Cinnamon Rolls

Unfortunately, the blog that this came from (What Geeks Eat) is down! And I didn't write the recipe down anywhere...hopefully it'll be back up soon.

Cardamom Bread

I might christen this carda-yum bread! It's easy and delicious and it makes the kitchen both warm and wonderful-smelling! (All of these things are pluses.)

This recipe comes from the Razor Family Farms blog-- http://razorfamilyfarms.com/cooking/ and has only slight alterations, but I'll repost it anyways...

Cardamom Bread (ala http://razorfamilyfarms.com/cooking/cardamom-bread-sweet-and-rustic/)

4 c. AP flour

1/2 T. cardamom

1 1/2 T. yeast

1 1/4 c. warm milk (soy or dairy) or water or some combination-- I usually use 3/4 c. soymilk and 1/2 c. water

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. oil

1 shy t. salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

Mix flour and cardamom in a large bowl (of your mixer, if you'd like). Dissolve sugar and then yeast in warm liquid. Pour into dry stuff and mix until doughy. Add oil and mix until doughy again (and oily--it won't all absorb yet). Cover with a plate and let rest for 20 minutes.

Thoroughly knead in the salt (I use my hands, but you could use the dough hook), and extra flour as needed to achieve the right consistency. (Like most dough, it should feel like an earlobe-- warm and elastic and soft.) Oil a baking sheet. Divide dough into thirds and place far apart on the baking sheet. Cover with a damp tea towel and let rise for 30-45 minutes, or until almost doubled in bulk. (This will take many hours if your house is chilly-- try preheating the oven for just 30 seconds and letting it rise there, with the oven light on-- ideal rising temperature is around 90 degrees F.)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Roll each dough lump into a long snake and braid together. Pinch the ends together firmly and fold them under.

Brush the braid with beaten egg and bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Sometimes I make two smaller braided loaves and they only take about 20 minutes. Let it rest for at least 15 minutes before you cut into it (it's torturous) for best texture later on. Enjoy!

The picture doesn't really do it justice...

Naan

As a late addition to the channa masala meal, I decided to make naan. With the help of the food blog search Firefox addon, I found two promising recipes: http://www.andreasrecipes.com/2007/01/11/naan-fluffy-style/ from a nice lady named Andrea, and this one http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2008/05/naan-recipe-if-you-can-make-pancakes.html from a nice lady named Stef. In the end I used Andrea's ingredients (halved) and Stef's cooking method. It worked, I suppose. It's super tasty, to be sure, but I'm not sure if it tastes of naan. Unfortunately the channa masala leftovers had already been put away, so I didn't taste the two together, but I'll report back after lunch tomorrow.

ingredients:
about 1 1/2 cups AP flour (start with 1 1/4 c. and increase as needed)
1/4 t. salt
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. sugar
1 t. yeast
1 small egg
1/4 c. plain yogurt
1/4 c. milk (Andrea's recipe called for skim milk, but all we had was 2%, it seemed to work fine)
1-2 t. canola oil

doings:
Stir together dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and wet ingredients in a small bowl (or measuring cup). Add wet to dry, stirring to combine. Add more flour as needed until you reach dough. Knead for a few minutes-- it's not a lot of dough so you can just do it in the bowl or your floured hands, no board required. Lightly oil the bowl, plop the dough into it, swirl it around and flip it to cover it with oil on all sides. Cover with a damp towel, and let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled. (In this cold and rainy weather I put it in the oven with just the light on.) When risen, lightly knead/punch down. Heat a lightly oiled cast iron skillet to medium. Pull off golfball-sized lumps of dough and flatten/stretch it between your hands as thin as you can get it-- it'll shrink and plump up as soon as you let go, like pizza dough. Plop (that word is so perfect for this dough!) the stretched bits into the skillet. Let them fry for 1-2 minutes on each side, or until they reach desired brown-ness. Eat.

Stew and Soda Bread

Happy belated St. Patrick's Day! I made the soda bread from an Epicurious recipe (where else?), link at the bottom. And stew is Irish, right? I made this up as I went along, threw it all in the Crock Pot, and it was delicious! There's nothing like a wonderful meal that cooked all day while you're in class. Perhaps we'll move on soon from winter comfort foods to spring foods, but for now I'm still enjoying casseroles and stew! (Besides, who wants to eat stew in August when it's 95? Not I.)

Irish-inspired Beef Stew
1/2 lb ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
dash of olive oil

2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 large button mushrooms, chopped
3 cloves garlic, whole or halved
2 dashes of olive oil (and/or bacon grease and/or butter)

4 red-skinned potatoes, chopped
2 or 3 bay leaves
a few heavy pinches of dried thyme
black pepper to taste
enough water to barely cover

2 forkfuls AP flour

Brown the first two ingredients together, add to Crock Pot. Brown next group of ingredients, add to Crock Pot. Add everything else except the flour, and cook until potatoes are soft-- a few hours. A few minutes before serving, ladle out some of the liquid into a cup, mix in the flour until no lumps remain, and stir the flour mixture back into the stew. Allow to cook for 5 minutes more, or until stew has thickened. Serve with Brown Butter Soda Bread and a good stout (more details on the beer end soon, I think).

(Blogger's being weird with the pictures today, I don't know why this one is rotated...)

The Bastard Baguette

So with a little help from Epicurious, I made my favorite-savory-bread-yet today. (Favorite sweet bread is cardamom; I'm sure I'll make that again soon too.) It was easy and quick in actual prep time (a total of 2 hours rising time, which isn't too bad either). So, without further ado:

Epicurious' One-a-day Baguette, plus or minus a bit:

• 1 heaping teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
• 2 teaspoons salt

In a large bowl sprinkle yeast and sugar over warm water and let stand until foamy. Stir in 2 cups flour, then salt and remaining flour to form a stiff dough. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes, adding flour as needed to keep from sticking. Oil a large bowl, roll the dough around in it to coat, and cover with a damp cloth. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 90 minutes.

Punch down dough and form into two long slender loaves, about 15 inches long each. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet and let rise again, this time for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 475 F and fill a pan on the lowest oven rack with boiling water. The steam from the pan will help the bread develop the characteristic crunchy crust.

Once risen, make 3 or 4 diagonal slashes on loaves with a sharp knife and place on upper or middle oven rack, above the water. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Transfer to a cooling rack. Do not cut for at least 10 minutes.

These loaves turned out amazingly. Perfectly golden brown, wonderful soft and fluffy interior with a crunchy crispy baguette crust. Simply heavenly. Okay, that's enough text, time for more pictures!

Just out of the oven...



And another close-up because I just can't resist...

Technicality note: because my loaves were not super-long and skinny they are actually more of bâtards, which are wider than baguettes. (Bâtard is French for bastard or hybrid.) Random historical linguistics factoid: The circumflex (e.g. â) in French orthography denotes that in an earlier incarnation of French spelling there was an s following that letter.