culinary experiments and explorations

Adapting from The Best-Ever Book of Bread today, I decided to try out making a variation on a granary cob.

A "cob" is one of those lovely round loaves of bread you often see at professional bakeries, the kind that are less frequently sold at supermarkets because they won't fit quite as readily into premade plastic bags to be left on a shelf. I have fond memories of my parents buying fresh-baked cobs at the bakery near where I grew up, usually for use with an Italian deli picnic or as a tasty extra with spaghetti sauce.

I've only made a couple of recipes from this book before, mostly because of my hesitation to approach rising yeasty breads, but with my newfound confidence I've decided to take another look through it and see what catches my attention.

Today's experiment was an adaptation of the first page I dog-eared -- ( An Oat-Topped Granary Cob. )

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this recipe was to make, and how readily adaptable it was. Moreover, the end result was impressively tasty and I certainly plan to make it in the future as a side to other dishes. The bread is soft and delicious, with a well-formed crisp crust.

Third bread recipe for today, appropriately enough, is adapted from the frankly very impressive Panera Bread Cookbook. This recipe made a lot more bread than I was expecting, particularly with the four-smaller-loaves pattern I'd been following -- two loaves sizeable enough that they wouldn't have been out of place on sale at a full-size bakery stall in the market.

Pleasantly enough, despite a substantial amount of rising for the dough, it also went relatively quickly. It's also adaptable to, well, whatever three or so different cheeses you might have on hand. I used what I had available to create a batch of ( Three Cheese Bread. )

Incredibly tasty and savory cheesy bread, equally servable sliced thin or with people just tearing off hunks at a party. The base recipe also makes a stupendous amount of bread, enough for two full-sized loaves -- I gave one loaf away to a convalescing friend and took another in to share with about a dozen or so other friends, and everyone got a decent quantity. Highly recommended, and I'll be trying out a number of other Panera recipes in the future.

Over the past week or so, after finally having an epiphany on how to make yeasty breads rise properly in my rather cool kitchen (namely, let the dough rise in a covered glass bowl near the oven vent with an extended preheating), I've been having quite a bit of fun experimenting with a small handful of recipes.

First off was my test case -- the Mall Pretzels recipe off of AllRecipes.com. Overall, it's really straightforward -- the only part I found, and continue to find, challenging was the shaping of the dough into the "pretzel" shapes after the rise. It just felt like there wasn't quite enough actual dough there to do it properly, particularly with the way the elastic risen dough didn't seem to want to roll out into meter-long pencil-thin ropes for proper twisting.

So I thought, why not play around with the division of the dough? Instead of dicing it into twelve pieces, why not try it with six pieces and a concurrently longer baking time? What about four pieces? I did still try to roll it out into pretzel shapes, but in the end it felt like too much trouble for just having fun experimenting and I chose to put it in loaves instead.

As it turned out, that made for some incredibly tasty bread, particularly once I added to the recipe with minced garlic, various herbs, and a little cheese to top it off.

Here's my ( Final Adapted Recipe for Italian Herb & Garlic Pretzel Bread )

I've totally fallen in love with this bread, and its salty goodness seems to be a big hit with everyone I've given it away to as well. Fresh bread -- it's great! (Unless you have a gluten allergy, in which case it's not, and I'm really sorry for your unfortunate dietary limitations. *wry grin*)

This morning was filled up with quite a bit of household tasks and chores, so to take a break I made a batch of banana nut bread. Mostly this was motivated by having plenty of leftover bananas that were overripe and about to go bad anyways -- double bonus!

( Banana Nut Bread )

Ridiculously easy to make and cook, smells fantastic, and my loaf is just about to come out of the oven. Of course, I did neglect to properly grease the pan before I put in the dough, so no doubt it'll end up a bit stuck to the pan -- learning experience for next time!

I snagged this recipe off of a baking LJ comm a while back and gave it a wee bit of modification. Overall, though, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. Really tasty, all in all. So, no further ado, the recipe:

( Triple Chocolate Cranberry Cookies )

They're usually a big hit for being awesomely chocolate-y with extra cranberry tartness. Hope you like them as much as I usually do!

Using the calzone/pizza dough recipe and my spicy red pizza sauce recipe, along with a healthy smattering of grated four-cheese (Mexican mix), I baked up some dinner with these ingredients:

* 13 oz. of Mom's calzone dough
* 4 regular spoonfuls of spicy red pizza sauce
* sufficient grated cheese to lightly cover the sauce
* five slices of salami
* 12 - 15 slices of pepperoni
* 2 oz. of fresh sliced mushrooms
* 1/6 of one green bell pepper, diced
* ... with more grated cheese on top to serve as binder for all the toppings

After 14 minutes of baking at 450 degrees, it turned out to be ( not bad combination pizza! )

Overall, pretty good considering. I'll just have to figure out a way to get the stone pre-heated next time and then put the prepared dough-and-toppings onto it.

Again going with a recipe from Emeril's Potluck, I went for just a snack this time -- today's earlier experiment with Sausage-Stuffed Bread was enormously filling. This time, I decided to go for a starter, and despite the recipe not turning out quite how I think it was supposed to I was fairly well-satisfied with the recipe on p. 37 -- ( Spiced Nuts. )

Overall, a pretty tasty snack -- if you can get your fingers on some of the nuts which are well-coated or enveloped by the spiced brown sugar. However, it felt to me as though there wasn't quite enough of the sugar-binder to really make an almost cookie-like treat. What I got was yummy enough to warrant a second try, though -- maybe with more sugar/spices?

A few weeks back, someone posted this recipe onto an LJ cooking community. Annoyingly, though I copied the recipe into a file I neglected to note whose recipe it is. Grrrr. So if this is your dough recipe, speak up and I'll gladly give you credit!

( Pizza Dough (used for Pepperoni Calzone) )

Long post, I know, but so worthwhile. I so should have taken a picture of this when it came out of the oven, but it looked so delicious I just tore into it. I'll take a picture when I make another tomorrow with another portion of the dough.

Now, as to taste: I've dabbled with a handful of different pizza dough recipes before, and most of them have seemed too starchy or too crunchy. This, however, was nothing of the sort. Baked, it was crisp yet still soft and pliable, and combined with the pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperoni made an absolutely fantastic light meal. I can honestly say it turned out to be one of the best calzones I've ever had, and coming from me that's saying a lot. I absolutely plan on making this recipe again, and I recommend it to any pizza or calzone lover.

As to toppings other than pepperoni... well, practically anything can be used. I worked in a couple of pizza shops on and off for more than a year, all told, and if you can imagine it (and it has no bones or anything inside) it can most likely go on a pizza. Particular combinations that I can recall include:

* Hawaiian: slices of ham and diced pineapple on red sauce
* Chicken Luau: use barbecue sauce instead of red sauce, top with diced chicken, pineapple, bacon, and green onions
* Stromboli: red sauce with salami, pepperoni, Italian sausage, and mushrooms
* Vegetarian: red sauce with mushrooms, green pepper, diced tomatoes, sliced onion, black olives, and/or artichoke hearts

But pretty much anything is possible. I'll see if I can't rustle up a recipe for a decent garlic white sauce as well, for an alternative to the red sauce -- even though, for me, the red sauce hits the spot. : )

Not much going on the past week -- between work and hobbies I haven't made the time to cook all that much that's new and interesting. Weekends, however, are when I have time to actually experiment a bit more. I'd snagged a bunch of cookie recipes and printed them out Friday at work, and decided to start experimenting with at least a few yesterday morning.

The first one I made was ( Skibo Castle Ginger Crunch. )

I adapted this recipe from the Good Morning America Food & Recipes page. Sad to say, overall I wasn't particularly impressed by it. The shortbread base seemed rather bland, and far too dry and crumbly for my tastes -- but maybe that's just the nature of shortbread. It wasn't in any way crunchy, really, and I expected it to be given the name of the recipe.

The ginger-maple taste of the topping is pleasantly sweet and elevates the recipe from mediocre to OK.

Overall rating, 3/5 -- I probably won't make it all too often, given that I can make tastier cookies for about the same amount of effort with similar ingredients, but at least this is a simple and straightforward snack recipe.

The other night, I decided I wanted to try out a pesto sauce recipe I'd found, and thought that cheesy garlic bread would be just the thing to go with it. I made the garlic bread first, and as it turned out it smelled and tasted so good that I didn't bother with the pesto sauce and pasta after all!

( Three-Cheese Garlic Bread with Herbs. )

Goes very well with the previously posted Meaty Red Sauce for dipping or topping.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.