Sweet and savory breads

Last week when i baked bread I realized that baking bread is actually cheaper than buying really nice bread in the store and it tastes oh so good.  So I set a personal goal for myself and I am going to try to bake some kind of bread at least once a week.  When I told my hubby this, he looked like a child who was told Christmas would be coming twice this year.  Anyone who knows my husband can attest to the fact that he has something of a bread addiction.  I swear he would eat bread for every meal if he could.  Now that I have already baked the basic white bread that I grew up on, I wanted to challenge myself to come up with other types of bread.

My first choice for today was easy.  Ever since childhood, the bread aisle in the grocery store has always been my favorite.  While some kids begged their parents for cookies in the cookie aisle, I couldn't wait for the moment we entered the bread aisle and I could breathe in the aroma of cinnamon bread.  Even now I still love to make that trip down the aisle simple for the smell itself.  My one problem is that I absolutely hate raisins. So while I have always loved to smell cinnamon bread, i have never bought it because stores tend to fill it with the very thing I detest.  i set the goal for myself to make a bread that smelled just as delicious but was tasty as well.  Since I didn't want raisins I decided to make cinnamon chocolate chip bread because how can you go wrong with chocolate?

I knew this bread would be sweet and I didn't only want to make sweet bread so this week is a two bread week.  For something savory, I designed a garlic cheese bread that could be delicious alone or as part of a sandwich.

For the dough I started with the basic white bread dough I made last week.  I made it exactly the same until I reached the point where I divided it in half. That is when I changed each loaf to make one sweet and one savory.

The cinnamon bread is on the left and the garlic cheese is on the right

Cinnamon chocolate chip bread

Ingredients

Half of the white bread dough

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

handful dark chocolate chips

handful semisweet chocolate chips

melted butter

Directions

1. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl

2. Roll out dough to about a 18 inch by nine inch rectangle.  

3. lightly brush with butter and spread cinnamon and sugar over entire thing.  press chocolate chips into dough.

4. roll up tightly.  fold ends under and place in greased bread pan.  brush with butter. let rise 30-50 minutes.

5. bake at 425 for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. brush with more butter and let cool before removing from pan.

Garlic cheese bread

Ingredients

Half of white bread dough

4-5 garlic cloves

grated cheese of choice (i used cheddar and monterey jack)

Directions

1. Roll dough to a 9 by 18 inch rectangle.

2. Mince garlic until it becomes almost a paste and spread on dough.  sprinkle with cheese.

3. Roll tightly. Fold ends under and place in greased bread pan.  Press cheese into top. Let rise 30-50  minutes.

4. Bake at 425 for 25-30 minutes or until turns golden brown and cheese on top gets crispy.  let cool before removing from bread pan.

Chicken Alfredo Calzones

The other day I was at Ross which is one of my absolute favorite stores. I decided to browse through the cooking supplies to see if I could find some cake pans for this new cake I have been wanting to bake.  I didn't find the right pans, but I did find this set of dough presses.  Looking at the examples on the box, I started day dreaming about all the possibilities that could arise from having these presses to help form the perfect shape. I quickly bought them and headed home to start experimenting.

I brought out the trusty Betty Crocker Cook book and started skimming the pages.  That's when I landed on the pizza dough recipe that I watched my mom make countless times as a child and an idea was formed: Calzones.  Now I enjoy the basic types of pizza such as pepperoni and sausage as much as the next person, but i usually prefer to make a more sophisticated pizza so I chose to make my favorite type of pizza into a calzone and the chicken alfredo calzones were invented.

When these came out of the oven, steaming and golden brown, I could almost see my husband's mouth begin to water.  He quickly scarfed down a couple before he decided he was too full to move.  And of course he had to try the leftovers later and these are just as good cold as they are hot. 

Chicken Alfredo Calzones

Ingredients

Dough
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Filling
One cooked chicken breast cut into small pieces
1/4 cut chopped onion
1/2 - 1 cup alfredo sauce
1 cup cheese

Directions
1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in medium bowl
2. stir in remaining ingredients.  you may have to kneed the dough a bit to work them all together.  let rest five minutes
3. form into six equal circles of dough and fill with other ingredients.
4. moisten edges of circles.  Fold over and press together using a dough press or your hands.
4. brush with melted butter and bake at 425 for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Pork Fried Rice

The other day, I told my sister in law that I was going to make fried rice and she looked at me in amazement. "YOU know how to make fried rice?" she questioned as if it were some great feat that only the brave attempt to do.  When I told her that it is one of the easiest things I know how to cook she didn't believe me.  What I can never believe is that most people react in this way when they find out that I can make fried rice.  My husband's coworkers didn't believe him that his wife was white after he brought it to work with him one day.  Even when he showed them a picture of me, they thought he must be joking.

I actually don't remember when I learned how to make fried rice because I've been making it most of my life.  I would like to give you a link to the recipe, but my mother made up the recipe a long time ago.  For years my mom searched for a fried rice recipe similar to that of her favorite restaurant Jade's Chopstick, but alas, no recipe was to be found. Finally, she set out to make her own recipe and I feel she succeeded in making one which is almost as good as the fried rice at Jade's.

You can use this as a side dish if you make something like sweet and sour pork, but I prefer just eating a big bowl of this by itself. I apologize for the quality of my camera, I only had my phone with me to take a picture that day.

Pork Fried Rice

Ingredients

3 cups instant rice
3 or 4 eggs
6 or 7 green onions, chopped
several slices of ham, cut into small pieces
salt
pepper
soy sauce
olive oil

Directions

1. Cook the instant rice to the directions on the box.  If you have time, make it before you plan to make the friend rice and cool it in the fridge for a while.  this will keep it from sticking together when you cook it.

2. Put about two tablespoons olive oil in a hot frying pan and scramble the eggs in it.

3. When the eggs are cooked add the rice, ham, and green onions.  Stir in a little more olive oil and a few dashes of  soy sauce and salt and pepper to taste.

4. Cook the rice, stirring occassionally until it starts to brown.  If you like lots of soy sauce, feel free to add more as the rice cooks.  Serve as a side or by itself.

Pool Party Pasta Salad

On Saturday, I decided to try a new recipe for Pasta Primavera that my friend Jessica Posted on her blog, The Learning Curve.  That was the first time I had ever cooked with asparagus and I absolutely loved it.  With asparagus and tomatoes left over, I went in search of something I could cook for dinner last night that would be nice and light since summer always makes me detest really heavy foods.

During my search, I was truly happy that we have google.  Instead of pooring over cookbooks, I was able to type in asparagus salad and instantly had thousands of recipes vying for my attention. The one that caught my eye was a pasta salad wich I had most of the ingredients for that also used an ingredient I hed never used before.  In search of feta cheese, I rode my bike to the grocery store.  This is when I discovered that winco only sells one brand of feta cheese.  I guess this is lucky since I honestly had no clue how to pick good feta.

After adapting the recipe a bit to fit our tastes, I found my favorite pasta salad dish.  This is probably going to be on the menu for all our BBQs this summer.  You can find the original recipe here, but I will include my adaptation as well.

Pool Party Pasta Salad

Ingredients

• 1 (16 ounce) package farfalle (bow tie) pasta
• 1 cup broccoli florets (I used fresh, but frozen would work too)
• 8 ounces fresh asparagus spears, trimmed and chopped
• 8 ounces diced cooked chicken breast meat
• 1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
• 1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 ounces crumbled feta cheese
• 1 cup Italian salad dressing, or as needed
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta, and cook until tender, about 8 minutes. Add broccoli florets and asparagus to the boiling water during the last 5 minutes. Drain, and run under cold water to cool.
2. In a large serving bowl, stir together the diced chicken, kidney beans, black olives, green pepper, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and Italian dressing. Stir in the pasta, broccoli and asparagus. Season with salt and pepper to taste. This salad is best if chilled for a couple of hours before serving.  You may want to add a little more italian dressing right before serving.  It tends to dry out in the fridge.

My First Bread

Today was a very special day for me: I made bread for the very first time.  When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to have a stay at home mom who was talented in all the ways that a mom could be.  She grew her own fruits and veggies, sewed clothes for me and my dolls, made me plastic canvas barbie furniture, knitted me hats and gloves, and cooked and baked some of the most amazing food.  One of the things I remember most from my childhood was a tattered old red Betty Crocker cook book that I loved to put stickers on while my mom was cooking.   From this cookbook, my mom created a plethera of delicious goodies including homemade bread, pies, cobblers, biscuits, cookies, and casseroles.   I don't remember anything coming out of that book that I did not love.  

A while back when I was at a used store, I browsed through the books not looking for anything in particular.  That's when I spotted it.  I found my very own copy of that beloved cook book from my childhood.  That was when I set the challenge for myself: to make my very own homemade bread.  Now I had watched my mom make it countless times as a child, but could I reproduce that delight in my own kitchen without my mom there to help me?

I decided that today was the day to go for it. And boy am I glad I did.   After making my arms sore with kneading and boiling as I turned on the heat in my apartment for it to be in a warm environment while rising, and hours of waiting, I have produced two beautifully golden loaves of bread.  They plumped out of the pans just as they were supposed to and reached that deep golden color I remember so well from my childhood.  It's amazing how something as simple as bread can give me such a feeling of accomplishment.

Traditional White Bread

  6 to 7 cups all-purpose or bread flour
   3 tablespoons sugar
   1 tablespoon salt
   2 tablespoons shortening
   2 packages active dry yeast
   2 1/4 cups very warm water (120° to 130°)
   Margarine or butter, melted


1. Mix 3 1/2 cups of the flour, the sugar, salt, shortening and yeast in large bowl. Add warm water. Beat with electric mixer on low speed 1 minute, scraping bowl frequently. Beat on medium speed 1 minute, scraping bowl frequently. Stir in enough remaining flour, 1 cup at a time, to make dough easy to handle.

2. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead about 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl and turn greased side up. Cover and let rise in warm place 40 to 60 minutes or until double. Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.

3. Grease bottoms and sides of 2 loaf pans, 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 or 9 x 5 x 3 inches, with shortening.

4. Punch down dough and divide in half. Flatten each half with hands or rolling pin into rectangle, 18 x 9 inches, on lightly floured surface. Roll dough up tightly, beginning at 9-inch side, to form a loaf. Press with thumbs to seal after each turn. Pinch edge of dough into roll to seal. Press each end with side of hand to seal. Fold ends under loaf. Place seam side down in pan. Brush loaves lightly with margarine. Cover and let rise in warm place 25 to 50 minutes or until double.

5. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 425°.

6. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until loaves are deep golden brown and sound hollow when tapped. Remove from pans to wire rack. Brush loaves with margarine; cool.

From "Betty Crocker's Cookbook." Text Copyright 1991 General Mills.