Easy Bread Recipe

I suck at baking bread.  I can bake a lot of things, but bread has alluded me.... until now.  I found this recipe from Chef Michael Smith.  I love that his "recipe" for cooking is "cooking without a recipe".  His show gives you ideas on how to make meals from what you have, and to be fearless. I love trying new combinations of flavours. (Aside from the fact that I now know my husband DOES NOT like the flavour of cumin!!!)

Anyways, his bread recipe is soooooo easy to follow. The flavour of the bread is great to.  I think because it has so much time for the yeast to work, the flavour is developed.  He has a few recipes that follow the same method.  So far I've only done this one.  It is for a large loaf.

Step One: Mix together

4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon dry yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/4 cups warm water



Bread ingredients



Step Two:

Mix just until incorporated.  It will be a wet dough

Wet dough

 Step Three:

Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise in a warm place for 18 hours.

I've left it as short as 9 and as long as 24 hours.... they worked out just the same.

Cover and let rise

 After 18 hours, this is how it looks.  Really moist and more than doubled in size.

Doubled dough

 Step Four:

Knock the dough down

Freshly punched dough!!!

 Step Five:

Form into a baking pan. I use my Pampered Chef loaf pan... it's great.

Dough into loaf pan

 Step Six:

Let dough rise again for 2-3 hours.  I cover it, but give it lots of room to expand otherwise it will stick to the wrap.

After two hours of rising

 Step Seven:

 Bake for 45 minutes in a  preheated oven (425 degrees)

Mmmmm... yummy loaf!

This recipe may sound time consuming because it is spread over such a long period of time, but it's really quite easy.  If you forget about it, it doesn't matter.  You can just knock in down.  From my experience, the longer you leave it, the more complex the flavour is. 

I may try mixing cheese in with it one time, or even cracked black pepper.  I think it'd be super.

Cheers,
Elisa

A black and white army!

Penguin #1

The other day I visited my nephews when "A" asked me to make some penguins with him.  Aren't they adorable... and tasty too!

Small penguin army

A penguin in the making

 You take an olive and cut out a section.  Fill the center with cream cheese.  A second olive is needed for the head.  You cut a little slit and add the beak (see below) to it. 

Feet and a beak

Getting ready for assembly

 A long toothpick throught the top, and voila.... a Penguin! It didn't take long, and we had our own little army.  Too bad it didn't take very long to 'win the battle' and defeat that army.  They were yummy!





Ready to conquer the world!



Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends out there.  Have a great day.

Cheers from Snowy Peachland.....

-e

Canadian Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving here in Canada.  It's nice to be able to take a day to remember what you love about life, and what you are most thankful for. 

This weekend I spent my free time baking pies.  I made 2 pumpkin pies, 2 apple pies and a lemon meringue pie.  Yummy! (and oops... I didn't take any pictures of them!).

I did take pics of the caramel apples I made.  Here's how it looked.

You take a bunch of apples and wash them:

You mix the sugar, milk and package and boil.

You keep boiling until it reaches 120 degrees (softball stage).  This took a lot longer than I expected.

You burn your fingers a few times while dipping into the HOT caramel.  Quickly you twirl them in your selected  candies.  Place them in the fridge to cool and watch the toppings slide to the bottom. Then, you wonder what went wrong while you hold your burnt finger under cold water! 

They were yummy, even if they didn't look like the ones from the store.  If I was to do this again, I'd cook the caramel a little more, almost to the hard ball stage.  It was just too gooey.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian style!

-e