Breads

Bread. It is so time-consuming. It's not a lot of work, really, especially with Betty, the Kitchen Aid. But the rising is what gets ya. Wait an hour (or more) for the first rise, then there is usually a SECOND rise after shaping. I would make bread way more often if it was a faster process.

Anyway, this is the babka from the other day. The original recipe had a chocolate filling, but I decided to use Nutella straight from the jar (lazy lazy lazy). Next time I will use more filling, but it was totally delicious!

Good Things Take Time

This is Amish Friendship Bread. It takes a long time to make. And by "long time," I mean "ten days." The idea is, you receive starter batter from a friend (in this case, TG's mom); it's made from milk, flour, and sugar. It sits on the counter for a few days, unrefrigerated, and all you do is stir it (mine was in a ziploc bag). After a few days you add more milk, flour, and sugar, and it starts to actually bubble. I guess there's chemical reactions going on that can't happen in the fridge. The bag gets full of air (gas?) and you have to let it out every day. From the smell, which is not unpleasant, it seems to turn into something related to yogurt.

On the tenth day, you add more stuff (the Amish call everything "stuff"), and then dish out three cups of batter in containers to give to others to start (hence the "friendship" part). The rest gets eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla pudding, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt, all mixed together, and baked. You can add in different things like fruit and chocolate chips - streusel on top would be great, as the final product is similiar to coffee cake: sweet and moist. I chose chocolate chip and plain. These were really good...I was pretty skeptical at first, what with the non-refrigeration and all. But with the time it takes to wait for it, I'm not sure I would make it again unless someone gives me starter again. I'm more of an instant gratification type of girl, you know?

Carb-less Dinner

Not really.

You know those Pasta Bowls that Domino's advertises? Pasta baked right into a bowl of...bread. Well, they LOOK good in theory, but really, trying something like that from Domino's, you have about 50/50 chance of it being good. For the record: I would try it.

Anyway, my first thought was, "Psh, I could make that." So I did. Please excuse the terrible photo, circumstances were not with me that day.


It's easier than it looks. Just make a simple baked ziti for the middle (sauce and grated cheese), and use canned Pillsbury pizza crust for the bowls. it takes a little work to make it the bowl shape (I made two from one can), but once you place the pasta in and bake, the shape comes through on its own. Bake according to the package, then when theres five mintues left, top it with cheese. I also brushed olive oil on the crust and put a little garlic powder on it.

These were so good. I just hope Domino's doesn't show up at my door and get me for copyright infringement or something.

Pita Power

When I finally got off the couch to take a shower Wednesday, I decided to make pita bread. It takes time to let the dough rise, and since I didn't have to work, I had some spare hours to kill.

A quick search of Tastespotting yielded this food blog: Always Order Dessert. It's a cute site, definitely browse it later.  The dough was pretty simple to make, and was easy to work with.  We went to get dinner while my dough disks were rising the second time, so they sat for about an hour instead of the recommended 20 minutes. I have no idea how this affected the final product, but I had satisfactory puffing of my pita!  If you're making this, I think you just need to make sure you don't handle the disks too much before baking.  Also, they say to use a bread stone to bake them on, but I just used a cookie sheet in the oven, and it worked fine.

That Guy enjoyed them, as did I, so I will be making these again. Yay success!