DB Sad Sourdough

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

Jessica of My Recipe Project gave us the task of making sourdough bread.  I really wanted to try a gluten free sourdough loaf but a few failed attempts and a load of Christmas projects to finish pushed it from my mind.  So all I have to offer is a sad picture of one of my moldy starters.  I'd love if anyone could help me figure out why my rice flour starters got moldy and what I should do about it.  Should I vinegar clean the bowl, boil the water first, get a different batch of rice flour?  Oh well, maybe some other time I'll feel up to trying again.  For those interested, the recipes can be found at our host Jessica's site, My Recipe Project, or on this PDF.

My mold-spotted rice sourdough starter

DB Croissants (done dairy and gluten free)

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Well, just because you "can" make gluten-free/dairy-free croissant-like things doesn't mean you "should".  Some part of me feels good about giving it a go despite my limitations but the reality is that these weren't any better than Pillsbury Crescent Rolls from the tube and took *considerably* more time to make.  Dairy-free croissants, sure-I'd make 'em.  Gluten-free ones with real butter and cream, most definitely!!, but another attempt at making something croissant like without both gluten and dairy is not in my future.  The kids did eat them so it wasn't a loss on that front.  But again, these just aren't good enough and nothing I can think of could change that.  Time to make some pot roast instead!

Links:
-The given recipe for Julia Child's croissants is available here. This recipe comes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two.
-I attempted the recipe for Gluten Free Croissants from Blog Critic author Bobbie Noto.  I replaced the heavy cream and milk with almond milk and the butter with Spectrum butter flavored shortening plus 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  You can see more recipes at Bobbie's Baking Blog, look for the Vols-au-Vent recipe for a gluten free puff pastry recipe. 
-More Daring Baker-ness can be found on the blogroll. 

In case you desire a tortuously long process that produces Doughboy results, here are pictures of the "butter" fold to help you along.  First mold your butter opposite your dough square.

Then fold in each triangular flap, overlapping slightly

For my more successful ventures this month, Alex loves this Minecraft Creeper plushy we made together.

DB Mets la main à la pâte (meringue coffecake, done gluten-free)

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake. 

For this month's Daring Baker challenge we were given a recipe for a meringue coffee cake.  Ugh--I thought, this will be my first non-mix attempt at a gluten-free yeasted bread and it has to rolled, formed into a ring and filled with meringue!!  Seeing that I really could live the rest of my life without ever having another taste of coffee cake I should have known better and just made a wheat flour version and given it away.  But then that wouldn't be "daring" enough would it?

I began researching gluten-free brioche dough online.  I really wanted to try a coconut flour version but my searches found a very popular gluten-free brioche recipe from Jeff Hertzberg MD and Zoe Francois, of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day fame.  I own that book and loved playing with the recipes in it (all with wheat flour) but I hadn't tried any recipes from their follow up book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  Apparently there is a gluten-free section that had just the recipe I was looking for and it was available online.

The recipe online is already dairy-free, which was a plus, but I think I was tackling too big of a project to try a full sized coffee cake on my first try.  The dough was sticky and lacking the familiar structure that gluten provides.  I managed to wrangle it into a ring-like blob with the meringue and filling sorta sandwiched inside but there wasn't any need to score the dough because it was splitting apart everywhere!  It browned nicely in the oven but only barely rose and remained quite dense.

In the end I think the chocolate saved this from being a complete disaster.  Yeasty dough and chocolate are hard to resist, even with a pitiful shape and without the flavor of wheat flour.  It was super sweet to me and I'm not sure how I would easily alter the recipe to remedy that.  If I were going to try this again I would make individual cinnamon roll style buns and not try to form a large ring.  I don't really think I like the meringue part and because it adds a lot of sweetness I would probably not use it again.  Chocolate chips in my cinnamon rolls might be a new fad though.

I had a third of the dough left over and fermented it further in the fridge.  After a few days I baked it plain in a mini loaf pan with only a simple egg wash on top.  I thought it was really delicious but Alex thought there was a winy taste, not the sour yeasty flavor he wanted, and he didn't like it.  I should be ashamed to say I threw the half a mini loaf out for the birds so I wouldn't be tempted by it but right now I'm down a little over five pounds and quite happy about it. 

Links:
-For my dough, I made the gluten-free brioche found on Wasabimon!. The recipe is from the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg MD and Zoe Francois.  For my filling, I used Enjoy Life chocolate chips, the meringue and cinnamon sugar but I left out the nuts.  I made the 2 egg sized batch and then used two thirds of the dough for my ring.  For the filling amounts I used only one egg white and scaled down the chocolate and cinnamon sugar to match.
-To see what this cake was supposed to look like and find the original recipe take a look at the Chocolate Meringue Coffee Cake recipe on the blogs of our hosts, Ria's Collection and Life's a Feast.
-When I get over my baking trama, I want to try making this Gluten-free Sourdough Boule for Alex.  
-To see a dairy-free baker who truly enjoyed this month's challenge visit The Crafts of Mommyhood.  She made 5 different flavors!!
-Visit the Daring Kitchen to join up and do some of your own daring baking.  And don't forget to look at the Daring Baker Blogroll for the other delicious baked goods made this month.  I'm betting 90% are way better looking than my blob. 

A slice of my gluten-free chocolate meringue coffee cake

DB Christmas Stollen

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

Though I do appreciate all yeasted goodies I've never been a big fan of Christmas breads like stollen and panetone.  They are often dry and flavorless and I much prefer the sticky goodness of the much maligned fruitcake, even the brick like kind.  But this year I fully embraced the challenge and fell in love with stollen.

I followed Penny's recipe replacing the butter with Earth Balance tub margarine.  For the fruit I made my own candied tangerine peel with cognac soaked currants and dried cranberries.  I used the spice combination from the Martha Stewart recipe because I have a recent obsession with mace, an extremely underused spice.   To avoid having on giant stollen wreath in the house to tempt me, I split my recipe into three loaves.  Two I froze and later shared one each with my parents and in laws and one I kept to enjoy.

It was fragrant, fruity, yeasty and wonderful and a fitting send off because in our household we're trying out being wheat free.  I made almost all of our Christmas cookies this year wheat free because my husband feels better not eating it.  And I'm personally committing to all of January completely wheat and gluten free to jumpstart my diet and see if I feel better eating that way.  Wish me luck because I know I'll be daydreaming about yeasty deliciousness like this stollen.

Links:
- Here is the complete stollen recipe which can also be found on our host Penny's blog, Sweet Sadie's Baking
-Along with advice from her German friend who bakes Stollen every year, Penny used the information in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker’s Apprentice and this Martha Stewart recipe for a stollen wreath
-Visit the Daring Kitchen and see more festive breads made this month by browsing the Daring Baker Blogroll.

Slices of stollen

Penny and Fritz with the snow drift after the big snow on December 12th, I love birthday snow!

The ducks still wander around in the snow, but thankfully we've been able to convince them that their nice heated house is the best place to spend the night.

The best Christmas photo I could get this year

A dreamy Christmas Fritz

He like the rest of us is a little sad this Christmas because our oldest dog Roxy unexpectantly passed away earlier this month. We all miss her very much.

Five Spice and Michigan Plum Short Ribs

This week I attempted to connect a few food loving spirits in the area by hosting a food blogger soiree.  For my contribution, I chose to make a batch of short ribs with meat from my quarter steer from Gallagher's Centennial Farm braised with plums from Greenrock Farm and seasoned with Chinese five spice powder.

I had hoped to serve the short ribs as little sliders but the kids found my mini challah buns irresistible and the super muggy weather wilted the formerly crispy fried shallots.  The ribs were still good picked at with fingers and the raucous children seemed to need the carbs.  

Five Spice and Plum Braised Short Ribs
Thanks to Tom Colicchio for his Braised Short Rib recipe which I have used several times and served as inspiration.
Serves 4-6

~3-4 pounds bone-in, flanken cut beef short ribs
2 heaping teaspoons Chinese five spice powder
1 cup diced sweet onion, 1/2 large
2 cups pitted, quartered red plums, ~9 plums
1 teaspoon finely diced fresh ginger root
2 cups rosé wine, because this was in my fridge
salt and pepper

-Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
-Liberally salt and pepper the ribs and then pat on the five spice powder, set aside.
-Heat an enameled cast iron Dutch oven over medium high until hot.  Brown the ribs on all sides and then remove from the pot to a rimmed plate or bowl.
-Pour off all but 1 teaspoon of the rendered fat and add the diced onion.  Season with salt and pepper and cook until the onion is translucent.
-Add in the wine, plums and ginger.  Scape the pot to deglaze with the wine and plum juices.
-Add the ribs back to the pot along with any leaked juices.  Add enough water (or chicken stock) to almost cover the ribs.  Bring to a boil.
-Cover and cook in the lower third of the preheated oven for 1 1/2 hours.
-Remove the cover and cook for an additional 45 minutes to 1 hour, turning the ribs at once or twice.  The braising liquid should be reduced by half and the ribs should be tender but not falling apart.
-Remove the ribs from the pot and separate them from their bones.  Trim away any large pieces of fat and then set the trimmed ribs in a shallow non reactive dish, like a glass brownie pan.
-Skim as much fat as possible from the reduced liquid and then pour the skimmed sauce over the ribs.  Cover with a glass lid, waxed paper or plastic wrap, not alluminum foil, it will react with the acid in the food!  Cool to room temperature and then refrigerate.  Keep in the fridge AT LEAST overnight, ideally for a day or two.
-When you are ready to serve, scrape off any large amounts of solidified fat from the sauce and remove the ribs.  Slice the ribs into 1/2 inch thick slices and lay out on a boiler pan.  Spread a little sauce on each slice and then broil until hot and glazed. Serve hot.
-Resist the urge to lick the pan until your guests have left.

And as for the other food...

Shayne of fruitcake or nuts brought red pepper dip and 

boiled potatoes topped with radishes, sour cream, herbs and pickled herring

Local Stone House bread, fromage blanc from Leelanau Cheese with her own herbed strawberry balsamic jam and strawberry syrup for sodas came from Angela of Notes from a Country Girl Living in the City

Feta and bean dips made by Laura of Laura's Recipe Collection

More Links:
-The buns were made with King Arthur Flour Classic Challah dough
-I also made 101 Cookbooks' Grilled Fava Beans with local favas.  They were ok but maybe overcooked or maybe too mature favas.  The insides were mushier than I expected.

I love that Michigan plum season has started!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Green beer is off the menu for me today but I did enjoy a homemade dairy-free shamrock shake with my son Alex today. It's been many, many years since I've had the authentic Mikki D version but these tasted like the ones from my memory. We made them using Temptation home vegan 'Ice Cream' mix (with vanilla extract, peppermint extract and green food color) and Alex had the brilliant idea to add the chocolate chips.
Alex wasn't interested in this but I thought it was the best soda bread I've ever had and it was dairy-free as well. I used the recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches for Irish Soda Bread with Fennel and Cinnamon. Vanilla So Delicious Coconut milk yogurt, soy milk and Earth Balance margarine replaced the dairy ingredients. I then swapped in dried cherries for the raisins and cranberries since I do live in Traverse City now.

We've been soaking up all the sun, chasing Fritz the puppy around and it's 8:30pm and the sun hasn't completely set. Spring is on the way!

*Check out more St Patrick's day food at the parade at The Daily Spud.

Beer Bread Experiments and some Bean Salad

I've been baking a lot of bread lately. There have been plenty of baguettes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, countless variations on banana bread, applesauce bread with nut milk pulp and quite a bit of beer bread. I was curious about how much the quality of the beer will effect the quality of the beer bread, so I started to play around. A recipe that simply calls for 12 ounces of beer leaves a lot of interpretation to the reader. Should I just go get a Bud Lite or is it worth it to use better beer? For the sake of experimentation, my latest beer breads have been made using some microbrews my parents brought back for me from Pittsburgh and the quality and flavor of the beer does make a big difference. I was particularly inspired by the microbrew called Stoudt's Fat Dog, an Imperial Oatmeal Stout. I love the dog on the label. It looks just like my father-in-law's black lab Max, who is quite the emperor of their house. ("Imperial" stout: "emperor"--get it?) I'm usually not a huge stout fan but I enjoyed my sampling--at 8am when I was making the bread, which felt naughty but I only had a taste! It had the more meal than drink appeal of good stout and a sweet molasses flavor that seemed perfect for bread.

I've been using a beer bread recipe I found on the site Zesty Cook. I like that it uses half whole wheat flour and the brown sugar in the dough adds just enough sweetness. The best part is the melted butter (Earth Balance margarine for us) that you pour over the top of the dough before baking. It makes the best tasting crunchy crust! I make my beer loaves in mini loaf pans and that gives you even more crust to savor. The day of my Fat Dog bread experiment I also made a bean salad. Inspired by a mock tuna salad recipe from The Daily Spud, I made some changes according to what was in my kitchen. I swapped cannellini beans for chickpeas, kale for parsley, home dried tomatoes for fresh, and some mashed avocado instead of mayonnaise. Though it deviated greatly from the original intent of mimicking tuna salad, it was a delicious, nutrient dense cross between bean dip and guacamole. And it was great on the beer bread! I think it would work equally well on other hearty breads, pita or just eaten with corn chips.

Here's is a link to the Beer Bread recipe from Zesty Cook. For the Fat Dog stout bread, I replaced a half cup of the all-purpose flour with oat flour, in honor of the oatmeal that went into the stout. My flour measurements were 1 1/2 cup whole wheat, 1 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup oat flour. It made the bread a little softer inside but didn't change the taste much. The real change in taste came from the beer. I plan to keep playing with other brews and maybe other beer bread recipes to see what I like best. I'd love to hear about your adventures in beer bread. What beers have you tried? Any favorite recipes for the beer bread? If you'd like to try it, here's my bastardized (but yummy) bean salad that I think is great on beer bread.

Bean Salad/Dip/Spread
Inspired by Mock Tuna Salad recipe on The Daily Spud who got the recipe idea from The Nomadic Gourmet, there is nothing like a viral recipe.
Makes ~2 cups

2 sundried tomatoes (I used home dried tomatoes from this summer)
2 large leaves of kale
1 (15 oz) can of cannellini beans (For canned beans I buy Eden Foods organic beans, they're a Michigan company)
1/4 cup diced onion
1 stalk celery, diced
juice from 1 lemon
1/2 small avocado, mashed
salt and cayenne pepper to taste

-Soak the dried tomatoes in just enough hot water to cover them for 5-10 minutes. Drain and dice.
-Wash the kale, remove and discard the stem and chop the leaves.
-Drain and rinse the beans. Place them in a bowl and mash a least half of them.
-Add the rest of the ingredients, stir and taste for seasoning. Add more salt and/or cayenne pepper to taste.
-Serve on bread or with chips.

Crunchy crusted beer bread made with Fat Dog StoutStoudt's Fat Dog Imperial Oatmeal Stout, so you can see the great label.

*I have one last site recommendation. If you are looking for a new banana bread recipe try this site. The number of different recipes seems endless and I'm addicted to watching the ingredient cloud on the side bar spin. It's like playing banana bread roulette!

I'm adding this to Bookmarked Recipes, an event started by Ruth of Ruth's Kitchen's Experiments. Visit the new Bookmarked Recipes site for the roundup of other bookmarked and tested recipes.

Almond Applesauce Bread

I was lucky enough to win a prize from this year's Menu For Hope and it arrived this past week. The prize I won came from Heidi Robb of Life in Recipes. It included an almond milk making kit, 2 beautiful hand-thrown mugs and an autographed menu from Michael Symon. I've been wanting to make my own nut milk for awhile, so I was excited to try my kit immediately. For my first batch of milk I followed Heidi's recipe. It was so much more flavorful than the boxed and a real treat. The way I liked it best was in my morning hot cereal. I kept the almond pulp as well and wanted to find a way to use it up. Through the convoluted pathways of my brain, an applesauce quick bread was born.

I've been trying to use up the remaining summer stores in our freezer. I had a couple of packages of homemade applesauce from my son Alex's enthusiastic apple picking this past fall. No one in our house will eat applesauce straight up except for me so I needed to repurpose it. In browsing the recent Daring Baker entries I visited a site with a parsnip cake sweetened with dates. Mix together those ideas in my head and out came an applesauce bread with almond milk pulp, sweetened with dates. Wonderfully the experiment was successful! Though the sweetness is much more subtle compared to the often cake-like banana breads it was just sweet enough for me. It also was moist and the almond pulp gave it a little chewiness. The bread was a big hit with my husband as well. I tried the recipe again with pre-ground almond meal and it works well but you do lose the fiber from the almond peels that are included in the milk pulp. I hope to keep making weekly batches of almond milk and more variations on this bread. Thanks Heidi!

More...
Creamy Nut Milk recipe from Life in Recipes
I love Bob's Red Mill High Fiber Hot Cereal. It was fantastic made with homemade almond milk!
My next batch of almond milk will be date sweetened per a recent Raw Comfort Foods Class I attended.

Almond Applesauce Bread
This is subtly sweet and very flavorful. It was developed as a way to use up the pulp leftover from making almond milk but works just as well with other ground almonds or almond meal.
Makes 1 (8-inch x 4-inch) loaf

4 oz (~2/3 cup) pitted dates
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
2 eggs
1 cup almond meal (or wrung out pulp from making almond milk)

-Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
-Soak the dates in warm water for at least 10 minutes.
-Sift (or whisk) together the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and allspice. Set aside.
-Place the applesauce and the dates (with the extra soaking water strained off) in the bowl of a food processor and process until the dates are chopped and evenly distributed. *You could also try doing this step in a blender and then mixing the rest of the recipe by hand but I used the food processor to make fewer dirty dishes.
-Add the margarine and process until combined. Add the eggs and again process until combined. Add the almond meal or almond milk pulp and pulse to combine.
-Add the flour mixture to the food processor in three stages, pulse 1-2 times after each addition. Then pulse until all the flour is combined with the wet ingredients.
-Coat a 8"x4" loaf pan with spray oil and spoon the batter evenly into the pan.
-Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the loaf comes out clean.
-Cool for 5 minutes and then remove the loaf from the pan and cool thoroughly on a rack before slicing.

These recipes were helpful/inspirational:
Applesauce Nut Bread from Baking Bites
Parsnip, Date & Banana Cake (vegan and gluten-free) from Creative Recipes for Wandering Minds

Isn't this mug fantastic!! See more beautiful pottery at Ellen Shankin Pottery.
(And yes, that's homemade almond milk in the mug.)Bonus Abbie shot

Pagach (Slovak Cabbage Bread)

In between rounds of Sushi Go Round (Thanks Allergy Mom! It's my new game addiction) I found myself in the mood for some comfort food. My cravings turned to something I've wanted to make for awhile, pagach. Pagach is Slovak bread filled with cabbage or sometimes potatoes. I always loved it slathered in butter when my mom and grandma Helen would make it. I had my parents dig out the recipe from my grandmother's church cookbook a while back only to find out that the recipe calls for ten cups of flour!! My dad also found this recipe online for a smaller batch and with a few alterations I made my first batch on my own. I was happy with the result. Though my batch was a tad thinner it could have easily passed for one made by my mom or grandma. Here's what I did:

Pagach (Slovak Cabbage Bread)
Makes 2 large flat breads (approximately 11x14 inches)
Adapted from GoToCentralEurope.com and The Sacred Heart League Cookbook from Livonia, Michigan.

Dough:
3 1/2 cups flour (I used white spelt, but I plan on using all-purpose next time)
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 pkg) dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon of sugar
2/3 cup scalded milk, cooled to lukewarm (I used warmed soy milk)
1 egg
1/3 butter, melted (I used Earth Balance margarine)

Filling:
1 medium to large head of cabbage, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
4-6 tablespoons of butter (again EB for me*)
salt and pepper
*Optional: 1/4 teaspoon of granulated garlic (I found that when I'm using Earth Balance instead of margarine a tiny bit of dry garlic makes cooked cabbage taste more like it was cooked in butter. I have no idea why this works but I do it all the time.)

Additional butter (or EB)

-Stir the yeast in the water and a pinch of sugar and let sit for a few minutes to proof.
-Add flour and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook and stir together to distribute.
-Beat the egg into the warm milk along with the melted butter and remaining sugar. Add the wet ingredients to the flour and salt and mix until a smooth dough forms.
-Place the dough in a oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rest until doubled.
-When doubled, punch the dough and give it a few quick kneads before recovering and allowing it to double again.
-Make the cabbage filling by cooking down the cabbage, onion and butter (garlic powder optional) with salt and pepper to taste. You want the cabbage and onion to get soft and golden brown. I cook it over medium-low heat and stir frequently. Allow it to cool.
-When the dough has doubled a second time divide it into quarters. Take one quarter and roll it out on parchment with a little flour until it is ~1/2 inch thick. Spread half of the cabbage mixture on top. Roll out a second quarter to match and lay it on top of the cabbage. Pinch the edges closed, cover with a damp cloth and allow it to rest for half an hour. Repeat with the remaining quarters of dough.
-Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
-Roll out the sandwiched dough and cabbage as thin as you like (1/2 to 3/4 inch.) Brush with butter (or EB) and prick the top with a fork. Transfer the dough onto a baking sheet and bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown on top. Cut into pieces and serve with more butter (or EB.)
-Realize that cabbage and starch is a wonderfully comforting thing.

These places have a potato filling if you are interested in trying it that way:
GoToCentralEurope.com
The Joy of Soup: Pagach

I'm adding this to Yeastspotting which is a wonderful weekly collection of recipes that use yeast. My collection of to-do bread, cracker, and other recipes always increases with each roundup.

DB Dairy-free Pizza Two Ways

I've made quite a lot of homemade pizza. Originally I started doing it because it's fun and then it became a necessity with Alex's dairy allergy. With all our homemade pizza we've had a chance to try a few dairy-free cheeses over the years. There are winners like Chreese and losers like Tofutti slices (which are even more disgusting than the dairy version of plastic cheese.) We've settled on Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella as our favorite pizza "cheese". The taste is mild and it melts nicely. But I also discovered that for me cheese can be completely replaced with caramelized onions. When I found out that October's Daring Baker challenge was pizza I knew I had to have both a fake cheese and a caramelized onion version of dairy-free pizza.

As things went, I ended up waiting til the last minute to do the challenge. I added a little whole wheat flour to the dough (1/3 of the flour by weight) but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. My procrastination forced me to raid the fridge for pizza toppings. I made Alex a simple tomato sauce and fake mozzarella pizza. For my pizza I decided to use up some cooked pumpkin from the fridge. I seasoned the mashed, roasted pumpkin with a little salt, olive oil and cayenne pepper. Then I used it in place of sauce with caramelized onions, toasted pine nuts and fresh thyme. The sweetness of the onions and pumpkin were wonderful together and the pine nuts gave texture and richness.

Pumpkin, caramelized onion and pine nut pizza and a Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella pizza

Part of this pizza challenge was attempting the tossing method. I may have given a few gentle back and forth tosses over the years but never really went all out and tried to spin it in the air. It was scary at first but I managed to not drop it. I had one or two rip a little but they patched easily and it did make the dough nice and round. Alex got to toss the last pizza and inevitably it landed on the floor. Who ever said a little cat and dog hair hurt anybody?

Tossing the dough like a pizzaiolo (sort of)
Check out the Foodbuzz apron! My poor ripped dough

This month's challenge was originally going to be co-hosted by Sherry of What did you eat? but tragically she passed away this July. Her co-host Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yums continued on alone and used the recipe they had talked about, Pizza Napoletana from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice”. You can visit Rosa's site for the complete recipe as well as a gluten-free version. To see the other experiences making pizza take a look at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

Soft Pretzels (with a touch of whole wheat flour)

Update: Jennie from A Vegan & a Dog Named Keiko made these and used soymilk in place of the egg yolk and they worked for her. Now we have a vegan version of the recipe, thanks Jennie!

Today in an effort to give the neighbor kids and Alex something new to do I made some pretzel dough. The little girl from next door and Alex like to play with clay together and Alex loves to do anything in the kitchen. This turned out to be a good idea but I managed to make a couple of mistakes. The first was to tell the girl from next door that we were going to make pretzels a good 30 minutes before the dough was done rising. "Alex's mom, is it pretzel time yet?" became her mantra, repeated through the screen door at least every minute. Mistake number two, I gave them sidewalk chalk to keep the nagging down. They were already wet from the sprinklers and wet + chalk = indelible chalk paste. I had to hose and scrub them down when the dough was finally ready and one pretzel still had a tinge of blue before it was boiled. They had a good time and I was feeling pretty proud of myself when my husband John walks in and sees the pretzels. This was my final mistake, halving the recipe. After some puppy dog eyes and blatant flattery about how good they were, I made a second batch so John could have some.

Soft pretzels and mini pretzel rolls cooling

This was an adaptation of Alton Brown's Good Eats Soft Pretzel recipe. I wanted to add some whole wheat flour and then discovered I was all out of all-purpose so I made up the rest with bread flour. They were chewy with a authentic pretzel taste and the dough was easy to work with. I think the bread flour is unnecessary but I loved the touch of whole wheat. I'd like to try the same dough with cinnamon sugar instead of salt and honey instead of sugar. I'm not sure if I'd boil those or not? Alex loves cinnamon and I think a slight honey flavor would go well with the whole wheat flour. The kids gobbled these up and Abbie even had to check them out (see her in the last shot).

Soft Pretzels
Makes 6 medium pretzels
Dough:
3/4 c warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
8 oz (~1 3/4 cups) bread flour (or all-purpose)
3 oz (~3/4 cup) whole wheat flour
1 oz (2 tablespoons)Earth Balance Margarine, melted
Other supplies needed:
Neutral vegetable oil
10 cups of water
2/3 cup baking soda
kosher or pretzel salt
1 egg yolk (or substitute soy milk)

-Proof the yeast with the water and sugar for five minutes (or skip it, I rarely proof yeast)
-Add the flour, salt and margarine to the yeast, water and sugar. Mix in a stand mixer with a dough hook until the dough is smooth and elastic.
-Place the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap. Allow to rise until doubled 50-55 minutes.
-Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. Bring the 10 cups of water and baking soda to a boil in a large pot. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
-Punch down the dough divide into six equal pieces. Oil your hands and a clean surface and roll the dough out into a rope ~16 inches long. Make a U with the rope and then cross the two ends over each other. Or make any shape. We made circles and small rolls and little baguettes and they all were good.
-One at a time gently place the pretzels in the boiling baking soda water for 30 seconds. Remove and place on the lined baking sheet.
-Add a teaspoon of water to the egg yolk and beat it to incorporate the water. Brush the yolk onto the pretzels and sprinkle on a little kosher or pretzel salt.
-Bake in the oven for 12-14 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Abbie the kitten gets her feet in the shot. Then she checks to see if it's edible.

Other pretzel stuff:
I didn't see this recipe until after I made my second batch!! Next time I really want to try the awesomely named Hell Boy Pretzels!

I added this to Yeastspotting. I get Susan's Wild Yeast email feed and I love the end of the week roundup with a ton of new bread ideas.

Try a new heirloom tomato: Azoychka Russian

I make an effort to try to grow at least one new variety of tomato each year. Garden Peach is my all time favorite! I'm partial to yellow/orange tomatoes so I usually look for heirlooms that are in that category. This year the new variety I found was Azoychka Russian. With a tongue twister name like that and a promise of "a distinctive flavor unlike any American variety" how could I lose? The first one ripened this past week and I prepared to pay full homage to its unveiling by making a loaf of crusty bread. I used a version of the now ubiquitous no-knead bread recipe. For my loaf, I altered Jen from Modern Beet's version of the recipe by only using a single half cup of rye flour and no whole wheat. This is the fourth or fifth loaf I've made of the no-knead with rye flour. The result was a tasty, lightly rye flavored, crusty loaf. When the bread had cooled enough to cut I got out tomatoes' other best friend, flaky sea salt. A little fat was required to carry the flavor of the tomato so I reached for our standby Earth Balance margarine to spread on the bread. Though the good bottle of olive oil was a tempting second choice.

There were lingering green shoulders and a little cracking but the inside of the tomato was a gorgeous, peachy orange. The first slice also revealed a tiny spot of pink in the center which reminded me of Queen Anne's Lace. The flavor was mild. It reminded me of the Mr. Stripey tomatoes I've had in the past. There wasn't a lot of tomato flavor but there was enough of a citrus note. The flesh was meaty and there weren't a lot of seeds. The flesh was similar to a Brandywine tomato and it worked well as a slicing tomato. I think the flavor would be too mild to add a lot to anything cooked but it should be good on sandwiches and in salads. In all, it's not a contender to beat out my beloved Garden Peach as my favorite tomato but the inside is beautiful and the name is fun to say. I'm interested to see if all of them have the spot of pink in the center when cut. If you are looking for a new low acid heirloom tomato for slicing this would be a decent one to try. Here are a few places that sell Azoychka Russian seeds:
Tanager Song Organic Heirloom Seeds
Reimer Seeds
Totally Tomatoes
Next Harvest

My Azoychka Russian tomato with its best friends, crusty bread and flaky sea salt

I'm adding this to Joelen's Culinary Adventures Tasting Sessions, Tomatoes! event since this was my tomato tasting.