Tag: bread

Categories
Bread Featured Recipes

Ciabatta Rolls

Ciabatta Rolls from www.jasonscooking.com
Temperature 475°Time20 – 30 mins cooking time (at least 12 hours total)

Ciabatta Rolls from www.jasonscooking.com

BackgroundBackground

I love to make bread and I love the idea of making bread even more. I often come up with grand plans to make a loaf of bread a week to use for lunches but you know how that goes…

Ciabatta bread is my absolute favorite type of bread. It’s light and airy on the inside but has a very crispy crust and is a great vehicle for a lot of different kinds of sandwiches. This dough, adapted from a The Kitchn recipe, does take a long time to make. Most of that time, however, is just letting it rise so it’s not bad at all. It also has the added bonus of making your house smell delicious!

If you’ve never tried your hand at bread making, you probably want to start with something else. If you’ve successfully made a couple of loaves, however, you should give this bread a shot!

The RecipeRecipe
Homemade Ciabatta Rolls
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Bread
Serves: 16 Rolls
Ingredients
Starter
  • 4 fl oz Warm Water
  • ½ tsp Active-Dry Yeast
  • 5 oz All-Purpose Flour (about 1 cup)

Ciabatta Dough
  • 17 fl oz Warm Water
  • 1 tsp Active Dry Yeast
  • 20 oz All-Purpose Flour (about 4 cups)
  • 2 tsp Salt
Instructions
Make the Starter
  1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix all of the starter ingredients with a wooden spoon for about 1 minute to dissolve the yeast and start to develop gluten.
  2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for at least 8 hours or overnight.

Make the Dough
  1. Add the water and yeast to the starter and stir to break up the starter a bit.
  2. Add all of the flour and salt and stir to combine, making sure that all of the flour is moistened and let it sit for about 20 minutes.
  3. Pop the dough hook onto the mixer and mix the dough on medium speed (5 or 6) for 18 – 20 minutes until it’s smooth but still pools at the bottom of the bowl when you turn the mixer off. Keep an eye on your mixer or it will walk off of the counter.
  4. Cover the bowl and let it rise for 2 – 3 hours until tripled in bulk.

Make the Rolls
  1. Preheat the oven to 475⁰ and line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper.
  2. Heavily dust your work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto it. The dough will be really light and may have a hard time staying put.
  3. Dust the top of the dough and your hands with more flour and cut the dough into 16 pieces. I cut it in half and then each of the halves in half until I get to 16 pieces.
  4. Using a bench scraper, lightly scoop up the dough sections, gently roll them into balls and put them on the prepared pans, being careful not to deflate them too much.
  5. Let them rest/proof one more time for about 20 minutes and cook for 20 – 30 minutes until golden brown and delicious.
  6. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Tips and TricksTips and Tricks

I find the perfect place to rise dough is in the oven (turned off) with the light on. This provides the perfect environment for the yeast to do their thing and you don’t have dough taking up space on your counter top all day.

Feed the FreezerFeed the Freezer

I love to make up a batch of these and freeze them to use later for sandwiches. They take a long time, but they’re totally worth it.

Fun FactsFun Facts

The basic ingredients for most of the different kinds of bread are water, flour, salt and yeast. The ratios, mixing times, proofing times, and cooking methods are responsible for the endless varieties that we get to enjoy!

Categories
Bread Breakfast Featured Recipes

Orange Blueberry Muffins

Orange Blueberry Muffins from www.jasonscooking.com
Temperature375°Time20 – 25 minutes

Orange Blueberry Muffins from www.jasonscooking.com

BackgroundBackground

When I was a wee tyke, my Mom would make a big breakfast for the family almost every Saturday morning. Typically, the breakfast would consist of grits, eggs, bacon and either toast or muffins. Most of the time, mom would mix the strawberry and blueberry packages of White Lilly Muffin Mix together to make the best muffins ever. When they came out of the oven, my dad would split them open and butter them so that the butter was super melty when they got to the table.

I’m pretty sure my Grandmother also used the same mix packets but sometimes, she would use orange juice instead of milk. Thinking back, I’m guessing they just didn’t have milk one morning and subbing in OJ was an oops moment but they turned out great in the end. The lesson here is that you should never be afraid to try new things in the kitchen because sometimes you come up with a new favorite recipe.

These muffins are an homage to those family breakfasts and Grandmother’s orange muffins. They’re light and tender, chock full of berries, and have a lovely orange flavor. The next time you make a big breakfast for the family (or accidentally run out of milk), you might want to give these a try!

The RecipeRecipe
Orange Blueberry Muffins
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast
Ingredients
  • 1¾ Cups Flour
  • 1 Tbs Baking Powder
  • ½ tsp Salt
  • ½ Cup Sugar
  • 1 Egg, Beaten
  • 1 Cup Orange Juice
  • ¼ Cup Melted Butter
  • 1 Cup Blueberries Tossed with ¼ Cup Flour
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375⁰ and spray a 12-well muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
  3. Add the egg, orange juice, and butter and mix until just combined. Be careful not to over mix.
  4. Fill each well of the muffin pan about ¾ full and bake for 20 – 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out mostly clean.
Tips and TricksTips and Tricks

Tossing your blueberries in a wee bit of flour helps them to stay suspended in the batter. If floating berries elude you (like they do for me sometimes – see picture), try sprinkling a few on top of the muffins just before you put them in the oven. The batter should set before they sink all the way down.

Feed the FreezerFeed the Freezer

You can freeze leftover muffins if you want but they’re so simple to make, there’s really no need. A way better use of freezer space is for storing berries.

Fun FactsFun Facts

One of my life goals is to make a perfectly domed muffin like you get in a bakery. I have not yet succeeded but one day I will. If you have any tips, please share them in the comments!

Categories
Bread Featured

Popovers

Temperature400P°Time45 mins

bread_062314_popover

BackgroundBackground

I had a popover for the first time a couple of years ago and if you’ve never had one, you should do yourself a favor and make that happen ASAP!  These dinner rolls are huge and hollow and crispy and flaky and pretty much all around awesome.  They’re also one of those things that seem like they’re hard to make but they’re super easy.

All you do is mix all of your room-temperature ingredients in a blender for about 30 seconds and divide the batter into 6 wells of a popover pan.  I have this Popover Pan and they turn out great every time!

The RecipeRecipe
Popovers
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Bread
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 1 Tbs Melted Butter
  • 2 Eggs, room temperature
  • 1 Cup Milk, room temperature
  • 1 tsp Kosher Salt
  • 1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 400°
  2. Spray a 6 cup popover pan with cooking spray.
  3. Put everything in a blender and blend for about 30 seconds.
  4. Fill wells of popover pan about ½ full with the batter. You should have enough for 6 popovers.
  5. Cook in preheated oven for 40 minutes until they are a deep golden brown. Don't open the oven while they're cooking or terrible things will happen!
  6. Remove to cooling rack and poke a small hole in the tops to let steam escape. This will keep them from deflating.
Tips and TricksTips and Tricks

I’ve tried using a muffin tin but you don’t get the volume that you get with a popover pan…the batter needs something to climb up to get the height.

Feed the FreezerFeed the Freezer

If – somehow – there are leftover popovers, you can throw them in the freezer for up to 3 months.  Reheat in a 350° oven for 8 – 10 minutes or until they’ve heated through and gotten some of their crispy back.

Fun FactsFun Facts

Popovers and Yorkshire pudding are very similar.

Categories
Bread Breakfast Featured

Buttermilk Biscuits

Temperature450°Time25 mins

breakfast_biscuits_062314

BackgroundBackground

I love breakfast more than any other meal.  Breakfast has the best meats, the best breads, and sometimes dessert is incorporated right into the meal.  I’ll take a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit over a club sandwich any day of the week!

Growing up in the south, biscuits were a pretty regular sight on the table – whether breakfast, lunch, dinner or supper.  The difference between lunch/supper and dinner is that dinner is fancier and was more likely to feature all the good stuff that southern food is known for, AKA biscuits.

Nanny (my mom’s mom) taught me the basics of biscuits but she never measured so I couldn’t turn out reliable biscuits like she did.  My goal this year was to “get good at biscuits” so I picked up a book called Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and a bag of flour and went to work and here’s what I came up with…

The RecipeRecipe
Buttermilk Biscuits
 
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Tender and flaky buttermilk biscuits will make people think that you are a southern grandmother.
Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast
Serves: 8
Ingredients
  • 3 Cups Flour
  • 4 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1 tsp Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Sugar
  • 5 Tbsp Butter
  • 3 Tbsp Vegetable Shortening
  • 1⅓ Cup Buttermilk
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 450°
  2. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a large bowl
  3. Cut in cold butter and shortening with a fork, your fingers, or a pastry cutter until you get pea sized chunks of flour/butter/shortening
  4. Pour in buttermilk and mix to combine. The mixture will be clumpy kind of like dry cookie dough.
  5. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and bring together into a dough - being careful not to overwork the dough.
  6. Pat dough out into a rectangle that is about ½ an inch thick and cut into biscuits. I cut them into squares because I didn't want to get out the biscuit cutters and reform the dough but you can cut rounds if you'd like.
  7. Place on greased sheet pan and put into the oven for 12 - 15 minutes. Watch them at the end and pull them out when they are golden brown and delicious.
Tips and TricksTips and Tricks
Feed the FreezerFeed the Freezer

Biscuits are super easy to make and freeze really well.  Get the hang of it and you’ll never buy a bag of frozen biscuits again!

  • Place uncooked biscuits in a single layer in the freezer so they’re not touching.
  • Once the biscuits have frozen, place them in a freezer bag for up to 6 months.
  • Cook biscuits directly from frozen at 375° on a greased pan for 20 – 25 minutes or until they’re golden brown and delicious.
Fun FactsFun Facts
  • A biscuit refers to a cookie in the United Kingdom and Canada.
  • White flour, commonly used to bake biscuits, is almost instantly metabolized into sugar. Biscuits will quickly spike your blood-sugar level.