook's Challenge: Pate and Baguettes

Blog-checking lines: Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
 

I have to admit that I wasn't too crazy about the prospect of making this Daring Cook's challenge. Don't get me wrong--I love liver, as I discussed in a previous post. It's just that I knew Nick wouldn't want to eat it and there was no way I was going to be able to eat a chicken liver terrine the size of a whole loaf of bread.

Luckily, the perfect opportunity to dispose of said loaf came along in the form of a family party. As I've said before, my family loves liver, so they were quite willing to dispatch a whole lot of liveriness, no matter that it looked and smelled like dog food. No, seriously. It did.

Happily, this little experiment tasted better than it smelled. I might even consider making it again, particularly because the leftovers (and I promise you that there will be leftovers) can be divided into smaller portions, frozen, and defrosted at any time. I might even take a less sucky picture of it.

So what would I not do next time? Forget the Cognac. As I was tasting for seasoning, I kept thinking "Hmmm...Something's missing, but I can't quite put my finger on what it might be." It wasn't until it had been taken out of the oven to cool that I realized my error. I think that the Cognac would have perfectly provided that missing Something, but that's just too bad.


You know what else I wouldn't do? Taste for seasoning and decide that it needs a bit more cloves. The finished product tasted overwhelmingly of cloves, although nobody else seemed to mind. Note to self: the seasonings are perfect. Do not mess with them.


Part of the challenge was to make baguettes to serve as the plate-to-mouth vehicle, although my brother dispensed with such niceties. I of course decided to make Jim Lahey's recipe, which I've previously discussed here, and a post with the recipe is in the works.


The result? Curiously underwhelming. Next time I'll probably stick with either his standard recipe or his ciabatta recipe. Nonetheless, like I've said before, this bread will still impress your friends and family and buy you some love.

Chicken Liver Terrine

Yields one 25 by 12,5 cm (10 by 5 inch) terrine or loaf pan

-1 tablespoon duck fat, or butter
-2 onions, coarsely chopped
-300g (11 oz) chicken livers, trimmed
-3 tablespoon brandy, or any other liqueur

-100g (3 1/2 oz, 1/2 cup) smoked bacon, diced
-300g (11 oz) boneless pork belly, minced
-200g (7 oz) ground pork-2 shallots, chopped
-1 teaspoon quatre-épices (or 1/4tsp each of ground pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger is close enough)
-2 eggs
-200 ml (7 fl oz, 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp) heavy cream
-2 fresh thyme sprigs, chopped
-Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Melt the fat or butter in a heavy frying pan over low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, until softened. Add the chicken livers and cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, until browned but still slightly pink on the inside.

Remove the pan from heat. Pour in the brandy, light a match and carefully ignite the alcohol to flambé. Wait for the flames to go out on their own, carefully tilting the pan to ensure even flavoring. When the mixture has cooled slightly, transfer to a food processor and cop until finely minced.

Put the minced pork belly and ground pork in the food processor, then add the onion-liver mixture and the chopped shallots, and pulse until you obtain a homogenous mixture – make sure not to reduce it to a slurry.

Transfer to a bowl, and gradually stir in the chopped bacon, quatre-épices, cream, eggs, and thyme. Season with salt and pepper, and mix well. Spoon the mixture into a terrine or loaf pan, and cover with the terrine lid or with aluminum foil.

Prepare a water bath: place the loaf pan in a larger, deep ovenproof dish (such as a brownie pan or a baking dish). Bring some water to a simmer and carefully pour it in the larger dish. The water should reach approximately halfway up the loaf pan.

Put the water bath and the loaf pan in the oven, and bake for 2 hours. Uncover and bake for another 30 minutes. The terrine should be cooked through, and you should be able to slice into it with a knife and leave a mark, but it shouldn’t be too dry. Refrigerate, as this pâté needs to be served cold. Unmold onto a serving platter, cut into slices, and serve with bread.

NOTE: This pâté freezes well. Divide it into manageable portions, wrap tightly in plastic film, put in a freezer Ziploc bag, and freeze. Defrost overnight in the fridge before eating.

By the way--this guy was for another meal, but I'm wondering if maybe some people out there have some answers for me.

I seasoned him with some salt and pepper and stuffed him with some herbs (summer savory, oregano, and epazote) and lemon, brushed him with some oil, and attempted to grill him.

The meat was properly cooked and ultimately edible, but my problem was the skin sticking to the grill grates. I oiled the fish, which was apparently not the solution. Does anyone know how to prevent this? My other problem is a recurring one--the fish tasted a bit like propane. I don't have this problem with meats, just fish. Again--why? Help!

Beef Stew, Rosemary Ciabatta

So I mentioned last time that I was feeling quite fortunate to not be working during the upcoming snow storm.

Did you know that in a state of emergency, healthcare workers are not allowed to go home? I've been a nurse for a few years, and I somehow didn't know that.

Luckily, I was not held captive on Friday morning, because the state of emergency was not called until the afternoon. Even though it wasn't snowing at that point, either.

I had initially planned to go to the store when I woke up on Friday afternoon, but luckily I realized that that was a stupid idea for several reasons.

(It was like a black and white world out there.)

Instead, I joined the masses standing outside the doors of Whole Foods at 8 a.m. on Friday morning. I have got to tell you that I have never seen anything like Whole Foods was that morning. I'm glad I had decided to go with simple, old school favorites, because searching out obscure ingredients would have been a bad idea. A Braise recipe will just have to happen another time.

So on Friday night, was had shrimp fajitas, and on Saturday night, we had our neighbor friends over and had old-school beef stew. It's been a while since I've made a beef stew-like dish that didn't include red wine, bacon, or other Frenchy accouterments, so it was kind of nice to have what Nick called good old American beef stew.

Not that there's anything wrong with Frenchy beef stews. I made Thomas Keller's Boeuf Bourguignon this past winter, and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. That recipe is hard core. It's expensive, time-consuming, and all-around intense, but it's worth it.

Sometimes simplicity is a beautiful thing, though, and this beef stew is child's play in comparison to the French Laundry recipe. I'll include the recipe, as it's one I made up myself many years ago. Not that that's an impressive feat, as it's a very simple recipe, but it's pretty darn good.

Leah's Beef Stew

-About 2 pounds of beef stew chunks
-1 large onion, diced
-3 celery stalks, diced
-About 6 medium carrots, preferably organic, diced
-Fresh rosemary
-Fresh parsley
-About 6 peppercorns
-1 can tomato paste, preferable Miur Glenn
-About 8 cups organic beef stock
-2 largish red potatoes, cubed
-One largish white potato, peeled if it's a Russet, left unpeeled if it has soft skin, cubed

Optional but yummy: Rosemary bread for serving

If the beef pieces are on the large side, trim them so that they're about 1 inch square, and thoroughly dry them, as the beef will not brown well if it is wet.

Salt and pepper the beef, and over medium-high heat, heat about a tablespoon of oil in a dutch oven until it shimmers. Working in batches, brown the beef cubes. If they are overcrowded, they will steam rather than brown. You might even need to do 3 batches, so just add more oil as needed.

Remove the beef cubes to a paper towel-lined plate or baking sheet.

Add the onion, carrots, and celery to the dutch oven, as well as more oil if necessary. The quantities above are approximate, as vegetables vary greatly in size. Basically, though, you should have 2 parts onion, one part celery, and one part carrot, which makes a miropoix. I like to go a little heavy on the carrots, actually, but that's just me.

Make a bouquet garni by tying up about 3 sprigs of rosemary with about 3 sprigs of parsley and a few peppercorns in a piece of cheesecloth. Add salt, and saute the vegetables and the bouquet garni until the vegetables are soft; they do not need to take on color, so medium heat should work.

When the vegetables are soft, add the can of tomato paste and cook for another minute or two. I suggest using Muir Glenn, because Cook's Illustrated did a taste test, and Muir Glenn was the winner.

Remove the veggies to a bowl. Add the beef back to the pot, add the beef stock and the bouquet garni, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, partially cover and reduce to a fast simmer and simmer for about an hour.

At this point, add the vegetables and simmer for at least 2 more hours, still partially covered. Add more finely chopped rosemary if necessary.

This might seem like way too long to cook a beef stew, and it probably is, but Nick and I like it when the stew has been cooked for so long its components are just demolished and the broth is very thick. We like it when the potatoes are disintegrating, and the beef cubes are falling apart into little stringy bits, and that takes at least 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

You pretty much can't overcook this stew. Adjust to taste with salt and lots of pepper. We like our stew to be very peppery, and very heavy on the rosemary.

Speaking of rosemary, I noted above that this stew is delicious when served with rosemary bread. We used to buy the rosemary sourdough bread from Whole Foods, but I didn't think that bread bought on Friday was going to be much good on Saturday, and I certainly wasn't going to be making a trip to the store on Saturday.

In case you don't live in the Baltimore/DC area, this is why I wasn't going anywhere on Saturday:


So I decided to make Jim Lahey's ciabatta bread with some added rosemary. If you haven't heard of Jim Lahey's no knead bread technique, you should definitely check out his cookbook. A few years ago, he created a sensation with this breadmaking technique, and it was profiled by the New York Times.

If you don't feel like checking out the book, the Times printed a version of his basic recipe here. Cook's Illustrated also came up with a bread that uses this technique, so you might be able to find that version.

(Finally, the sun came out, and there was color!)

Basically, you create a very wet bread dough with a very small amount of yeast. Jim Lahey explains the science behind this dough in his book:

"The long, slow rise brings the gluten molecules into side-by-side alignment, to maximize their opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this because the gluten molecules are more mobile when there is a sufficient quantity of water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the dough was stiff."

If you ever make this dough, it will seem totally wrong at first, but don't add more flour, just go with it.



This bread is insanely easy to make; it just requires that you plan ahead in order to accommodate the 18-24 hour rise. I've made his standard recipe, as well as the wheat recipe, so I wanted to try the ciabatta.

Speaking of ciabatta, if you ever find yourself at Pazo in Batimore, you should get their ciabatta.

So I made the dough by just dumping the ingredients together, including about 2 teaspoons of rosemary, and let the dough rise for about 22 hours.

Speaking of chopping rosemary, I got bored with using the chef's knife, so I decided to try the coffee grinder. It worked beautifully, and I felt like a genius. It wasn't so easy to clean, though, so we'll see how I feel later when I'm drinking rosemary-scented coffee. Gross.
The dough then got pushed around a little bit and underwent a secondary rise for about an hour.

Jim Lahey then directs you to put half of the dough on a preheated pizza stone and cover it with a preheated clay baker. Well, I don't have a clay baker, and because they sound highly breakable, I don't intend to get one.
Instead, I inverted the dutch oven to cover the bread on the pizza stone. This was potentially a very bad idea, as dutch ovens are quite heavy. The clay bakers are heavy too, though, and I figured that the dutch oven at least has big handles.

Well, I managed to cook two separate loaves of bread without inflicting a serious injury upon myself. And the bread was awesome.

Jim Lahey sounds a little cocky when he claims that his bread is better than what you'll find in most stores, but it's true. I could have eaten all of that bread myself, especially with some cheese and Prosecco.

Did you know that sparkling wine is really good with beef stew? I wouldn't have guessed, but it was great. We've all been drinking Prosecco and Cava before meals for a while now, and it's recently gotten trendy. I swear we were doing it first, though.


What a lovely snow day.