Passion Kneaded

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

"English Muffin" Bread

This is another of those loaves that I made with no intention of sharing on my blog. But I loved the end result so I thought I'd share. I had gone into the kitchen intending to make Sourdough English Muffins. However, my starter just wasn't bubbly. I had been having trouble with it - I think it's STILL punishing me for buying commercial yeast over a year ago. I had to put off the English muffins but I really needed to make something. Anything. I remembered seeing recipes for "English Muffin" Bread and quickly looked up a recipe.

Of course, I got distracted and some milk that I was only supposed to be scalding went a bit beyond the scalding stage and reduced a lot. I decided to just go with it anyway and didn't bother to add fresh milk to make up the rest. I loved how quickly this bread came together. The entire process took less than an hour and a half. The crumb was great and the flavour was good too. I snapped a crumb shot for a friend, ate several slices and then thought that I should share it here. Weeks later, I'm finally getting around to it.

I'll definitely make this again and will try adding various flavours to it. Garlic is always my first choice but we'll see what I decide on. Tomorrow I'll be sharing a really delicious sandwich that I made with it.

English Muffin Bread

Ingredients

12.75 oz all purpose flour
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup milk
cornmeal for loaf pan

Directions

Grease a loaf pan and sprinkle bottom and sides with cornmeal.

Whisk together flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Heat milk and water to between 120F to 130 F. Pour over dry ingredients.

Beat at high speed for a minute then scoop into prepared loaf pan. Cover and proof at room temperature until dough has doubled. This could take about 45 minutes, depending on the temperature of the room.

Before the door has doubled, preheat oven to 400 F.

Bake the dough for 22-27 minutes or until it registers 190 F. Cool for 5 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack. Allow to completely cool before slicing.

Notes

I adapted this from King Arthur's English Muffin Toasting Bread. They used more milk than I did. You can definitely do that or even use all milk.

The recipe is for an 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan. However, I used a 9" x 5" pan without scaling the ingredients. I was fine with the size. However, you may want to use the smaller pan so you can have a taller loaf.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Spicy Chicken Cauliflower Pizza - Crazy Ingredient Challenge

I am surrounded (virtually) by cauliflower. First, cauliflower (and cheese) won the vote for this month's Crazy Ingredient Challenge. A few days later; I got an email from Pinterest featuring all things cauliflower. Then a blogger posted a round-up of 10 cauliflower recipes. A few others posted their own cauliflower recipes and then I learned about cauliflower Alfredo from yet another blog post.

You know me, I live for dessert. I try to turn almost all the Crazy Ingredient Challenge ingredients into dessert . It was with some reluctance that I ditched my original ideas for pizza. Don't look at me like that. Cauliflower in dessert would definitely have worked. It's very mild tasting so it would have been easy to blend it into a quick bread or brownies and then top them with an amazing cream cheese frosting. But pizza is good too and it's been a very long time since I've had pizza. I'm pretty sure it's been about two years.

I have ZERO regrets about going for pizza instead. Sure, it helps that I also made cupcakes on the same day. But seriously, this pizza is absolutely delicious! The cauliflower sauce works perfectly here. Again, it's very mild so I am sure that no one would suspect that you topped your pizza with cauliflower sauce. They would be too busy enjoying the cheesy goodness.

Be sure to check out what everyone else made below!

Spicy Chicken Cauliflower Pizza

Recipe by: Kelly

Yield: 2 10-11 inch pizzas

Ingredients

Pizza Dough

275 grams all purpose flour
152 - 182 grams water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

Cauliflower Sauce
3 cups cauliflower
3 cups water
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons minced garlic (see note)
salt & pepper, to taste

Toppings
4-8 ounces pepper jack cheese
1 cup cooked chicken, cubed
tomato, diced
jalapeno, diced
red pepper flakes

Directions

Pizza Dough
Combine all the pizza dough ingredients until it just starts coming together then knead for an additional 5-7 minutes. Dough should be tacky. Start with the smaller amount of water and add water as needed.

Form into a ball and place in a large, oiled bowl. Cover tightly and immediately refrigerate for at leas 18 hours.

Remove dough from fridge and divide iinto two pieces and form each piece into a tight ball. Leave the balls to rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven and a pizza stone, if using, to 450 F.

Flatten each dough into a disk and gently stretch it to a 10-12 inch circle ensuring that the edges are thicker than the center. If the dough tears, be sure to patch it so that the sauce doesn't leak through.

Place a disk on a floured peel. Brush the edges with oil. Top with approximately 6-8 tablespoons of cauliflower sauce, half the chicken, tomatoes, jalapeno and then cheese.

Slide the pizza onto the pizza stone and bake for 7 - 9 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. Let rest for 2 minutes then sprinkle with red pepper flakes before serving.

Cauliflower Sauce
Boil the cauliflower in the water until the cauliflower is tender. Remove the cauliflower with a slotted spoon and place in a food processor or blender. Add 1 cup of the cooking water, milk and garlic. Process until it's completely smooth. Add salt and pepper and process once more.

Notes

The garlic in the sauce may be very assertive, however, it definitely mellows out after being baked on the pizza. You can saute the garlic beforehand or start with less garlic and then add as much as you like.

You may also want to add more sauce than I suggested. The recipe makes more than enough. Leftovers can be stirred into pasta or soup.

An InLinkz Link-up

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Spiked Lemonade Bundt - #BundtBakers

I am the host of this month's Bundt Bakers and challenged my fellow bakers to bake a Bundt inspired by Girl Scout cookies. My fellow bakers may be surprised to learn that I have never eaten a Girl Scout cookie. I've just never seen anyone selling them. The fundraising-children outside my supermarket usually sell chocolate. I'm pretty sure that I saw a Girl Scout some weeks ago and she was holding one of those boxes of fundraising-chocolate. I think that when I was a Brownie in primary school, my friend and I may have sold some cookies one year. I have a vague memory of knocking on some gates in my neighbourhood. They were most likely just simple vanilla and chocolate sandwich cookies. From what I gather, the US Girl Scouts are the main cookie entrepreneurs.

I wasn't a good Brownie and I was an even worse Girl Guide. I avoided camping - never even told my mother about it. When I first transitioned from Brownie to Girl Guide, I ordered my uniform but never picked it up. I know. Horrible. But it was complicated. You know, in the way that 10 year-olds can have complicated lives. A new girl moved into the neighbourhood and we started high school together. (High school starts at age 10/11 in Jamaica.) We were inseparable. I was at her house every day after school. Her mother was a dressmaker so I asked her to make my uniform instead of using my regular dressmaker. Then suddenly, C and I weren't friends anymore and picking up my uniform became a wee bit of an issue.

Adding Lemon-Rum Syrup

I have no idea what happened. When we talked about it years later, she didn't know either. I'm 100% sure that whatever happened was my fault though. There was no fight or anything like that. More than likely, I just got distracted. I was a VERY impressionable 10/11 year old (and beyond but let's not go there). I think it was another year or two before I got a new uniform made and started attending Girl Guide meetings. C and I ended up in the same class for the last 4 years of high school but it wasn't the same. We each had our core group of friends by that point but we did keep in touch off and on after high school. When she was in Florida with her family 3 years ago, we met up and ended up talking about baking bread. She introduced me to white wheat. High school regrets; I have lots.

I made a cake based on the Lemonade cookie (a shortbread dipped in lemon glaze). I chose this for one simple reason - it's the last cookie that I'd ever choose to eat. There are Thin Mints (chocolate), Samoas (more chocolate plus coconut) and Thanks A Lots (dipped in chocolate)! There would just be no reason to choose Lemonades. But I'm trying to branch out when it comes to dessert flavours. So it was time to find out what lemons had to offer. I figured that adding a little rum wouldn't hurt. I'd tell you that I ate this entire cake by myself in 4 days but I'm pretending that never happened.

Be sure to scroll down to see everyone baked!

Spiked Lemonade Bundt

Recipe by: Kelly Adapted from: Cook's Illustrated

Yield: 1 cake

Ingredients

Cake

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup buttermilk, room temperature

¼ cup rum

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups sugar

1 cup + 2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons lemon zest

3 egg, room temperature

1 egg yolk, room temperature

Lemon - Rum Syrup

2/3 cup sugar

4 tablespoons lemon juice

½ cup rum

4 tablespoon butter

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

4 tablespoon rum syrup

Directions

Cake

Preheat oven to 350 F. Thoroughly grease and flour a 10 - 12 cup Bundt pan.

Whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a small bowl. In a separate container, mix together buttermilk, rum, lemon juice, and vanilla.

Cream sugar, butter, and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Add eggs and egg yolk one at a time and beat until combined.

Add the flour mixture in 3 additions alternating with 2 additions of the buttermilk mixture. Scrape down the bowl as needed

Scrape batter into the prepared Bundt pan. Bake for 40 -50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes then remove cake from pan..

Lemon-Rum Syrup

While cake is baking, whisk together sugar and lemon juice over low heat until sugar is dissolved. When sugar has dissolved, add rum and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and stir in butter. Reserve 4 tablespoons of syrup.

Prick the warm cake all over with a fork. Brush the cake with the rum syrup. You can also slowly pour the syrup over the cake ensuring that the syrup has been absorbed before pouring more. Cool the cake completely.

Glaze
Mix together powdered sugar and enough of the reserved syrup until the desired consistency has been reached. Add additional water, if needed. Pour the glaze over the cooled cake.