Salads / challah

Oh hay y'all. I'm in Florida at my dad's house and my sisters and I cooked dinner on Friday. The following are a few items that I made.


Roasted red beet salad. The beets were cut up, tossed with olive oil and lemon juice, salt, pepper. Then roasted for perhaps an hour at 375 or 400. This was really yummy. Especially since this dish costed $2 to make. Hurray for cheap beets!


Fennel and citrus salad. I sliced the fennel thin and cut segments of oranges and grapefruit. The dressing was olive oil and lemon juice. I enjoyed this but the citrus segments got a little broken up. Still yummy!


Endive, celery, apple golden raisin, and walnut salad. Dressing consisted of white wine, lemon juice, olive oil. This salad was ok. The chunks of apple were too big I thought. Also the endive pretty much got lost behind the celery and other ingredients.


Challah! I am never good at making a uniform challah - as in the same size the whole way through. This challah was a lot fatter on one end. It was delicious nonetheless!

That ees all for now!

Sourdough

Howdy y'all. I made sourdough, actually a few months ago now. Again from peter reinhart's book. It was sooooooo good. It totally had the sourdough taste and was very moist. I tried to make sure that I added as little extra flour as possible so that the dough was still pretty sticky the whole time. It wasn't hard to deal with though, since I have a kitchenaid. Mmmm so good. People at work liked it too. Unfortunately my starter is in the trash because it was totally unsustainable. So I need to find a new method of maintaining a starter.

Another picture of one of the loaves:


I think next up is bagels, because I'm skipping the pizza doughs.

Pain au Levain

Hi! I made pain au levain from peter reinhart's book. This was the first time I used a starter in my bread. I made a starter from scratch. This involved me going through all of the phases laid out in the book. The bread came out good! I don't know if it was worth 2 weeks of trouble to get the starter ready. Not to mention having the starter die twice (and having to restart the starter) before getting it right. Also the starter doesn't seem sustainable. Having to add over 2 cups of flower every 5 days and throwing out the majority of it sounds unrealistic. The bread was good though!



I think the bread did have more flavor than usual. I cut up the bread into pieces and brought it to work:


I split the dough into 2 batches. I probably overcooked the second batch but I kind of like it when it's almost burnt:


And here the second batch is sliced:


Next up, sourdough!

Focaccia

Hi! I made focaccia last week. Again, it was from this book. The dough is very similar to the dough used to make the ciabatta that I made a few weeks prior. The dough comes out so smooth and feels so good when I have to mess with it.

The process involves putting together the initial dough, stretching it out a bit, and putting it in a ball shape. Then I left it in the refrigerator, covered, for 2 to 3 days. At that point I spread the dough out into a big cookie sheet, and dotted it with my fingers.

The topping I used was a sort of herb oil. All it was was olive oil, red pepper flakes, minced garlic. chili powder, kosher salt and black pepper.

The focaccia was amazing right out of the oven. It was so crispy on top and soft underneath. I brought it into work the next day and it was still good but the top was no longer crispy. People seemed to like it, though.



Next up, pain au levain. My starter is well on its way already! (Sort of.)

Apple chips

Hokay, so. At pike place market there are these people that sell apple chips. They claim that they are 100% apple with nothing added. They're supposedly just baked. Those things are amazing. I love them so much I want to cry. Sooo I decided to try it out for myself. I used my mandolin to cut some gala apples and bake them at about 275 for around 2 hours I think. The outcome was terrific!! I loved it!! It tasted like the pike place market people!! Sooooo good. I am in love. Such an awesome snack. The chips are completely crisp, and they produce such a satisfying crunch when you bite into them. The only problem with these guys is they take a long time to bake (about 2 hours) and you can't make a lot at a time, since they probably can't be layered on top of each other on the baking sheet.

Here's the before pic:


And another after shot:


Check out this cool chip with the star:

Ciabatta

Happy holidays! Last week my older sister and I made ciabatta, again from this book. It was amaaaaazing. Definitely my favorite bread from the book so far. The bubbles in the bread were so big and awesome looking. The bread was amazing as toast. One recipe made 3 ciabattas. Mmm. Definitely will make again.

And now, some more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

BUBBLES!!!


TOAST!!


TOAST WITH GOAT CHEESE!!! This seems like it'd be good with some sun dried tomatoes on top iykwis. Riyeeeet.


...next up, focaccia!

Classic french bread

Oh hi. I made the second recipe in this book. It came out delicious. Tasted like real bread. One thing I did wrong was make the cuts in the dough too deep, as you can see in the pictures. Also, apparently the baguettes were supposed to be half the size. I was supposed to make 4 instead of 2. Whoops! Anyway, here are a few pictures from along the way:





And then here they are:


I also brought them to work:


Some people at work seemed indifferent about the bread and some said it was good. No one had the guts to say it was bad. Next up, ciabatta!

"Lean Bread" from Peter Reinhart

Oh hello there. I made the first recipe from Peter Reinhart's new book.

It is called "Lean Bread". I don't know why though. It probably explains in the description. The bread came out awesome.

Here's a picture of the final product:


The recipe made enough to produce two of them:


I made the dough, which was pretty painless, and then let it sit in my refrigerator for 2 to 3 days (but you don't have to leave it in there that long). Then, day of, you have to shape the dough and then let it rise for 1 hour, covered:


Then, let the dough rise for another hour, uncovered:


Then, I managed to blow all the fuses in my house other than the oven, before actually putting the bread in the oven. I still baked the bread, using candle light to see:


I still got a shot of the babies in the oven:


Since my refrigerator wasn't working (as there was no power in my place), I decided to put my refrigerated goods in bags and hang them outside my window:


And 2 more windows:


Hopefully there is power when I get home but I'm not getting my hopes up. Didn't hear back from my landlord yet.

Tomato and onion tart

Hey hey. I made a tomato and onion tart today. I am staying at my mom's house right now and she has mad tomato plants in full bloom around the house, so I used those cherry tomatoes in this tart. The bottom layer is 1 large onion that I caramelized, 1 package of feta cheese, a bunch of basil leaves (also from my mom's garden) and 2 eggs. I mixed all of those together and put that on the bottom of the tart. On top of that I put a bunch of cherry tomatoes that I had roasted in the oven before hand for about an hour. The crust is a whole wheat and olive oil crust. I thought that the tart was very delicious. In the future I will work on the crust, because it was a little tough. The cherry tomatoes were really good though, since they were roasted before hand. The feta cheese was also delicious.

And here it is after my sister and I got our hands on it:


I totally took what felt like all day to make this tart. Ok, not all day, but a good 3 or 4 hours. It's nice having nothing to do, and just taking my time and being inefficient. I can only do that for another week and a half!

Matbucha

Hi there. I made matbucha, pronounced mott-boo-cha, where the 'ch' is the sound of clearing your throat. Matbucha is a Moroccan tomato dish that primarily consists of tomatoes, spicy peppers and garlic. I guess red peppers are often also put in there but I'm not sure. Technically you're supposed to make it with really ripe tomatoes but I had to make it with normal tomatoes. This is how it went down.

I cut up about 6 medium sized tomatoes into big chunks. I seeded and cut up 6 jalapenos, and chopped about 8 cloves of garlic, as shown below.


I then put all of these ingredients, as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil, and salt and cracked black pepper in my soup pot:


Next I opened up a big can of whole peeled tomatoes:


And poured them into the soup pot (aw yeah, action shot):


And then it looked like this:


I had these roasted red bell peppers hanging out in my fridge and decided that I wasn't going to use them for anything else


So I threw them in the pot:


And then it looked like this:


I then let these ingredients simmer, covered, for about an hour and a half, stirring every once in a while


Eventually the whole thing becomes pretty watery and at that point you want to let it cook half covered, to let the juices evaporate


...And finally, you end up with something like this:


All that fit in this little container:


I made a wheat challah to enjoy this with, but you do your thing