Easy Homemade Bread

Water, yeast, salt, flour, cornmeal, a broiler pan, and a pizza stone. If you have these seven things, you can make your own bread. A stand mixer won't hurt, but it's not required. As with most baking recipes, and especially if you're making bread for the first time, it's important to follow the directions exactly. I'll give you a few specifics later of what not to do, learned by my brother's mistakes and my far less significant mistakes. Once you combine all of the ingredients there is very little active cooking time involved, and there's no need to be intimidated by bread-making with this recipe. Or should I say there's no knead to be intimidated. Hi-yo!

Boules

From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day via Mother Earth News

3 cups lukewarm water

1-1/2 tbsp yeast

1-1/2 tbsp yeast

6-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Cornmeal

Note 1: If you want a little more clarification or more details, click on the Mother Earth News link above.

Note 2: This recipes makes four 1-lb. loaves.

Heat the water to 105-115 degrees. Add the water, the yeast, and the salt to the bowl of a stand mixer or to a large bowl with a lid. Give it a quick stir.

Add the flour 1/2 cup or 1 cup at a time by scooping it up and then leveling it off with a knife. Mix with every addition, with either the dough hook of the mixer or with a wooden spoon. The first time my mom and I made this recipe we just dumped all the flour in at once, and I don't think it made that much of a difference in the end result so do whatever works for you.

Keep adding flour and mixing until all of the flour is incorporated. The dough will be very moist.

Cover the bowl loosely with a towel, and let the dough rise at room temperature for about 2 hours, until the dough rises and then flattens on top. Letting the dough sit out for up to five hours will not hurt it.

Here it is after 3 or 4 hours. You can skip to the baking process at this point, but it will be easier to work with if you refrigerate it for a few hours.

After a few hours of refrigeration, dust the top of the dough with flour.

Since the recipe makes four 1-lb. loaves I think it's easiest to score the dough before cutting off a piece so you end up with uniform loaves.

Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal. Holding the dough in your hands (and adding more flour if it's too sticky), turn the dough over itself, from the top to the bottom. Rotate a quarter turn and repeat so you have four bunched ends on the bottom. If that's confusing just think of a mushroom cap, but instead of having a hollow bottom, the dough that you pull around fills up what would be the hollow space.

Let the dough rest on the peel for 40 minutes before baking. After 20 minutes turn on the oven t0 450, with the pizza stone on the the middle rack and an empty pan for water on another rack. Before going into the oven, liberally dust the top of the loaf with flour and make a few slashes in it.

When the 40 minutes is up, transfer the dough to the pizza stone, pour a cup of hot water into the broiler tray to create steam, and quickly shut the door. This is where my brother totally blew it the first time he tried this recipe. In case you are a ditz like he is, here is a warning: never pour a cup of cold water into a preheated glass pan. Especially if that glass pan is on a rack above your bread. Unless, of course, you enjoy eating crunchy bread which gets its crunch from shards of glass.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the outside is browned and firm.

The remainder of the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for a couple weeks. Store it in a container with a lid, but not one that is airtight. I used a lidded container and just set the lid on top instead of sealing it. The longer the dough hangs out in the fridge, the more it will take on a sourdough flavor. You can also reserve a little of the dough from your last loaf to incorporate into the next batch of dough for a more immediate sourdough flavor.

Repeat the same steps as before with the remaining dough, dusting the top with flour and cutting off a piece of dough.

I decided to make my second loaf slightly larger, using about 2/3 of the remaining dough.

This is where I messed up. I was slightly distracted by putting the final touches on my Margot Tenenbaum costume that I forgot to dust the loaf with flour or make slashes in it before throwing it in the oven.

I still ended up with a nice loaf of bread, but it was a loaf of bread with a tumor shooting out of it. Maybe it was more of a goiter. The mark on the top of the loaf is from my unsuccessful attempt to make a slash after it had been baking for 20 minutes.

This loaf was a little more dense than the last, probably from it's large size and lack of slashes on the top which give it room to grow. It's still delicious, though.

Happy Halloween from my nearly-albino piece of candy corn!

And happy birthday to the cutest cupcake-eyeballing one-year-old I know.

Who is slightly unsure of what to think about dolls that are nearly as tall as he is. Happy Birthday, Nolan!

Pumpkin Bread

The number one sign for me that fall is here is that I traded in my flip flops for socks and shoes this morning. Maybe I'm becoming more sensible as I get older and choosing comfort over fashion or maybe I'm slowly morphing into my perpetually frozen dad, but there are only so many days when I can walk to school with white toes that have lost all sensation before I realize I should stop being so lazy and put on some stupid shoes. Breaking out the socks and shoes is a pretty big step for me. I don't really have anything against shoes and I love boots, but there is nothing I hate more than socks. Well, maybe bad grammar, people who smoke cigarettes on the running path, and Penn State fans, but socks are next in line. Actually I don't even hate Penn State fans. I just feel bad for them.

Anyway, fall has finally arrived. It's in the 50s, it's insanely windy, and I have to wear socks. To make myself feel better about the whole socks thing, I baked some pumpkin bread this afternoon. I might at well enjoy one of the best things about fall while dealing with one of the worst, right?

Pumpkin Bread

Adapted from Simply Recipes and Joy of Cooking

1-1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 cup fresh or canned pumpkin puree

1/2 cup olive oil

2 large eggs

1/4 cup water

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup diced apples, raisins, chopped pecans or chopped walnuts (optional)

1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional, but strongly recommended)

Recipe makes 1 loaf.

If you're using fresh pumpkin, preheat the oven to 375. If you're using canned pumpkin or you've already cooked the pumpkin, preheat the oven to 350.

To cook the pumpkin slice it it half lengthwise and scrape out the stringy stuff and the seeds. Save the seeds for these, and discard the stringy stuff. Lay the pumpkin halves skin side down on a rimmed baking sheet, pour about 1/4" water into the pan, and loosely cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes or until tender. Reduce the oven temp to 350.

Let the pumpkin cool and then scoop the flesh into a food processor.

Process until it's pureed and no longer stringy.

Over a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg.

In a separate bowl combine the pumpkin, oil, eggs and water. Next time I'll remember to not use a yellow bowl when taking photos of orange and yellow food. And no, you're not hallucinating. There are four eggs. I had a lot of pumpkin, so I doubled the recipe.

Whisk to combine.

Pour the egg/pumpkin mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients.

Stir until mostly combined.

I decided to add some chopped apples since I have several pounds of them taking up a ton of space in my fridge.

And I really don't see the point in baking anything if chocolate chips aren't involved.

Mix until the apples and chocolate chips are evenly distributed.

Butter and flour the loaf pan(s).

Then pour in the batter.

Top them off with a few more chocolate chips for good measure.

Bake for about an hour or until a tester comes out clean. One of my loaves took 60 minutes and the other one took closer to 70.

Leave the bread in the pan to cool for at least 10 minutes (and preferably longer) before trying to remove it. Trace around the edge of the pan with a knife and turn in over onto a plate or cooling rack.

This is great on it's own, but it would make a lovely dessert with a little dollop of freshly whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream.

If you give a mouse a corner of a of loaf of pumpkin bread...

He's going to ask you for a whole slice.

Apple, Bacon + Cheddar Scones

It's not very often that I make something and think, "Wow, I really kick ass." Sure I have this little thing called a blog where you can find me yammering on about cooking a few times a week, but it's a very humble blog. I don't know all there is to know about cooking or baking and I don't make really complicated or complex dishes, so I certainly hope I'm not giving off a vibe that I'm some kind of expert. Please correct me if I'm wrong. One thing that I'm confident that I am not wrong about is touting these apple, bacon, and cheddar scones as delectable morsels that you need to make immediately. There is nothing about these that's wrong. Well, I guess they did come out looking more like muffin tops than scones, but if you judge scones by their shape rather than their taste then you are wrong.

I talk to my mom close to every day, and our conversations usually include one of the following: what we had for lunch or dinner, a newfound recipe that we're looking forward to trying, a new restaurant that we want to go to, or that fact that my mom can (temporarily) stop being jealous of my ability to eat at Potbelly whenever I want because for the next few weeks my dad is going to be working in a town with both a Potbelly and a Whole Foods. I'll give you a hint: It's not in Iowa. I usually wait to call my mom until I am bored while walking home from class or until I have something to say that isn't related to food, but these scones could not wait. I took them out of the oven, transferred them to a cooling rack, gave up on my plan to wait until after dinner to try them, tore off a little piece, began chewing, walked around in search of my phone while continuing to chew, called my mom, and then proceeded to eat an entire scone while I was talking to her. Did I mention that I started making dinner while the scones were in the oven? The last time I checked scones are not filed under "appetizer." Nor were they anywhere close to the size of an appetizer.

Self control, is that you? My name is Kirsten. I don't think we've met. Can we please hang out more?

Apple, Bacon + Cheddar Scones

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan via The Floured Apron with a little help from BakeWise

1 cup whole milk

1 large egg

1-3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup yellow cornmeal

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 stick (8 tbsp) cold, unsalted butter

3/4 cup cheddar, grated

3/4 to 1 cup diced apple (about 2 small apples)

3 strips bacon

Preheat the oven to 400, and then get that bacon cooking. The bacon is key here. I suppose you could leave it out if you're a vegetarian or something, but you would really be missing out.

You want the bacon to be fairly crisp so it will crumble. Once the bacon is cooked let it cool on a paper towel, and then slice or crumble it into small pieces.

Grate about 3/4 cup cheddar.

One of these is a honeycrisp and the other is a zestar. I think the honeycrisp is the one that actually went into the batter. I only used about 1/2 to 2/3 cup of diced apples, but I think more would be nice so I've adjusted the recipe above accordingly.

Cut the apple into small pieces.

Crack an egg into a bowl.

Add the milk, and stir to combine.

This is what it looked like after sitting around for a few minutes. It reminds me of spring. Or art class.

Add the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to a large bowl.

Whisk to combine.

Cut the cold butter into small pieces and add to the dry ingredients.

Use your fingers or a pastry cutter to blend the butter with the dry ingredients until the largest pieces of butter are the size of a pea.

Add the milk/egg mixture and stir with a fork just until combined. It's OK if there are still some patches of dry ingredients. We're not going for perfection here.

Add the apples, bacon, and cheddar.

Stir to combine.

Using a rubber spatula, turn the batter over itself in the bowl several times. Several being 7 or 8, not 25 or 30. You're trying to get it to be more of a cohesive mass than a big bowl of batter.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spoon piles of batter onto it. I used a 1/2 cup measuring cup to scoop the batter, and I ended up with 7 large scones. Next time I would probably do 1/3 cup scoops.

Bake on the middle rack of your oven for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. So maybe they look like muffin tops and they all grew together, but they sure taste good. If you want more crumbly, drier scones you should reduce the amount of milk by 1/4 cup.

I prefer this moist version. It's a little like a biscuit, actually.

Please make these soon.