French Baguettes

The word baguette does not mean "very difficult to make".   It actually means "narrow stick loaf" for those who really want to know.  When my husband and I got married almost 12 years ago his sweet great aunt Arzula gave us a Williams-Sonoma Breads cookbook.  I looked through fairly casually because I felt that so many of the recipes required "fancy cookery" that I didn't own and didn't have the money to buy, (ie a brioche mold, muffin rings, and baguette pans, and a stand mixer).  It has sat on my shelf for a long time.  There are only two recipes that I have tried, one of which is this baguette recipe and the other I'll tell you about another time (it's one of my favorite breads to make).  I finally decided to bite the bullet and make the baguettes after I received my stand mixer for Christmas.  I shared with my husband (he ate a whole loaf by himself) and the other three were shared with friends.  They all thought it was great.  Now a few things about this recipe.  It isn't hard.  It really isn't.  Follow the directions and you should be munching fresh, warm, crunchy, soft baguettes in a little over 3 hours.  Most of that 3 hours requires absolutely nothing from you.  Second, it isn't a traditional baguette recipe as it doesn't start with a polish (pronounced 'pol-eesh'), or a starter, which makes it appealing to me because I never plan that far in advance.  It doesn't have that sour flavor that I've come to expect from baguettes, but it still is pretty darn tasty with a warm bowl of soup, or by itself with pats of butter.  Thirdly, the recipe calls for 5-5 1/2 cups of flour.  The two times I've made these now I've only used about 4 1/2 c.  The dough is soft but not really sticky.  Fourth, I put the pan of tap water in the oven and then preheat my oven and it is boiling by the time I put my bread in, as opposed to trying to pour boiling water into a pan already into the oven, but whichever.  Do not skip this step.  It is imperative for getting that crusty crust.  One word of warning: The oven is set very hot and it will be quite steamy in there when you open the door to take your bread out so remember to stand back and let the steam escape before you stick your face down there.  The steam actually set off my smoke detector the first time I made these.  Lastly, you don't need baguette pans or a stand mixer.  I still don't own baguette pans.  I just use large rimmed baking sheets and they still look like baguettes to me.   If you don't eat all of them right away (what? you can't eat 4 loaves of baguettes in a single sitting). Wrap loosely after they've cooled.  I warmed mine in a toaster oven (thanks Karyli) for about 10 minutes and they were practically as good as when they came out of the oven the first time.  So there, you too can make baguettes.  Bon Appetit!

French Baguettes
Prep Time: 15 minutes + rising time
Cook Time: 20-25 minutes
Yield: Four 1/2 -lb baguettes

Ingredients:
5-5-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour (I use bleached bread flour)
2 t. salt
1 pkg. (2-1/4 tsp.) quick-rise yeast
2 c. lukewarm water (110 degrees)
boiling water, as needed
cornmeal for pans
1 egg white beaten with pinch of salt, for glaze
Directions: In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, combine 4 cups of the flour, the salt, yeast and water.  Stir until blended.  Knead with the dough hook until the dough is elastic and pulls cleanly from the bowl sides, about 10 minutes, adding flour as needed.   the dough will be very soft.  Turn out onto a lighly floured surface and knead for 1 minute. Form into a ball and place in a clean bowl.  Dust lightly with flour, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, 45-60 minutes.
Scrape the dough out onto a well-floured work surface.  Press flat, knead for a few seconds and return to the bowl.  cover with plastic wrap and let rise again until doubled, 20-30 minutes.
Line each of 2 double baguette pans (4 molds total, or two large baking sheets), each 18 inches long and 6 inches wide, with a kitchen towel and sprinkle with flour, lightly rubbing it into the fabric.  Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface; press flat.  Cut into 4 equal pieces, knead into balls and let rest for 5 mintues.  Press each ball flat and then fold into thirds.  Roll each into a rope 16 inches long with tapered ends.  Place in the towel-lined pans.  Cover with a kitchen towl and let rise until doubled, about 20 minutes.  Preheat an oven to 450 degrees.
Place a shallow pan of boiling water on the floor of the preheated oven.  Pull the pans out from under the towels.  Grease the pans and sprinkle with cornmeal.  One at a time, flip the loaves into the pans, underside up.  Brush with the glaze.  Using a sharp knife, make three 1/4" deep diagonal slashes on each loaf.  Bake until brown and crusty, 20-25 minutes.  Transfer the loaves  to a wire rack.  Serve warm or at room temperature. 

Cherry Berry Streusel Pie

I have wanted to make this pie for awhile and I finally got to it on Sunday. My son gave this two thumbs “way past up.” My kids are usually not big fans of pie, but they gobbled this up and when given the choice between cookies and pie, the two older ones chose pie. I was shocked because my cookies were pretty good too. A couple of notes on this recipe. It calls for a deep dish pie plate, which I didn't notice until I was too far into it to turn back. I simply didn't put as much filling in and it was still great. Second, if you aren't comfortable with making a lattice-top I am not sure it's necessary. I think next time I'll try it with just the streusel on top and cut the pie crust in half. It looked pretty though, until I tried to cut into it and it all fell apart. I also didn't find it necessary to chill the dough. It was really easy to work with. You can toast your pecans in a frying pan on the stove, just keep an eye on them, they toast quickly. Lastly, don't forget to put a pan on the rack under your pie while it's baking to catch any spills. Serve with a lovely scoop of vanilla ice cream. Let me know if you like it too! By the way, my pie was pretty but it didn't look anything like the picture below.  That's amazing, although maybe easier than lattice top. 

Cherry-Berry Streusel Pie

Prep Time: 30 minutes + chilling

Cook Time: 55-65 minutes

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients:

2½ c. all-purpose flour

1 T. sugar

1 t. salt

1 c. cold butter

7-8 T. cold water

FILLING:

2 can (21 oz. Each) cherry pie filling

1 c. fresh or frozen raspberries

¼ c. packed brown sugar

¼ t. ground cinnamon

TOPPING:

1 c. yellow cake mix

½ c. chopped pecans, toasted

½ c. flaked coconut

¼ c. butter, melted

2 T. 2% milk

2 T. sugar

Directions: Place the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor; cover and pulse until blended. Add butter; cover and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. While processing, gradually add water until dough forms a ball.

Divide dough in half so that one portion is slightly larger than the other; wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or until easy to handle.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out larger portion of dough to fit a 9-in. Deep-dish pie plate. Transfer pastry to pie plate; trim pastry to ½ inch beyond edge of plate. Combine the filling ingredients; spoon into crust. Sprinkle with dry cake mix, pecans and coconut. Drizzle with butter.

Roll out remaining pastry to a 13-inch circle; cut into strips for a lattice top. While creating the lattice top, twist the pastry strips for a decorative effect. Seal and flute edges of pie.

Brush lattice top with milk; sprinkle with sugar. Cover edges loosely with foil. Bake at 375° for 55-65 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly.


The recipe and photo are originally from tasteofhome.com and Taste of Home magazine

Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars

These buttery bars are sweet and chewy. They remind me of the butterscotch delights (cookies) that my mom used to make for us. They have a lot of butterscotch flavor. They are also better the day you make them, they don't last long. When you're making the glaze don't make it before the bars come out of the oven. It gets hard really fast and I ended up having to frost the bars instead of drizzling. So they weren't real pretty but that didn't stop me from eating half the pan. ENJOY!

Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 17-19 minutes + cooling

Yield: 36 bars – They must cut them much smaller than I do.

Ingredients:

BARS:

1¼ c. all-purpose flour

2 c. quick-cooking oats

½ t. baking soda

½ t. salt

16 T. unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened, each stick cut into 8 pieces

¾ c. butterscotch chips

1 c. packed dark brown sugar

2 t. vanilla extract

1 large egg

GLAZE:

2 T. dark brown sugar

1 T. water

1/8 t. salt

¼ c. butterscotch chips

Directions: FOR THE BARS: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 13 x 9 inch baking pan with aluminum foil, leaving overhang on all sides.

Mix flour, oats, baking soda,and salt in medium bowl until combined. Heat butter in small saucepan over medium-low heat until nutty brown in color, about 12 minutes. Pour hot butter over butterscotch chips in large bowl and whisk until smooth. Whisk in brown sugar until dissolved, then whisk in vanilla and egg until combined. Stir in flour mixture in two additions until combined.

Spread the mixture into prepared pan and bake until edges are golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 17-19 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack.

FOR THE GLAZE: Bring brown sugar, water, and salt to simmer in small saucepan. Pour hot sugar mixture over butterscotch chips in small bowl, whisking until smooth. Drizzle glaze over warm bars and allow to cool on rack until warm to touch, about 1½ hours. (They're house must be warmer than mine because mine were pretty cool after 30 minutes.) Using foil overhang, lift bars from pan and completely cool on rack, about 30 minutes. Cut into bars and serve.

This recipe is originally found on Cook's Country.com

Honey Wheat Rolls

One of my Christmas presents was my very first stand mixer. I am still giddy every time I use it. I love making bread in it because I don't have to get my hands dirty and it does all the work for it. However, now I have to do extra arm exercises to replace the workout I got from kneading. My husband is just as thrilled with this new found love of bread. You see whenever I make anything and I ask if he likes it he'll tell me “It's good.” That's about as much as I ever get out of him. However, when it comes to bread he still doesn't say much, usually because his mouth is full of bread. It's the only thing that gets a rise out of him (sorry I had to). I found this recipe for honey-wheat dinner rolls and thought it might be time to start using the 300 lbs. Of wheat down in my basement. They are completely delicious. My kids gobble them up. The dough is really sticky, which is a bit of a pain. However, they are light, full of honey flavor, and oh so, mouthwatering-delicious warm out of the oven. I hope you like them too.

Honey Wheat Rolls

Prep Time: 15 minutes + rising times + cooling

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Yield: 16 dinner rolls

Ingredients:

1¾ c. whole milk, heated to 110 degrees, plus 1 tablespoon

6 T. plus 1 t. honey

5 T. unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg

2½ c. whole wheat flour

1¾ c. all-purpose flour

1 T. instant or rapid-rise yeast

2¼ t. salt

Directions: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 200 degrees. When oven reaches 200 degrees, turn it off. Grease large bowl and 9 x 13 pan. Combine 1¾ c. milk, 6 T. honey, 4 T. butter, and egg in 4-cup measuring cup. Using a stand mixer fitted with dough hook, mix whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, yeast, and salt on low speed until combined. Slowly add milk mixture and mix until dough comes together, about 1 minute. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is smooth and almost clears sides of bowl yet still sticks to bottom, 6-8 minutes. (I found that I have to scrap the bottom of my bowl occasionally to make sure it all mixes in.)

Transfer dough, scraping sides of bowl, to greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in turned-off oven until dough has doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

Punch down dough on lightly floured counter. Divide dough into quarters and cut each quarter into 4-equal pieces. Form each piece into rough ball by pinching and pulling dough edges under so that top is smooth. On clean counter, cup each ball with your palm and roll into smooth, tight ball. Arrange in prepared baking dish and cover loosely with plastic. Let rolls rest in turned-off oven until doubled in size, about 20 minutes.

Remove rolls from oven and discard plastic. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Combine remaining 1 T. butter and remaining 1 t. honey in bowl. Brush rolls with remaining 1 T. milk. Bake rolls until golden brown and register 200 degrees, about 20 minutes, rotating dish halfway through baking. Brush with honey butter and let cool in dish on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove rolls from dish. Serve.

MAKE AHEAD:

Instead of 20-minute rise in step 4, baking dish with formed rolls can be refrigerated, covered, for 24 hours. Let dough sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before brushing with milk and baking.

Recipe originally found in Cooks Country Magazine, Nov. 2011, photo from cookscountry.com

Best Cornbread in the World

I know that is a supercilious name. I have no idea if it's even true. It's the name on the recipe as I received it. I have, however, tried several cornbread recipes and while most of them are just fine, this one is a little more so. It just has that little extra something that makes it taste better. It also bakes up pretty tall, not wussy like some other cornbread recipes that come out an inch tall. I would like someday to try and double this and put it in a 9x13 pan because as I said yesterday my kids really really like cornbread and we never have leftovers. My son especially loves to come home from school and eat leftover cornbread if possible. If you don't have buttermilk (I never do, okay rarely do) you can substitute with soured (or clabbered) milk. Do not put your milk out until it gets sour, instead put one tablespoon of vinegar in a 1 cup measure and fill with milk; let sit for 5 minutes. Do not use buttermilk powder, I can't seem to get that to work. ENJOY!

Best Cornbread in the World

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Cook Time: 25-30 minutes

Yield: 9 servings

Ingredients:

½ c. margarine, softened

2/3 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 c. buttermilk

½ t. soda

½ t. salt

1 c. yellow cornmeal

1 c. flour

Directions: Blend margarine, sugar, eggs and buttermilk. Add soda, salt, cornmeal and flour. Mix well. Pour into a greased 9x9-inch pan and bake at 375° for 25-30 minutes.

This recipe was originally found by me in a church cookbook.

Creamed Chicken Over Cornbread

I apologize for my extended absence from the blogging world but I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to get done. My house was becoming cluttered and disorganized and I do not function well in that environment so I had to do some sprucing up. The projects I've gotten done should hold me over till spring cleaning time.

So today I am going to introduce you to creamed chicken over corn bread. Does that sound weird to anyone else? It did to me, but it intrigued me enough to give it a try, whilst tweaking it a bit. And we like it quite a bit. All of my children LOVE corn bread so while they don't put the creamed chicken on top they still eat it on the side. The original recipe which I am going to give you calls for a corn bread mix. I don't like to use mixes very often because I get annoyed when I want to make something and I can't because I am out of that mix. So I use my regular corn bread recipe (I'll post that tomorrow). Corn bread mixes are slightly faster (not much once you've made the recipe a couple of times) and taste fine. You can also find them at fairly inexpensive prices. So it's up to you which you use. The other is that it calls for 2 cups rotisserie chicken which is way too expensive, so I just use cooked and cubed boneless skinless chicken breasts. If you are really smart, like my mother, you buy a whole chicken, cook it, debone it and freeze already cooked chicken in useable portions. I am not smart like that. I have a thing against deboning anything. It makes me queasy. One thing that I liked about this recipe is that it doesn't use cream of chicken soup, instead you actually make your own creamy goodness. You can get the bread in the oven and make the creamed chicken while it's baking. Serve with a green salad or a fruit salad. Enjoy!

Creamed Chicken Over Corn Bread

Prep Time: 20-25 minutes (this will vary depending on whether you use a mix or not, cooked chicken or not)

Cook Time: Cornbread 25 minutes or so; Chicken mixture about 15-20 minutes

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients:

1 package (8-1/2 oz.) corn bread/muffin mix

1 T. chopped onion (I put a little more, I live in Onion country and they're free!)

1/8 t. minced garlic

¼ c. butter, cubed

2 c. cubed rotisserie chicken (see ramblings above)

1 package (16 oz.) frozen chopped broccoli, thawed (come to think of it, I've never thawed it, I just let it cook a little longer)

2 T. all-purpose flour

1-1/2 t. salt (I decrease this to 1 t. or less)

2 egg yolks, lightly beaten

1 c. (8 oz.) sour cream

¾ c. milk

Shredded cheddar cheese

Directions: Prepare corn bread batter and bake according to package directions, using a 9-in round pan. (I bake mine in a 9x9, I like squares what can I say?)

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute onion and garlic in butter for 2-3 minutes; stir in chicken and broccoli. Cook and stir for 5-7 minutes or until heated through.

In a small bowl, combine flour and salt; stir in the egg yolks, sour cream and milk until smooth. Add to chicken mixture; cook and stir for 3-5 minutes or until thickened.

Cut warm corn bread into wedges (or squares); top with chicken mixture and sprinkle with cheese.

Original Recipe found in Taste of Home's “Fast Fixes with Mixes” 2011, photo from tasteofhome.com

Flank Steak with Loaded Smashed Potatoes

Have I mentioned that I love Cooks Country?  Because I do.  There are several reasons that I love this recipe from their website.  First, it's fast.  Second, it's simple.  Third, it's flavorful and delicious.  When I took a bite of the potatoes all I could say was, "Wow."  I think that perhaps I overcooked my steak a little bit, but that's my fault, not the recipe's.  I don't really like meat that's less than medium-rare.  But flank steak is supposed to be pink in the middle, so watch that.  And cooking potatoes in the microwave is my new favorite thing to do.  Enjoy!
Flank Steak with Loaded Smashed Potatoes
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: about 25 minutes

Yield: 6 servings of both meat and potatoes

Ingredients:
1 (1 1/2 - 2 pound) flank steak, trimmed
8 slices bacon, chopped fine
2 pounds small red potatoes, halved
2 T. vegetable oil
3/4 c. sour cream
4 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (1 cup)
2 scallions, sliced thin
Directions: Pat steak dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.  Cook bacon in 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 8 minutes.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towel-lined plate.  Pour off all but 1 T. fat from pan.  Cook steak over medium-high heat in now-empty skillet until well browned and meat registers 120 to 125 degrees (medium-rare), 5-7 minutes per side.  Transfer to cutting board, tent loosely with aluminum foil, and let rest for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, microwave potatoes and oil in large covered bowl until tender, 10-12 minutes.  Add sour cream and, using potato masher, mash until combined.  Stir in cheddar, bacon, and scallions.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Slice steak thinly against grain and serve with potatoes.

This recipe and photo are originally from http://www.cookscountry.com/