Braided Challah Bread

I love baking my own bread and I don't mind kneading it myself, but I usually just let the stand mixer do the heavy work. About 10 years ago I decided I needed to own an automatic bread machine.  You can't beat it if you only have five minutes to spare for prep work but want fresh bread a few hours later.  As it turned out though, I really missed the hands-on part of bread baking.  Eventually it took a backseat to my stand mixer and then was completely lost in the storage area of the garage that I like to think of as the Appliance Graveyard.  While I realize that anything in an area called a graveyard is probably due to be donated or thrown out, I can't seem to do that.  Just as soon as I donate it I'll want to use it.  I know this because once I donated my 20 year old ice cream maker, that had been in the Appliance Graveyard for 10, I found a new ice cream recipe I wanted to make that used a machine.  I'm still mourning the loss of my food dehydrator as well.
Last year my hoarding of the bread machine went from an annoying habit that my husband simply accepts in me to something possibly akin to opening King Tut's tomb, without the curse.  I found a bread recipe that used the bread machine to make the dough and then the shaping and final rising is done by hand.  I remembered that my model has a dough setting on it, but I'd never tried it.  We promptly began excavating for the bread machine. 


I made Bread Machine Honey Whole Wheat Challah bread, posted to Food.com by Rachel Leah D, that uses the machine to mix, knead and rise the dough, then I shape, rise and bake the loaves.  The resulting bread was tender, soft and had a hint of sweetness that compliments both a sweet or savory dish.  While I had intended to make the recipe as directed, I found there were some bumps in the road on the way to my success.  I only had 2 cups of whole wheat flour left, so I had to substitute with some white flour and I learned that my machine is not capable of holding the amount of dough this recipe made.  However, after an exhaustive online search I was able to locate a copy of my machine's long-lost manual and I now know that it makes one 2-pound loaf.

After adding all the ingredients to the machine I pushed the dough cycle button and let it go.  Just under two hours later, I happened to be in the kitchen, preparing my rolling mats for braiding the dough, when the machine showed that it had under 5 minutes left to go.  All of a sudden I heard a muted, yet still loud, "POP!".  Startled, I looked over at the bread machine and saw that the dough had expanded enough to unlatch and push up the lid on it's own! I had dough stuck to every inch of the interior, including the element below the bread container.  At this point I started to reconsider the curse aspect of unearthing my machine. 

The following recipe is my altered version because, as it turns out, we like it best with a combination of white and whole wheat flour and there were no braiding instructions in the original recipe.  I still use the bread machine but have also made the dough in my stand mixer.

Braided Challah Bread
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 egg
1 egg white
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups cracked wheat flour
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons active dry yeast (a 1/4 oz. packet)

For bread machine:
Add the first 8 ingredients to the bread machine in the order listed above.  Using a spatula, gently spread the flour out to cover all the liquid and then make a small well in the center.  Sprinkle the salt around the well and then add the yeast to the well.  Set the bread machine on the dough cycle and let it do it's magic. When the cycle is finished, remove the dough to a lightly floured surface.  Knead a bit of flour into the dough to make it workable, divided it into 3 equal pieces.  Divide the first piece into 3 equal pieces and roll them into 10-12 inch long ropes.  Gently squeeze the tops of each rope together and then braid them together.  Repeat with the other two pieces of dough to create three loaves.  Place the braided loaves on parchment lined (or greased) cookie sheets, cover them with a tea towel or foil and allow to rise for 30 minutes. Then bake the loaves at 325 F for 30-40 minutes.  Makes 3 large loaves.

Tomato, Bacon and Caramelized Onion Quiche

I've been trying out and creating several new quiche recipes over the last few months.   My main inspiration is a friend, and her three children, who were diagnosed with Celiac disease almost 2 years ago.  Anyone who has ever tried a low-carb diet will attest to the fact that cutting out breads and other baked goods is very difficult.  Celiac sufferers can't eat the wheat gluten, which is not only found in baked goods, but also items that do not contain flour.  Common kitchen ingredients, like ketchup, barbecue sauce, peanut butter, mayonnaise, salad dressings, syrup, taco seasoning, pasta sauce or wine can contain gluten.  But it's not just found in foods.  Hair products, cosmetics, sun-block, lotions and soaps can contain gluten as well.  After seeing the life changes my friend has had to make in order to keep her family healthy, and how costly it is to purchase gluten-free breads, cake and pancake mixes, it became my mission to develop gluten-free recipes that would satisfy their craving for baked goods, without sacrificing their health.

There are many gluten free products on the market and there are a couple major brands that produce gluten free baking mixes.  While I continue to play with rice flours and starches to produce breads and cakes that resemble those made with gluten, I am also trying out store-bought items that are gluten free.  Gluten free pie crust mixes are available, as well as pre-made, frozen pie crusts.  Another delicious option is to make a crust using crushed up gluten free cookies.  The recipe below is written with gluten free products in mind, but is just as easily made with your favorite brand or homemade recipe.

Tomato, Bacon and Caramelized Onion Quiche
1 frozen, gluten-free, 9-inch pie shell
2 Roma tomatoes, sliced thinly
5 slices gluten-free turkey bacon, chopped
1 medium red onion, sliced thin
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
4 ounces Gruyere cheese, shredded (can substitute Parmesan, smoked Swiss or Cheddar)
1 Tablespoon fresh basil, chopped (can use dried)
1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (can use dried)
1/8 teaspoon mustard powder
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and bake uncovered pie crust for 10 minutes.  In large frying pan, cook the turkey bacon and red onion, over medium heat, until caramelized, about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and set aside.  In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, cheese, herbs and seasonings.  Add the caramelized onion and bacon mixture; combine and pour all into the prebaked pie crust.  Arrange the sliced tomatoes on top.  Bake in a 375 degree oven for 45-60 minutes, or until knife inserted near the center comes out clean.  Serves 4

Oven-Baked Chicken Romano

As the name implies, Romano cheese has a starring role in this flavorful and healthier version of Chicken Romano.   Instead of being dredged in batter and fried or served with a fat-laden (although delicious) cream sauce, this oven-baked version offers plenty of flavor without the extra calories.

For over two thousand years, this hard, Italian cheese has been made in Rome, its namesake city, by a process known as rummaging the curd.  The curds of the cheese are drained well, then pierced before being salted and brined.  There are several types of Romano cheese, each made with a different milk and therefore producing slightly different flavors. 

The most authentic variety is Pecorino Romano and boasts a sharp, tangy and salty flavor.  To carry the title of Pecorino Romano, the cheese must be made under stringent Italian government guidelines.  To be precise, the cheese must be round, meet minimum weight requirements, be made from the milk of specific sheep, in a specific area of Italy and only manufactured between the months of October and July.  When Romano cheese is made from goat's milk it is called Caprino Romano and has a distinctly sharp flavor.  When it's made from cow's milk it has a milder flavor, which suits most American palates, and is called Vaccino Romano. 
All three varieties must be aged for a minimum of five months and are especially good for grating over dishes such as pasta, salads, breads and soups.

 

 Oven-Baked Chicken Romano


1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons grated Pecorino Romano cheese or 3 tablespoons parmesan cheese

2 sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped (dry packed, or very well drained if packed in oil)
2 teaspoons dried parsley

1 Tablespoon chopped fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup skim milk
8 chicken breast tenderloins or 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

 

Preheat oven to 425.  In a shallow dish, or pie plate, combine bread crumbs, cheese, tomatoes, parsley, basil and garlic powder.  Pour milk into a second shallow dish.  Dip chicken pieces into milk, and then roll in the crumb mixture.  Place coated pieces in an ungreased 13 x 9 baking dish.  Bake in the 425 oven for about 15-20 min or until poultry is tender and no longer pink.  Serve with your favorite steamed vegetable or a small side of pasta.

Lemon-Filled Ginger Scones

I want to share a new scone technique that I recently tried.  Most scones I've made are dropped by spoonfuls into a small mound, like a biscuit, or they're patted into one (or two) large, semi-flat rounds that are then cut into triangles before baking.  The triangular scones were my preferred method until I tried these delicious Lemon-Filled Ginger Scones found in the Breast Wishes cookbook; the third in a series of cookbooks published to raise money for breast cancer patients.  While making about six different scone recipes in a matter of days, I realized that I'm partial to the scones made with buttermilk.

Contrary to what its name implies, there is no butter (or fat) in buttermilk.  It's ideal in baking because it acts very much like whole milk in pancakes, muffins and scones.  The flavor it lends to your baked goods is richer and it provides a softer, fuller-bodied texture.  I recently made homemade butter.  A crazy idea, I know, but it was too intriguing not to try it.  I've always envisioned old fashioned butter churns, which were as tall as a third grader, with a wearied farmer's wife methodically pushing the paddle around until the butter is made.  I gave absolutely no thought to what was IN the churn, however, until now.

I put one cup of fresh, heavy cream and about 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt into a sterilized pint size canning jar.  The rest is easy... or so I thought.  Simply cap off the jar and shake it until the cream turns to butter.  Shaking the liquid did start out easy but was killing me at about four minutes.  At that time it had magically thickened up to where I couldn't hear it moving in the jar anymore.  I peeked under the lid and literally saw whipped cream!  It was so thick now and my arms were really getting tired so I tried passing it off on my ultra-lazy teen, who was still in bed at half past noon.  But he claimed he was too tired to shake for even a minute.  So I continued shaking it myself and within just another 30 seconds it sounded like liquid again!  Sure I'd ruined it when I had stopped shaking to pass it off, I looked through the side of the jar and was shocked to see a big lump of fluffy butter just floating in buttermilk.  What an amazingly simple process!  I separated the buttermilk from the butter.  The butter was outstanding and it worked just like butter from the store.  It hardened in the fridge and softened when left out. 

I've often substituted a combination of milk and vinegar for buttermilk in a recipe, but now I'm thrilled to have an even more authentic substitution.  When I decided to make homemade butter it never occurred to me that the bonus would be fresh buttermilk.  But I wasted no time testing it out in my new favorite scone recipe!

Lemon-Filled Ginger Scones

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1/3 cup lemon curd
Sugar, to sprinkle before baking


Mix flour, sugar and baking powder.  Cut in butter with pastry blender or two butter knives, and then stir in the buttermilk and ginger.  Form into a ball and divide in two, so that one half is just slightly larger than the other.  Line a pie plate (or cookie sheet) with greased foil.  Place the larger half of the dough on foil and pat into an 8 inch circle.  Spread with lemon curd, and then pat out the other half of the dough into a 7 inch circle.  Lay it over the lemon curd and fold up the edges of the bottom dough, sealing the seam as best you can.  Sprinkle a bit of sugar (I like a lot) over the top.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, cool slightly, cut into pizza slices and serve.  Serves 8

Gramma & Grampa Fjerstad's Lefse

One of the things I treasure most about family is the passing on of edible traditions.  When I was a teen my first husband's Norwegian grandparents taught me to make this thin, light potato pancake.  The recipe is delicious, of course, but the most wonderful thing about it was their tradition of making it together.  Just before Thanksgiving each year Carol and Bernie would make a huge batch of lefse.  Gramma would do the mashing, portioning and rolling, while Grampa's job was to do the cooking.  He would stand at the griddle with his lefse turner, a yardstick-like piece of wood, and happily flip each pancake over as it browned.  They would wrap and freeze half the pancakes for Christmas dinner and serve the remainder at the Thanksgiving meal.  Even though I learned to make it for the holidays, lefse is served all year round in place of a dinner roll or as a dessert.  I know many people like to eat lefse with cinnamon and sugar, lingonberry jam or even meat and cheese, but Grampa and Gramma taught me to simply spread it with butter and roll it up and that continues to be my preferred way of eating it.  The one tip Gramma stressed the most was to make sure your potatoes are refrigerator cold before adding the flour.  If they're warm when the flour is added the mixture turns to paste and will be impossible to roll out properly.  I'm still using Gramma's handwritten recipe, but I've been meaning to post it for a long time now, to make sure I don't lose it.
Traditional lefse making in Scandinavian countries was a practical way to use up an abundance of potatoes.  Now, for me, it's a way to share a taste of the heritage and the love I received from my son's great-grandparents.  And while I don't expect my young, rebel of a teenager to pick up a lefse stick anytime soon, I do hope that recipes like this will live on in his heart as a loving memory of his family.  Who knows?  One day I may be lucky enough to share this skill and my tools with his wife or his children.
The lefse rolling pin, with it's deep, checkerboard grooves and the yardstick-length lefse turner are traditional items used to make the pancakes, but both can easily be substituted with a smooth rolling pin and a spatula.  I'll often make the mashed potatoes the night before, so they can refrigerate and cool completely, and then the next day I add the flour, roll out the pancakes and put them on the dry griddle.  I've kept a round-shaped, Daisy brand griddle, for almost 20 years, just for making lefse.  But again, it can be done on a rectangular griddle or even in a fry pan on the stove.  If you make or enjoy lefse yourself, I hope this has brought back pleasant memories for you.  If you don't, I hope it inspires you to explore this Scandinavian tradition.

Gramma and Grampa Fjerstad's Lefse
5 lbs potatoes (8 cups mashed)
1/2 cup heavy cream (not whipped)
3/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon salt
4 cups flour (scant)

Peel the potatoes, cut into quarters (or smaller) and boil until tender.  You should be able to pierce the potato easily with a fork, but feel a slight resistance in the center.  Don't over-boil them.
Drain the cooked potatoes and then return them to the hot pot, but do not place back on the hot burner.  Let sit for about 5 minutes to steam out any additional moisture.
Mash the potatoes with the cream, butter and salt.  (Do this by hand, not an electric mixer.)
Place the potatoes in the refrigerator to cool completely.  (I like to stir them periodically until they're cold in the center.).
Begin stirring in the flour, a cup or so at a time.
Divide dough into 1-2 inch sized balls and roll each out into paper thin rounds on a floured board.
Bake on a hot, dry griddle. 
Lightly brown one side and then carefully flip the pancake to brown the other side.
Remove to a towel-lined plate (cloth or paper) and continue to stack the pancakes with paper towels between each one and a cloth towel to cover all.
To store, layer each cooled pancake between waxed paper and wrap in plastic wrap.  Store in the refrigerator until mealtime or wrap all in a Ziploc baggie and freeze for up to 6 months.

Capers

Capers are the unopened flower of a perennial Mediterranean shrub called the Capparis Spinosa. The caper bush or caper berry grows wild all over the Mediterranean on stony ground and can even be found growing from cracks in stone walls.

Although the caper is thought of as a gourmet ingredient, used in gourmet dishes, it's actually a weed. Many times it's pulled out as a weed because of its ability to grow wildly without human intervention. The caper buds are harvested between May and August and are best picked in the early morning before the bud has had time to open into a flower.

Fresh Capers, before pickling:

The caper is closely related to the cabbage family and resembles several spices, like cress, black and white mustard, wasabi and horseradish. Although the caper is chemically related to these spices, without treatment the caper directly from the bush is quite bland. To develop the peppery mustard flavor desirable in many dishes, from pasta and pizza to fish and salads, the capers must be preserved in either vinegar or salt. The isothiocyanates, a phytochemical occurring naturally in cruciferous vegetables, contained in capers will react to the salt or vinegar to bring out the intense flavor of the caper. The pickling brings out the spicy and slightly sour flavor of the caper and although similar in flavor intensity to the olive, they aren't eaten straight from the jar. They are best used to compliment a dish by adding saltiness toward or at the end of cooking. Because the pickled capers are salty, very little extra salt, if any, is needed in the dish. Small capers are called nonpareils and are considered to be more valuable. The larger capers are sometimes called a salad caper and have a milder taste than their smaller counterparts.

Capers have been around for thousands of years, mentioned in the story of Gilgamesh found on ancient Sumerian clay tablets dating back to 2700 B.C., as well as by the Roman, Apicus, who is believed to have written the very first cookbook in the 1st century. Caper bushes were used by the ancient Greeks not only for cooking, but also for medicinal purposes. The capers were an ingredient in their food while the leaves and roots were used to heal one's ailments.
Capers are high in anti-oxidants and assist with healthy liver function. Recent studies show that isothiocyanates neutralize carcinogens in the body and therefore are effective in lowering the risk of several types of cancers.

A few of the recipes we've enjoyed featuring capers can be found on Recipezaar.com:
Chickpea Salad with Cumin Vinaigrette by Kumquat the Cat's friend:

Simple Marinade and Rub for Fish by LifeIsGood

and
Pasta Puttanesca (the Madame's Pasta) by Pot Scrubber

Tarragon and Thyme Quiche

Tarragon, known as the King of Herbs in France, is an herb used mostly in classic French cuisine for vinegar, salad dressings, Béarnaise sauce, and homemade mustard. When paired with parsley, chives and chervil, it becomes the seasoning blend known as fines herbes. The name originates from the Latin word dracunculus, meaning little dragon. After being translated in Arabic to tarkhum and in French to esdragon the herb’s name evolved into a combination of both words to form tarragon.

Tarragon is part of a family of herbs known as the Dragon Herbs, due to their snake-like root system, and because of their serpentine roots, the Dragon herbs were used as medicine in medieval times to cure stings, snake bites and the injuries sustained from rabid animals. French Tarragon possesses an essential volatile oil, chemically identical with that of Anise, and when used fresh, with a light hand, adds a sweet licorice essence to the dish. It compliments most vegetables, fish, poultry, soups, egg dishes, herbed butter or mayonnaise, and makes plain white vinegar dazzle for use in sauces and mustards. However, the anise-like oils are lost when the herb is dried and if the herb is cooked too long it becomes bitter.

Sometimes I try a recipe with a strange ingredient combination out of curiosity and sometimes it’s simply because everyone else is afraid to try it. (Remind me some time to tell you about Pineapple-Garlic Upside Down Cake!) When I stumbled onto the recipe for Tarragon-Thyme Quiche, posted to Food.com by Starman, I thought there must be a typo in the ingredients. I couldn’t imagine a savory pie filling inside a cookie crust, but the recipe had not yet been reviewed by another chef, so I knew I had to try it.

I admit I had my doubts right up until I was serving it, so even though my family is game to try anything once, I didn't tell them about the ingredients until I heard a lot of, "Mmmmm!" going on around the table. The dish strikes a balance between sweet and savory that is very satisfying, and with many ingredient variations available, this recipe is an excellent way to clean out the fridge at the end of the week. I used all fresh herbs, smoked Swiss cheese, turkey-bacon, white onion, green bell pepper, 2% milk and the graham cracker crust option. Every ingredient came together, melding into one beautiful harmony. So, get in touch with your adventurous side and give this quiche a try!

Tarragon and Thyme Quiche