Confessions of a Mormon Foodie

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Bread Maker Magic

I love my breadmaker. It doesn't make the most fantastic bread I've ever had, but it does a pretty good job. The nice part is that I don't have to babysit it. I can set it up before I go to bed, set the timer, and voila! Warm bread for breakfast!

Most of the recipes that came with it are pretty good. One of my friends came up with her own variations that work even better. One my family's favorites, from her list of breadmaker recipes, is for a half-white half-wheat bread. By itself, the recipe makes nice, soft, and tasty bread. I've modified the recipe by adding a couple of "secret ingredients" - wheat gluten and dough conditioner. They don't make the bread any tastier, but they do seem to help it rise a bit better, and more evenly.

Half-Wheat Bread a la Jennifer (as interpreted by the Mormon Foodie)

This recipe will make a nice 1 1/2 pound loaf in your breadmaker. The ingredients are listed in the order suggested by my breadmaker's manufacturer. Check the order recommended for your breadmaker. It does make a difference.

1 cup water
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup white flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/2 tsp dry yeast
2 tsp wheat gluten
1 tsp dough conditioner

Use the "wheat" cycle, and set it to make a "light" loaf. (Yes, this recipe is light in the loafers. Ha Ha. Now be quiet.)

After it's done baking, cover it with a kitchen towel and cool it on a wire rack. Make sure you let it cool completely before cutting. That way the warm moisture on the inside of the bread will rise up and soften the crust, not fly out the side and dry out the bread.

What I like doing is making a couple of loaves of 100% whole wheat bread the "old fashioned" way over the weekend, and then supplement that with bread from the breadmaker during the week. That way we can cut down on making all those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using store bought "air" bread.

Mmmm . . . peanut butter . . .

Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Comfort of Bread

There's nothing that takes me back to my childhood faster than the smell of freshly baked bread. I recall my halcyon days of youth, the light steaming through the back window and onto the kitchen counter, lighting up small particles of flour in the air like tiny fireflies. I'd watch my mother in that light, hands and arms dusted in flour, kneading large batches of bread dough, enough to make four or five loaves at a time. I remember watching the dough rise, too, and wondering at the magic behind the yeast, water, and flour that made it so. Then the smell, oh the wonderful warm smell that would fill the kitchen as they baked.

Someone once said, "Cooking is art, baking is science, but bread is magic." Oh, how right they are.

My mother didn't always make bread. She didn't think she made good sandwich bread. At a young age, I'm sure I felt the same way as she did from time to time. But oh, I remember it was the best bread for toast, and even better for French toast, cut thickly and drenched in eggs for frying. Hot slabs of the stuff smothered in home made maple syrup. It was far better than store bought bread ever could be.

I've not always been successful making bread, and my lazy streak makes it a chore. My wife and I got a bread maker from her parents for Christmas one year, however, and I really enjoyed that. We wore it out and had to replace it after the first year or so. The unfortunate part is that my wife, and children, prefer the store bought "air bread" to the richer textures and crispy crusts of the bread I would make, even in the bread maker. So ended up eating more of the bread than they did.

Maybe that's part of why I'm shaped the way I am. Round.

My neighbor gave me some automatic bread maker recipes that she had come up with, and they work every time. I started using them more than the recipes that came with the bread maker. What I wanted to be able to make kept eluding me, though. I wanted to make a really good loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. Preferably in the bread maker (there's that lazy bit kicking in again). My neighbor's recipes included a killer half white / half wheat recipe, but try as I might, I've never been completely satisfied with any of the 100% whole wheat bread maker recipes I've found.

My family certainly has trouble with them. They're too dense and bitter for general sandwich use, and even I get tired of them after a while. So I've always been on a quest to find a really good whole wheat recipe. I thought I'd never find one, until two weeks ago when I discovered the Prepared Panty.

This is the most amazing recipe I've ever found for 100% whole wheat bread. I've contacted them about getting permission to reprint it here for you, but they've not gotten back to me. That’s okay. It’s worth clicking on the link. Trust me. The Prepared Panty website has so many cool things about it, even if you never make this bread, you should go check it out.

This recipe is life changing. I can't make it in my bread maker, but since I started using dough hooks with my hand mixer, it's made the process a lot less painful. It's the strangest recipe I've every found for bread. It takes at least two days to make, counting the rising time, and a good portion of the first rise happens in the refrigerator. How weird is that?

But oh, what bread it makes. Even my wife and children like this one. In fact, the other day after we'd run out of it, my wife said, "I was so disappointed to wake up, go to make breakfast, and not find any of your bread."

Considering this is coming from my "air bread only, please" wife, it really is life changing.

One thing this recipe uses is an ingredient called “dough conditioner.” I’d never heard of it before, and I’ve only picked some up just recently. At first, I added an extra tablespoon of wheat gluten. and it worked wonderfully. This last batch was made with the dough conditioner, but don’t know if made much difference. Some people swear by it but, even without it, this bread is heaven.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Stir-fried vegetables, served over rice or ramen noodles, is a staple for my family. They're simple, quick, tasty, and healthy. If I've got some chicken, pork, beef, or some other meat hanging around I'll throw that in, too. A favorite with me and the kids is to skip the meat and add firm tofu instead.

I'm so glad my kids like tofu!

The secrets of stir-frying, as I see them, are four fold:

Cut the meat (or tofu) and vegetables small enough to fit on a fork (or pick up with chopsticks), and thin enough to maximize the surface area.
Use high enough heat to cook the vegetables quickly, but maintain crispness.
Cook each ingredient only until it's done, and no more. You want each ingredient to be cooked to it's own perfection. This may involved cooking each ingredient separately, and then recombining them to heat through in the end.
In order to do points two and three effectively, you've got to keep the food moving in the pan. That's why it's called stir-frying, for heaven's sake!

One of the great advantages of a stir-fry is that you can use whatever you have on hand. You don't need to make a special trip for ingredients, unless you want to of course.

Here's what my daughter and I made together a couple of Sunday's ago:

Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients

2 boneless chicken breasts
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 yellow onion, chopped (I prefer using green onions, but we didn't have any on hand).
1 cup baby carrots, cut into thin strips (With full sized carrots, cut into thin slices on a bias. This makes pretty ovals that are easy to handle with chopsticks.)
Two stalks of celery, chopped
1 can (6 oz.?) of sliced water chestnuts
1 green pepper, rough chopped
1/4 cup sherry
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
3/4 cup water
1 cube chicken bouillon
1/2 tsp ground ginger (fresh is better)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Peanut oil

Rinse the chicken and cut into 1" pieces. Toss with 1 tbsp of the cornstarch to coat, and set aside. Cut the vegetables and set aside in individual dishes (My family washes and reuses plastic sour cream tubs for this).

Heat the water, and dissolve the bouillon cube in it. If you've got some chicken or vegetable stock on hand, that would be better.

Heat a wok or large non-stick frying pan on medium high heat. Add about one tbsp of peanut oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Because we are going to cook each ingredient separately, you may need to add more oil from time to time. Just try not to overdo it.

Add the onions and garlic, and cook until the onions just start to get a bit brown. Remove from pan and set aside.

Reduce heat to medium and add chicken to the pan. You may need to add more oil. Add the chicken/cornstarch mixture to the pan and cook until it's no longer pink inside, and the outside is just a nice golden color. Remove from pan. Make sure you put it in a clean bowl, not the one you mixed it up in. We don't want to risk getting salmonella, here.

Cook the other vegetables, one at a time, removing them after they have been cooked through, but still a bit crispy. It's better to undercook them than overcook them.

De-glaze the pan by adding the sherry. When it quits bubbling quite so hard (showing that the alcohol has been evaporated), return all the ingredients to the pan and gently stir together.

Now that the bouillon or stock is cooled, mix the bouillon with the soy sauce, ginger, and remaining tbsp of cornstarch. Add the mixture to the pan. Cook, while stirring, until the sauce is thick and bubbly. Add salt or soy sauce to taste.

Serve over cooked rice or noodles in individual bowls, and enjoy!