a side of pretzel {recipe: pretzel rolls}

who doesn’t like a side of pretzel?

these pretzel rolls are delish, but serve them aside a salad or something of the sort because they are, um, dense. it’s a lot of bread, but who’s complaining?

Pretzel Rolls

adapted from une bonne vie

makes 8 large rolls

Dough Ingredients

• 3-3.5 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 1/4 cups milk, lukewarm
• 1/2 cup water, lukewarm water
• Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Water Bath Ingredients

• 7 cups water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 4 tablespoons baking soda

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 200
• Combine 3 cups of flour and teaspoon of salt in a large bowl.
• In a small container, mix yeast with warmed milk and let rest for 10 minutes.
• Add canola oil and warmed water to yeast mixture.
• Pour yeast mixture into with flour and salt.
• Hand-knead in the bowl until dough is mostly smooth. Add more flour if your dough cannot be easily handled. The dough will be somewhat stiff.
• Turn off preheated oven.
• Cover the bowl with a dish towel and put in warm oven to rise for one hour.
• Punch down dough and knead in bowl for one minute. Cut dough into 8 pieces.
• Form balls by pushing dough into a circle in your palm, and then pull all of the outside edges of the dough to the center and pinch.
• Place dough balls seam side down on a well-greased surface.
• Let the dough balls rise for 15 minutes.
• While the dough balls are rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get the pretzel “bath” ready. In a large pot, bring water, salt, and baking soda to a rolling boil.
• Plunge three dough balls into the water and let them “poach” for 1 minute total. Using a slotted spoon, transfer them to a well-greased baking sheet. They will be sort of slimy.
• With a serrated knife, cut 2-3 lines across each roll and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pretzels are a rich brown.  These are best eaten the same day they are made.

a homemade touch {recipe: grissini}

 

 

i love that dinner item that really gives a personal touch to your dinner.

have people over for burgers and throw a bag of sweet potto fries in the oven, but make your own garlic aioli, or bring a regular salad to dinner and make your own dressing.

grissini are thin breadsticks made with a yeast dough. they are simple, but they’ll leave that homemade mark on a dinner salad or a bowl of pasta.

Grissini

adapted from the Wild Yeast Blog

Ingredients:

• 1 T. warm water
• 2 t. active dry yeast
• 2 1/2 c. flour
• 7 oz water at room temperature
• 1 t. salt
• 1 T. olive oil
• topping of your choice (I used coarse salt – you could also add coarsely-ground pepper or chopped fennel seed)

Method:

1. Sprinkle yeast over 1 T.  warm water and let sit five minutes.
2. Combine the flour, yeast mixture, and salt in the bowl of a large food processor. Pulse a few times to combine.
3. Combine the 7 oz. water and olive oil in a liquid measuring cup.
4. With the processor running, add the liquid to the dry ingredients in a steady stream.
5. Process until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 90 seconds.
6. Place the dough in a lightly oiled container. Cover the container and let the dough ferment at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 1.5 – 2 hours.
7. Preheat the oven to 350F.
8. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
9. Divide the dough into tw0 equal pieces. The steps that follow will be repeated for each of the two pieces. Keep the piece you’re not working with covered.
10. On a floured counter, roll the dough out into a rectangle about 12 x 8 inches.
11. Cut the dough into 16 strips of equal width. A pizza cutter works very well for this.
12. Fold each strip over on itself.
13. On an unfloured surface, roll the strip into a long snake. Make it a bit longer than the length of your baking sheet, to allow for spring-back.
14. Place the snakes evenly spaced across the width of the parchment-lined baking sheet.
15. Lightly spray or brush the grissini with olive oil and sprinkle on the topping.
16. Bake at 350F for 25 – 30 minutes, until golden brown.
17. Cool on a wire rack.

 

 

pepperoni and cheese pull-apart bread and easy marinara

we love having friends over for dinner, and i love a good meal that you can sit around the table and talk and eat and talk and eat. go back for more if you want, or not.

with this pizza pull-apart bread, i served everyone a bow of marinara, passed out plates, and dropped the main course in the middle of the table. everyone just grabbed pieces as we ate.

because each piece is dipped in garlic butter, each bite is soft and cheesy on the inside and crisp and buttery on the outside.

what a fun recipe. you could put broccoli and cheese and chicken in each ball, or goat cheese and a half a fig, or a basil leaf and a piece of mozzarella…or anything you want.

we used pepperoni and cheese. the good ole american way.

before baking:

after:

Pizza Dough

adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride  

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup warm water, divided
• 1 t. sugar
• 2 1/2 t. active dry yeast
• 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing bowl and springform pan
• 4 c. bread flour
• 1 1/2 t. salt

Instructions

1. Put 1/2 cup warm water into the bowl of your stand mixer and stir in sugar until dissolved.
2. Sprinkle the yeast over top of water/sugar mixture and let stand about 5 minutes.
3. Add the remaining water and oil.
4. Add the flour and salt to the stand mixer bowl fitted with the dough hook.
5. Mix on low until flour is combined
6. Turn up the speed and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.
7. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot until it doubles in volume, about 1 1/2 hours.

Pepperoni and Cheese Pull-Apart Bread

adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride

Ingredients:

• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup salted butter
• pizza dough (recipe above)
• 8 oz mozzarella cheese, cut into 40 pieces
• 8 ox package pepperoni
• marinara sauce, recipe below

Instructions

1. Heat garlic and butter over medium heat just until the butter begins to brown. Remove from heat and let sit.
2. Brush the inside of a bundt pan (or other oven-safe dish) with garlic butter.
3. Divide pizza dough into four balls.
4. Take one ball and divide it into 10 pieces.
5. Flatten each piece into a disk and top with two slices of pepperoni and one cube of cheese.
6. Pinch the disk into a ball.
7. Dunk the ball in the garlic butter. (be careful not to completely submerge the ball, which would get your fingers buttery. if your fingers get buttery it becomes very difficult to pinch the dough into a ball.
8. Drop the ball in the bundt pan.
9. Repeat steps 4-8 until all dough, pepperoni, and cheese are used.
10. Cover top of pan with plastic wrap whole oven preheats to 400
11. Bake about 40 minutes or until dough is cooked throughout
12. Remove from oven and turn pan upside down onto a plate.
13. Serve with marinara (below)

Easy Marinara

adapted from Annie’s Eats 

Ingredients

• 1 (28 oz.) can whole peeled tomatoes, with juices
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 1 clove garlic, miced
• 5 T. salted butter
• Salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to keep the sauce at a low, steady simmer for 45 minutes.
3. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes as you go along with a potato masher or large fork.
4. Remove from the heat and discard the onion. Sauce will thicken as it cools.

make your own starbucks banana walnut bread {recipe}

starbucks banana walnut bread. i posted this recipe a while back but it needed a revisit. it is that good.

you mean i can make that pricey banana goodness at home?

i do mean that.

i have been reading leslie’s blog recently. if you go read it, empty your bladder first and don’t be drinking anything you  might spit all over your computer in a fit of laughter. anyways, i think there is a starbucks reference in every post she writes. which got me wanting this bread again.

see how we came full circle?

i can’t take credit for this recipe. i started with a recipe for Starbuck’s banana walnut bread that they posted on their corporate site a while ago. With a few modifications, this is awesome.

Also, Starbucks will charge you something like $1.95 per slice. Say they get 10 slices for a loaf and that makes this loaf worth $19.50 in the Starbucks economy.

Making this will cost you $2 tops. And that is for the whole loaf!

i just saved you 90%.

90%! this is not even a going out of business sale, people!

Starbuck’s Banana Walnut Bread (May 2009)

makes one 9×5 in. loaf.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 T. vanilla
• 2 c. flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• 3/4 t. cinnamon
• 3 very-ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup buttermilk (don’t have buttermilk? do this)
• 1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F and grease a 9×5 loaf pan.
2. Mix together oil and sugar until blended. Add egg and vanilla and stir.
3. Stir in flour, cinnamon and baking soda.
4. In a separate bowl, mash bananas until creamy and then stir in  buttermilk.
5. Add banana mixture to flour mixture andstir to combine.
6. Stir in half of nuts.
7. Pour batter into pan and top with remaining nuts.
8. Bake 45-60 minutes or until wooden toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.

always in search of a good bread recipe {recipe: oatmeal bread}

I feel like I am always in search of a good bread recipe.

I probably should never bake, because I am terrible at measuring things exactly and often have little patience for cooling times or candy temperatures. Not to mention the rising of yeast breads. But I do bake.

A nice loaf of bread is expensive. And when the family’s having sandwiches and toast daily, it adds up. So I try and make my own.

For a few years, I had my mom’s old breadmaker. It was great because there was no waiting involved. Input ingredients. Turn on. Output bread. The beautiful lack of effort even made me overlook the weird, cylinder-shaped bread. But a few summers ago, the bread machine died (a moment of silence please). Dead may not even be the right word. It went wrong, but it was like it was so good it was bad. The breadmaker would mix the dough ingredients and then heat up to bake the bread. It would heat and heat and heat and the mechanism inside that told the breadmaker that it was hot enough broke. In the end you had this weird ball of bread that was hard and charred on the outside and a sticky gooey mess on the inside. And the house would smell. Like if you walked in the house with your eyes closed, you would think the kitchen had burned to a pile of ashes.

Sigh.

So, I am learning to make bread on my own, with just my trusty stand mixer.

I have made this recipe twice now in the last week. The loaf is huge. The bread is soft and smooth and not at all dry. And, start to finish it only takes about four hours, with minimal hands-on time. Really, I promise. Try it.

Oatmeal Bread

adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

• 1 1/4 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup boiling water
• ¼ cup warm water
• 2 1/4 tsp active dried yeast (same as one packet)
• 1 ½ cups whole milk
• 1 T. distilled vinegar
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 t. agave nectar or honey (for topping)
• 1/4 cup rolled oats (for topping)

Instructions

1. Place 1 1/4 cup oats in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Mix and let sit for 10 minutes, uncovered.
2. Place ¼ cup of warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle yeast on top. Mix with a whisk to dissolve yeast. Let rest for 5 minutes.
3. Mix milk and vinegar in another bowl. Let sit 5 minutes.
4. Add soaked oats, milk mixture, canola oil, brown sugar, both flours, and salt to yeast.
5. Using the hook attachment, mix on low speed for 1 or 2 minutes to combine ingredients.
6. Increase speed to medium and mix for about 10 minutes. Dough will be wet at first, but will eventually from a ball.
7. Place dough in an oiled, medium bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
8. Proof in a warm room, about 80*F (I put it in the garage!), for about an hour. Dough will almost double in size.
9. Pull dough from bowl onto a floured surface and flatten it with your hands, releasing excess air bubbles. Form dough into a 12 x 6-inch rectangle and position it so that a long side is facing you. Fold the 2 short ends onto the top so they meet in the middle. Starting with the closest end, roll dough away from you into a log. Let loaf rest on its seam for a few minutes.
10. Transfer dough to an oiled 9 x 5 x 4-inch loaf pan, seam side down. Using your hands, push down on the dough to make sure it extends to all corners of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let proof in a warm room for another hour. Loaf will rise above the top of the pan.
11. While loaf is proofing, preheat oven to 385F.
12. Remove plastic wrap and spread honey or agave nectar over top of loaf. Sprinkle with remaining oats.
13. Place pan on center rack of oven an bake for approximately 1 hour (check after 30 minutes, if top of loaf is already getting golden brown, cover top of loaf with aluminum foil. Top and sides of finished loaf will be deep golden brown.
14. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes, then run a sharp knife around the sides of the loaf to release from the pan. Invert to remove loaf.