Cooking for Seven

Can you believe that this dough is 100% whole wheat? Can you? It is! Yet it handles so well - better than any pizza dough recipe I’ve ever tried. It is so easily manipulated, yet it doesn’t tear easily.

What’s the secret? I really couldn’t say. Perhaps the method of mixing. Perhaps the perfect combination of ingredients (thanks, Cook’s Illustrated!). Perhaps the type of whole wheat flour I use (white whole wheat flour). All I know is, my search for a whole wheat pizza dough recipe ended when I found this one. Maybe someday I’ll try a different pizza dough recipe, but for now I’m content.

Care for some ideas for pizza?

~ Why not spread it with some homemade pizza sauce and sprinkle it with homemade Italian sausage?
~ Or you could drizzle it with Smoky BBQ sauce and add chicken (perhaps some bacon) and cheddar cheese for a BBQ Chicken Pizza.

~ The other day, I made pizza on the grill. It’s a great way to beat the heat and it is so delicious. Here is an excellent article and video with the instructions.

How do you like to fix your pizza?

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Pizza Dough

Adapted from The New Best Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup warm water (about 110°
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 1/4 cups water, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cups (20 ounces) white whole wheat flour (aka white whole wheat flour)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
• Olive oil or butter, for greasing the bowl

Directions:

1) Place the 1/2 cup warm water in a small bowl. Add the yeast and stir. Let sit for about 5 minutes, or until the yeast begins to swell. Add to the room temperature water and oil and stir.

2) Place the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix briefly until combined. With mixer on low speed, slowly add the liquid ingredients. Mix just until a cohesive dough forms. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

3) Change to the dough hook attachment. Knead the dough until it becomes smooth and elastic, about 5-10 minutes.

4) Oil or butter a medium-sized bowl. Transfer the dough to the prepared bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel or plastic wrap and place in a warm spot. Allow to rise for 1 ½-2 hours, or until double in volume. The dough is now ready to be used in your recipe.

Makes enough dough for approximately 3 large thin-crust pizzas

Yankee cornbread. Slather it with butter. Pour on the maple syrup. Repeat.

This recipe is the perfect blend of sweet and nearly fluffy, and rustic and flavorful.

This cornbread has the best flavor when you use fresh ground or at least stone ground corn. However, it is still very tasty when you only have yellow cornmeal (as I did).

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Maple Cornbread

Adapted from the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (4 ounces) whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup stone ground or yellow cornmeal
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (8 ounces) whole milk
• 1/4 cup (2 3/4 ounces) maple syrup
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 425° F. Pour 2 tablespoons of the melted butter into an 8 or 9-inch square or round baking pan.

2) In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. In a small bowl, whisk the milk, maple syrup, remaining butter, and eggs. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently stir together just until moistened.

3) Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve warm with butter and maple syrup.

Makes 9 servings

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And now for the giveaway!

Here’s what you’ll win:

One lucky person will win two (2) cotton dishcloths, hand knitted by yours truly!

What makes these dishcloths so special?

They are knit with a single strand of crochet thread. That makes for a much tighter knit than regular hand knitted dishcloths. And the scrubbing power is wonderful. They take much longer to knit, but it is worth it.

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How can you win these?

Leave a comment describing to me what you would do with this piece of cornbread. For example: would you drizzle it with honey, spread it with jam, crumble it into a soup, or chuck it out the door?

The Rules:

• Leave a comment as described above before 11 p.m. on Monday, May 18.
• You must leave me with a valid e-mail address.
• Only one comment per person.
• The winner will be chosen at random using random.org.

Good luck!

Edited Tuesday, May 19: The giveaway has ended. Thank you all for participating! The winner will be announced shortly.

This bread really was extremely simple to make. Just mix all ingredients for 60 seconds, scoop into a pan, let rise, and bake. The taste is excellent as well, even with my changes to the recipe (replacing half of the AP flour with whole wheat)

Confession: I had a bit of a mishap when I was mixing the dough. The recipe instructed me to mix the dough with an electric mixer. My gut told me it would be better to mix it in the stand mixer. But a recipe (especially KAF) doesn’t lie, right?

Wrong. The dough was just too much for our little electric mixer. Bits of dough flew out of the bowl and onto the floor. The mixer made noises it shouldn’t.

Not to worry! I scraped the dough into the bowl of our stand mixer and finished mixing it there.

Lesson: when cooking, listen to your gut.

The finished product reminded me of the texture of bread sticks: crispy crust, soft crumb. It’s definitely a keeper.

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:: Focaccia ::

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Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) warm water
3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) olive oil (plus additional for drizzling)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) hard white wheat
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon onion powder (optional)

1 tablespoon dried chopped onion (optional)
pizza seasoning or dried herbs of choice, optional

Directions:

1) Lightly grease a 9″ x 13″ pan, and drizzle 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom.

2) In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine all of the ingredients except the optional seasonings. Beat at medium-high speed for 60 seconds.

3) Scoop the sticky batter into the prepared pan. Cover and let it rise at room temperature for 60 minutes, till it’s become puffy. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 375°F.

4) Gently poke the dough all over with your index finger. Drizzle it lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle with pizza seasoning, and/or the dried herbs of your choice, if desired.

5) Bake the bread till it’s golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool in pan 5 minutes, then turn it out of the pan onto a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I’m finally getting back into the swing of things after over a week of vacation. Please forgive me for the paucity of my posts. Hey, I like how that sounds. Paucity of posts. Paucity of posts.

Anyway.

I promise to be better in future.

Maybe.

We’ll be heading out to go skiing tomorrow, so things will be quiet around here for a week or so. I leave you with this recipe…

This recipe makes a moist and flavorful loaf again and again. And can you beleive it’s 100% whole wheat? Serve warm or at room temperature slavered with butter, or spread with cream cheese.

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:: Banana Nut Bread ::

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Adapted from The New Best Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (8 ounces) Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
• 1¼ cups walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped coarse
• ¾ cup sucanat, rapadura, demerara or granulated sugar
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3-4  large, darkly speckled bananas, mashed well (about 1½ cups)
• ¼ cup whole plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
• 1-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• Extra banana, for garnish, optional

1) Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease and flour a 9×5 inch loaf pan.

2) In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and nuts. In a medium bowl, mix the mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla until well blended. Gently fold the banana mixture into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula just until combined. Batter with be thick and chunky.

3) Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Garnish with slices of banana if desired. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean, about 55-60 minutes.

4) Remove from oven and cool in pan for 5 minutes. Gently loosen the edges with a knife. Transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes one large loaf