What's for dinner?

[MountainDon]

Yeah John; that's why ours is coming out of a timer operated machine. 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

smoked sausage with cranberry sauce, salad, a couple of kimchees, and some leftover coleslaw,etc., and whatever else we can scrape out of the fridge and throw on the table.  I was hoping to get some more of the bread dough in the fridge yesterday, but never got around to getting it done.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Oh, and spinach dip with veggie sticks... yum-yum.

[Dog]

No meat. Vegetarian here...My favorite in the winter...Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli tonight.

[MountainDon]

Omnivore here. 

Grilled skinless, boneless chicken breast, lightly steamed broccoli, mashed potatoes. 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

We went out for Korean food last night.  Had been thinking how good a casserole of steaming hot wu-gu-ji-tang would taste all day (Korean veggie soup, usually poor folks' comfort food in Korea).  Got there and they were all out of it, so had to have dolsot bi-bim-bab instead, which is a hot pot of rice with a little bit of beef and a lot of veggies, fried egg, and hot pepper sauce.  Even though it is not what I really wanted, it tasted really good.  I love how the rice on the bottom of the hot pot sticks and almost carmelizes... it is tough and chewy and has a sesame/hot pepper flavor, my favorite part, so you have to eat the whole bowl to get to it.   DH got pork bul-go-gi, which tasted good, but I don't like the way restaurants make bul-go-gi with only meat, no veggies.  When people make it at home, they usually put a lot of veggies in it too, to make it stretch more.  However, most Korean restaurants, especially in the states, are under the false assumption that somehow their American clientele can't handle "real" Korean food, and that we only eat meat.  So, they make it entirely with meat.  And then Koreans come to their restaurants and DON'T eat bul-go-gi, but instead go for what is considered cheap street vendor food in Korea because it is closer to the real thing.

[tesa]

pan fried pork chops, white rice with homemade gravy, and fresh veggies

with a tall gass of iced tea

tesa

[MountainDon]

Corned beef. Pan fried cabbage with onions and baby carrots. Beer.

[considerations]

I like whole wheat bread, but the prices in the grocery are getting borderline ridiculous.

I love this recipe - no kneading and it's bomb proof.  I can substitute whole wheat for regular flour.  So far i've worked up to 2 of the 6-1/2 cups without turning the finished product into a brick.  You can pull the usual substitutions for the equipment they talk about (see notes in parantheses).

The other part I love is doing a full batch, and then pulling enough out of the fridge to make a fresh loaf when I'm ready for it....up to 2 weeks.  I've tried freezing it in loaf portions, but I'm still perfecting the technique.

I throw in things like sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, garlic and rosemary.  I haven't tried raisins, brown sugar, and cinnamon yet, but this is the most basic no muss no fuss way to make my own cost effective designer bread.   I can hardly wait to try it with the wood stove, and in the dutch oven this summer.  Nice chewy crust and fluffy texture.

THE MASTER RECIPE: BOULE (ARTISAN FREE-FORM LOAF)
MAKES FOUR 1-POUND LOAVES
3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees)
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt or other coarse salt (if you put salted seeds in also, you may want to back down on the amount of salt)
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour. (So far, up to 2 cups of whole wheat still makes a fluffy loaf)

Cornmeal or parchment for pizza peel ( I don't bother with the parchment or the pizza peel, cornmeal on the back side of the cutting board works just fine on it's own.

Preparing the dough:

• In a 5-quart bowl or a resealable, lidded, plastic food container, (or just a big bowl and a clean kitchen towel) add yeast and salt to lukewarm water. Don't worry about getting it all to dissolve.

• Add in all the flour at once. (You don't have to sift the flour)

Mix with a wooden spoon (you can use very wet hands to help if needed).

Don't knead the dough; just mix until it is uniformly moist without dry patches.

• Cover with a lid that fits well, but is not airtight. Allow to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse, about 2 hours. (You can let it go up to 5 hours.)

The dough is ready to use at this point, but will be easier to shape if it is refrigerated at least 3 hours first.

On baking day:
• Prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal or line it with parchment. (I just use the cutting board)

Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1 pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won't stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. (Most of the dusting flour will fall off.) The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will flatten and adhere during resting and baking. Handle the dough as little as possible.

Place the shaped ball on the cornmeal-covered pizza peel. Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes, uncovered. Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise (more will occur during baking).

20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees, with a baking stone (upside down baking pan) placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on any other shelf that won't interfere with the rising bread.

Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour. Slash a ¼-inch-deep cross, scallop or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top. Slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the preheated baking stone.

Pour about 1 cup of hot water from the tap into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch. (Tap it, it will sound hollow)

Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack.

Store the remaining dough in the refrigerator in your lidded (not airtight) container. Cut off and shape more loaves as you need them anytime over the next 14 days.

The flavor and texture will improve after even one day's storage.  Baking stones are great but hardly necessary. 

[tesa]

oh, is that from mother earth news??

i tried that myself

great idea, keeping the dough in the fridge

it was my first real success with homemade bread

i've been encouraging all my friends to give it a try

tesa

[n74tg]

What's a pizza peel?

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

A pizza peel is the flat, handled thin board that you see pizza places using to slide the pizza into the oven. (You don't bake ON it, but use it to slide the dough off without messing up the shape.)  I don't have one, but use a wooden cutting board sprinkled in cornmeal (per earlier posts with variations on the same recipe... it is a good recipe, by the way.)

[glenn kangiser]

Oh --- I thought it was some exotic pizza recipe....

I guess I made a Pizza Peel out of a board then -- I just didn't know what it was.

[considerations]

Yeah just ignore the piazza peel stuff.  It came from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, which is famous for translating simple recipes into yuppie-speak. 

But, brought down to real living terminology its a simple and therefore great way to make excellent and cost effective bread. 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Yeah, when I first read the recipe in Mother Earth News, I had to look up pizza peels on google to figure out what they were talking about... I thought, "Now, why couldn't they just say a thin flat board with a handle?" because that would leave no doubt in anybody's mind.   Oh, and when I googled on it, it brought up a bunch of yuppie-style kitchen specialty stores that sell them.  All that said, though, it is a very easy and good-tasting bread.  As I posted earlier, if I actually turn my oven to 450 degrees, as the recipe calls for, the texture steps over the line from "crusty" to something more like "hardtack", so I had to turn my oven down closer to 425.  Oh, and i cook the bread on a cast iron griddle or skillet instead of a baking stone, and it comes out just fine. 

[tesa]

next time, i think i'll turn my oven down a bit too, i think that might help

and great minds do think alike

i used my cast iron too!!

tesa

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I might add, I don't think our oven temp is right on.  The outside of the blasted thing gets hot enough to burn you, but the inside always does weird stuff to our food (charred outside, squishy middle, etc., and it is as uneven as a microwave.)  Dang landlords. 

Tonight was baked acorn squash stuffed with pineapple, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and a little bacon.  We also had a vast assortment of little leftovers that needed to be eaten up.  Oh, and some corn on the cob.  So, it was a totally starched-out meal, and I'm thinking I need to go test DH's blood sugar because he crashed on the couch immediately after supper and I still can't get him up to go to bed.  He mumbles that "he will" go to bed in a minute and then goes right back to sleep. 

[MountainDon]

I like the convection feature our oven has. Seems to even things out, shortens time or allows a lower temperature setting.


Baked marinated (teriyaki) salmon. Steamed rice and green beans tonight.

[glenn kangiser]

One bowl of Potato Pearls, two bowls of Pecan Praline ice cream.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Potato pearls?

Tonight, it is going to be stew.  It got cooler overnight (yesterday was in the mid 70s and gorgeous) so stew should taste pretty good tonight.  I put  a couple of pieces of beef shank in to simmer a little while ago.  I'm low on just about everything, but don't want to go to the grocery store either... don't want to stock up and then have to move it all in a few weeks.  Anyway, I had a little ginger root left, so I sliced it up with the beef.  The only fresh veggies I have left are some Korean radish (sort of like diakon, but more like a turnip in diameter) and some green onions.  I think I have some dried seaweed, and then I may have some dried squash, and a few potatoes that oughtta be used for seed potatoes.  There may be an onion around here somewhere, too, so it'll be whatever-I-can-find-stew.  There is leftover cornbread from last night to go with it.  Well, that's if the kids don't find the cornbread between now and then... they had some of it with molasses and milk for breakfast this morning. 

Need to mix up another bunch of that bread dough today... it is supposed to be cool for several days, so a good time to do a little baking.

[considerations]

Buffalo rib steak, smashed taters & fresh spinach from the cold (heated) frame.

[MountainDon]

London Broil, probably mashed potatoes, salad

[glenn kangiser]

Potato Pearls

http://www.baf.com/pages/17

[MountainDon]

Chicken potstickers. A little rice.


No, we didn't make the potstickers ourselves.

[Redoverfarm]

Chicken potstickers. A little rice.


No, we didn't make the potstickers ourselves.