Bread: Rosemary Peasant Bread

I am a lover of all things doughy! As proof I have a separate board on my Pintrest for bread and bread alone.  Other foods get mashed together All Desserts on one board, and everything else combined under a board i call Devour.  Sure I could start breaking the breads down and getting more complicated in my orginazation system, but it's Pintrest and I don't wanna.  So deal!  

To help you deal, I'm sharing the results of my twist on a traditional Peasant bread.

Rosemary Peasant Bread.

All my life, growing up in Riverside on a reasonably large piece of land, there were there rosemary bushes that were popping up.  As a child they were the bane of my existence. Run through them playing cowboys? Smell like a sharp and bitter plant for days!  Give the dog a hug?  Fragrent punch to the nose!  It was terrible.  

When I learned that my mother was purposefully planting the smelly weed I was shocked.  There's a reason to have that bush around?  Fresh herbs?  Who cares, they're gross!  And the dogs smell like plants, which was coincidentally the reason she would throw back at me. The dogs smell like plants!

  

It's only been recently that I've understood the fully joy of rosemary.  I still find the smell some what overpowering when it's super fresh or if I rub up against it accidentally.   However when added to baked dishes and breads, I have a new respect for this pine-esk green and it's tiny purple flowers.  It added a great amount of character to the Peasant bread of yore. 

 

And just look at that picture!  It's an airy delight with a crust that crisps up nicely when toasted and is soft enough to add delight to your day. 

It is a yeast bread so be ready!  However, this magical bread requires NO KNEADING.  Just a couple of rise times and some punching/folding, then you're all good for the baking.

 

I found the recipie via Pintrest on a blog called Alexandra's Kitchen.  Fantastic post!  It's filled with detailed instructions for this surprisingly simple bread and even includes a whole bunch of useful tips regarding how long to rise, add ins, tricks for rising and so on.  

The rosemary alternative was something that I came up with myself.

 

The inspiration for this addition was my visit home.  After each visit I make off like a bandit with food stuffs.  Fruit from the garden, leftover home cooking, some times candy if I'm lucky.  This trip included a few cuttings of rosemary.  I let them sit in some water for a few days.  The green covered stems and little purple flowers just looked so nice next to the sink!  

Finally the day came!  I cut off some stems and pulled the leaves off by hand creating a large pile.  Then in came Mr. Knife and we made short work of the herb.  

The grand total after chopping carnage was 5 teaspoons of rosemary. I'd say 3 tsp were chopped finely (to add flavor but not some much green stuff in the teeth) and 2 tsp were more crushed (to add visual confirmation of the herb which was smelling up the bread... in a good way).  It just looks more rustic with some larger chunks sitting around.

Add the rosemary to the dry ingredients, mix appropriately so there's some green spread evenly, and follow the rest of the directions as laid out by Ms. Alexandra!

Pan-cupcakes

Another Pintrest idea was attempted last night.  I decided that I was in serious need of some pancake lovin' and whipped up 12 pancake muffins.  These are some fantastically fun treats and are super easy to create.  It get's you that pancake flavor you desire without any flipping or in my case, flopping.  Relatively mess less and a huge plus, has very few dishes involved for cleaning later. A whole lot of pluses in my mind. The idea have been trending on Pintrest for a few days and simple enough in action.

Step 1: Get pancake mix.

Step 2: Find any other ingriedents if necessary.

Step 3: Mix

Step 4: Pour into cupcake pan.

Step 5: Bake.

Step 6a: Cool

Step 6b: Eat

And I found that I actually really enjoyed these babies.  I filled each cupcake indent of my silicone tray about half full and watched them rise slightly as them baked.  Mine could have used more time in the oven, as they were pretty albino in color, but they taste nice all the same.

I worked off this really simple idea as discussed here, at Gwaltney Foods, and expanded to fit my tastebuds at that moment.

The difference for me is that I went with Chocolate Chip Coconut Pan-Cupcakes and poured the batter into regular sized cupcake pans (as I do not own any mini cupcake pans).

It the batter went a sprinkling of sweetened coconut.  Poured into the cupcake pan when the batter,  was ready.  Now just imagine someone wildly chucking individual  chocolate chips into each cupcake compartment in the misguided hope that this would help evenly disburse chocolaty goodness throughout the pan-cupcakes. On top of that, floating on the lagoon of goo I sprinkled a few more chips and then loaded up on the coconut shavings.  I do love coconut.

While the pan-cupcakes were baking I created yet another tasty dessert, deconstructed almond joys (I guess they would technically be mounds, but almod joys would be easy enough to follow), which I may discuss at another time.

Recipe: Oreo Rice Crispy

This week I went a bit nuts in testing out Rice Crispy recipes. For final days and party events I made three different types in the last 3 days.  Today I'm gonna work through the recipe for one of the creations I made myself.  

I was working with the basic Kellogs Rice Crispy recipe which can be found here.  While classic Crispies are wonderful, I was looking for something with a little more pizazz!!

Thus born are my version of the Oreo Rice Crispy. 

 Ingredients in their packages. I do cheat and use off brand Oreos.  They taste the same when crushed and added to other things!  Plus they're much cheaper on average.

Here are the ingridients all measures out!

The next step is to melt the butter, add the marshmellows and let them melt.

From there, pour in the rice crispies and mix like a maniac.

Once mixed well enough, start folding in the crumbled oreos! 

Continue mixing untill your satisfied that everything is coated in melted marshmallows. 

Pour into per-greased baking dish, a 9 x 13 works well with the basic recipe.

Carefully spread to fit pan.

Important TIP!! 

Do not press heavily on the mixture when spreading into  the pan.  Heavy compression will create solid, hard to bite bricks.  Instead spread lightly, allowing for jumbled spaces.  The marshmallow should be sticky enough to hold it all together. 

Optional Step is to melt down some chocolate and pour it over the rice crispies!

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 1 package (10 oz., about 40) regular marshmallow OR 4 cups miniature marshmallows
• 6 cups puffed rice cereal
• 2 cups crushed Oreos

 

Tools

• Large Pot or Pan
• Spatula
• Pr-greased 9x13 baking pan 

 

Directions

1. In large pot melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. 
2. Remove from heat.
3. Add puffed rice cereal. Stir with spatula until well coated.
4. Fold in Oreo crumbles. 
5. Using buttered spatula or wax paper lightly & evenly press mixture into per-greased 13 x 9 inch pan. 
6. Let Cool. 
7. Cut into 2-inch squares. 
8. If desired, melt chocolate in double boiler.
9. Pour over top of Rice Crispy brick before cutting.

Best if served the same day.

Greek Yogurt: Opinion Trials

Greek yogurt is a tasty snack that all the health nuts seem to love so much that they probably bathe in it.  It seems like it might be something worth looking into, but at the same time you can't always trust healthy hippies.  My first purchase was of a Trader Joe's "Greek Style Honey Yogurt" in an 8 oz plastic container which I used to make a bread.  It was from the left over greek yogurt that I finall tried the Greek yogurt.

I enjoyed it.  Yogurt is something that I find tastey but often have problems with the texture of normal yogurt.  So I'm elated!  This is an exciting moment!  I've gotten a chance at eating yogurt regularly.  Mixing up my morning routine.

 So, I figure I'd give it an actually try.

I bought another 8ounces of Trader Joe's "Greek Style Honey Yogurt." It's little yellow container brightening up my otherwise bland fridge. It's just as good as the first time. Have a thicker but creamy texture that allows me to eat spoonfuls without inciting a gag reflex.  And I find the flavor delightful.  A light honey taste with a bit of the tart-ness of a plain yogurt.  Refreshing almost.  I've also tried the "Greek Style Vanilla Yogurt" of the same brand/type.  It's also great.

But it's a bit more expensive than I like my yogurt to be.  The next logical step is to try every other honey  Greek yogurt that I can find to run a taste test to discover which brand I like the best, and possibly a back up brand in case that one gets shut down.

Boy are there a lot of yogurts out there.

Another Trader Joe's Yogurt would logically be a good first step. So I bought a bunch.

Big mistake.. This version of the greek yogurt as a gritty texture which is unpleasant.  It almost has a feeling of being dry.  But had a similar texture to your typical everyday yogurt.  A huge let down as I had to eat, gross honey, gross blueberry, and gross pomegranate.

The Lucerne Greek Non Fat Yogurt Tick and Creamy Honey defied it's name.  Such a shame.  I quite enjoy the other Lucerne products that are milk based... cheese, cottage cheese.. you know cheese..

It was not thick and creamy.  It was basically similar to any other yogurt in thickness.  What really struck me was the two after tastes.  Not just one, but TWO!  The first flavor that I tasted after finishing swallowing was something akin to funny grape juice.  It was tart, but had something extra going on.  Then it shifted into something with an overwhelming iron flavor that reminded me of when I got knocked in the mouth during a soccer game, the flavor of blood pooling in my mouth.  Needless to say I won't be going back to them anytime soon.

With regards to Chobani, more dashed hopes. More strange after tastes.

The texture was good, the thickness was good, but the strange after taste similar to  stomach acid just isn't cutting it.  Not a Greek yogurt that I can get behind. Being reminded of having the stomach flu or getting sick after eating candy and going on a ridiculous roller coaster... unpleasant.

I tried Open Nature's Honey Greek.

It had similar problems to the other's already mentioned..  A good thickness but still had a lightly gritty texture and even that acidic after taste.  While less offensive than the others, still not on my purchase list.

My last taste test greek yogurt was Dannon Oikos Greek Nonfat Yogurt.  This only came in Vanilla so it had to do.

I must say that I liked it.  It had a good texture and thickness and was super sweet.  Not something I was expecting from the greek yogurt, as compared to all the other types I tried.  But it works as a back up.

My favorites are still Trader Joe's "Greek Style Honey Yogurt."

If only the crowning jewels came in larger sizes...

Recipe: Banana bread Cinamon Rolls

There are few times in my life when I have trouble sleeping.  Today is one of those days where I can just tell that I'm going to be resistant.  Not really to the act of sleep itself, but more so to the things required for sleep to take place. Which makes me really go bananas because I can tell that I'm tired and do want to sleep.  It seemed thusly appropriate that instead, I try my hand at baking bread.  A Cinnamon Roll Bananna Bread to be precise. 


Click here to be transported to the original glorious instructions.

The miracle about this bread attempt is that I forced myself to basically stick to the directions.  A bad habit that has formed over my life time is to change things up in ways that I think are small changes, but in the end have being time effects on the food. This time I did not make that mistake.  Therefore, I'm hoping that this bread turns out nice enough to bring with me to class tomorrow.  Or if I like it enough, to keep for myself and make another batch with the bananas that now sit on my counter for the slightly longer Monday class time.

I did not take pictures as I was going.  I will take pictures of the final project, no matter what it looks like. I hope it looks good.  As it is a yeast based bread, I now think I should have given it an egg wash to make the top all shiny at the final moment, but it wasn't in the directions.. so perhaps next time.

There are 12 more minutes on the clock.

My one challenge was that the break didn't rise properly.  My place is not warm enough to support the needs of waiting yeast.  Instead of doubleing in size because it was sitting in a warm spot in my house I kept placing it on top of my toaster oven and turning the appliance on and off so as to carefully assist with the rising and not bake the bottom part of the bread.  And I worry that because I had to do all the kneading on the cold counter top, perhaps it messed with the chemical reactions that were going on.

I also do not own a Kitchen aide type of mixer so everything was hand mixed.  I'm never sure if I'm over doing the mixing or under doing it.  The dough did look awfully soggy to me, before I started kneading it the first time.  After I finally got it to rise it looked more how I'm used to so that was encouraging.  Now I wait for the ding of the oven timer.  And keep clicking the oven light on and off to see what's going on.

It does smell really good!!

 And there they are, cooling!  They look and smell great.  I can only hope that they're going to taste good as well.  I'm trying to continue to follow directions, "Cool Completly." But I'm not sure that I have the will power.  I want to cut into one of them right now!!  Eating warm bread fresh out of the oven is one of those great little joys in life.  I can't really see it hurting the bread to be cut into before it's cool and needs to be warmed again.  Plus, how do you get the butter to melt without something warming it up above room temp?

Recipe below the Cut!!
In case you didn't check out the link!