French Bread, or Woods Finds an Open Window

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to make French bread for our dinner party.  Since I was already baking this dessert, I figured, why not add some fresh baked bread to the meal!  

Here is the recipe, adapted from this source:

KitchenAid Stand Mixer French Bread

Ingredients:

2 packages active yeast

2 1/2 cups of hot, but not scalding, water 

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon of melted butter

7 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons of corn meal

Stick of butter

Kitchen Supplies:

Stand mixer--while there are many recipes out there for french bread you make by hand, this recipe is especially designed for stand mixer since it does all the kneeding for you.  I am sure it could be adapted for use without a stand mixer

Glass bowl

Kitchen towel

Rolling pin

Cookie sheet

Rinse mixing bowl with warm water to warm up the sides and bottom of the bowl.  Pat dry.  Add yeast and hot water.  Mix by hand until combined.  Place mixing bowl on Stand mixer.  Add melted butter, flour and salt.  Using the dough hook attachment, mix on speed 2 for 1 minute or until well blended.  Continue on speed 2 for an additional two minutes.  Turn contents of bowl into a glass bowl greased with butter.  Cover with towel and place in a warm place free of draft for one hour.

For a warm, draft-free place (especially in the winter) I usually use my oven.  Turn the oven to 350 for 2 minutes to warm it and then turn it off.  Place the dough mixture inside.  Also take care to lower the oven racks so you don't burn a hole through or set your towel on fire once it's in there!

Once an hour has elapsed, remove from oven (or other warm place) and punch mixture down.  It should have doubled in size over this time.  Remove from bowl and divide into two equal pieces.  With a small amount of flour to prevent sticking, roll out each piece to approximately 12 inches by 16 inches.  Starting from the longest end, roll up tightly into a long baguette roll.  Shape the ends into tapers if desired.  Place on a cookie sheet that has been dusted with the cornmeal.  Repeat with other half.  Cover and return to warmed oven (again warm for 2 minutes) and let rise for an hour.

Remove from oven.  The baguettes should have again risen over the second hour.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Using a sharp knife, cut four slits across the top of the loafs.  

Cook bread for 25 minutes, then remove from oven.  Run a stick of butter over the tops of the bread and return to oven for five more minutes of cooking.  Remove from oven.  Serve hot or cold with your favorite dishes.

There is a lot of down time during this process and this time I used to clean the house and soak our stove's drip plates which had, sadly, lots of caked on food on them from all the cooking we have been doing as of late. While I was baking, it occurred to me I should have cleaned the oven too because it got a little smoky and our very sensitive fire alarms went off.  I opened the kitchen window to stop the incessant beeping and when I turned around, I found this.

Apparently Woods enjoy an open window no matter what the size!

Happy baking and happy Christmas Eve everyone!

Pumpkin Bars recipe, or We Have A Lot of Leftovers

As I mentioned in this post, I made Pumpkin Bars this weekend for our dinner with JY and Ashlee.  I knew I wanted to make a dessert for them and when I thought about all of the dessert recipes in my repertoire and which I would like to make this weekend, Pumpkin Bars immediately came to mind.

You see, when I was growing up my mom would bake us a cake of our choice for our birthday every year.  As I detailed in this post, my mom is not big on baking, so this was a very nice gesture!  While my siblings would choose confetti or chocolate cake, my dad and I always chose Pumpkin Bars for our birthdays.  I loved them so much my mom even figured out how to mail them to me my first year of college!  Even before all that, my grandma (whose recipe this is and of Grandma D's Sugar Cookie fame) used to make these for my dad when he was young and I believe he brought some back from her to college too!

They are delicious and instantly remind me of all the great birthdays I've spent with my family over the years.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Pumpkin Bars

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups of sugar
15 ounce can of pumpkin
2 cups of flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Frosting:
4 ounces of cream cheese (usually half of a regular box of cream cheese), softened
3/4 stick of margarine, softened
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups of powdered sugar


Kitchen Supplies:
Handheld mixer or stand mixer
Cookie sheet (my grandma's original recipe calls it a jelly roll pan)
Sieve for sifting
Medium size bowl for dry ingredients

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda.  Add ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to dry ingredients.  Next, mix eggs, vegetable oil, sugar and pumpkin well.  Slowly add dry ingredients to wet, stirring to combine.  Pour into a 12 x 18 pan (see notes above) and bake for twenty five to thirty minutes until toothpick, when inserted, comes out clean.

Allow to cool.  Combine cream cheese, margarine, milk, vanilla and powdered sugar.  Beat well until creamy and smooth.  Spread over top of cooled bars and serve.

This makes a lot of food.  On Sunday we each had two pieces and J and I have been eating some for dessert for lunch and dinner (and breakfast one day) every day this week and we still have a ton left over, hence the title of this post.

Alas, I didn't get any pictures of the finished product before we dug in, but trust me, it's great. As always, please let me know if you try the pumpkin bars and if you end up loving them as much as I do!

Weekend Events

This weekend was a busy but happy one. First, we saw two of our good friends get married in a beautiful and very personal outdoor wedding! Their siblings shared readings they selected for the couple which had all of us laughing, smiling and nodding our heads in agreement--the readings fit the couple and their relationship so well! A reception at a yummy local Thai restaurant that followed perfectly capped off the day.

You may kiss the bride!

Yesterday I spent the day reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I know I am a bit behind the curve on reading this book since they have already made a movie about it, but I tried to read it once when it first came out and couldn't get into the novel. This time, I couldn't put it down. Part of the novel is set in the township of South Haven, MI which is where my family has a vacation home. It was so fun to read the novel and recognize places I've grown to know and love, like St. Basil's Church! I started and finished this novel in one day, something I haven't done in a long time and felt oh so good. Her follow-up novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, is likewise haunting and delicious. I strongly recommend them both to you!

I also spent time on Sunday baking French bread, using my KitchenAid Stand Mixer as a bread maker for the first time. It was a smashing success and created a great aroma in the house that I enjoyed while reading my book and drinking some Irish Breakfast tea on our couch.

Fresh bread, anyone?

Overall, it was a very relaxing and beautiful weekend around here. How was your weekend, friends?

Life is Good

Dinner has been made (and consumed): Asian lemon chicken, a recipe from my childhood. Cookies have been made (with the new stand mixer) for dessert tonight and lunches this week. Laundry from this weekend has been cleaned, folded and put away. J and I were able to take a long walk after dinner.

We have a dear friend (and best man at our wedding) coming to visit this weekend, which also coincides with the start of college football season. I have my new "The Shirt" from Notre Dame ready and waiting.

Life. is. good.

How was your weekend?

The Good, the Beautiful, and the Ugly

This slightly altered phrase pretty much describes our weekend.

The good was the Saturday J and I had this weekend. We visited our favorite farmer's market in the northern part of the Lou that guarantees that all of the produce is local and picked fresh within 24 hours. We always find great and sometimes unusual ingredients to fill our bags, and this weekend was no exception. We bought fingerling potatoes, leeks, yellow and red bell peppers, purple basil and gorgeous heirloom tomatoes. The fingerling potatoes made an appearance in our dinner tonight: steak with "Secret" sauce and oven-roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes--so called because my dad invented it a few years ago and will only share the recipe with close family and friends! The leeks will be used in Vichyssoise later this week which is another of my dad's recipes. The purple basil and heirloom tomatoes were consumed almost immediately. J and I used them in a Caprese salad as part of our picnic in the park Saturday afternoon. It has been so hot lately that we have done very little outside other than go to work, go to the grocery store and sweat! It was so wonderful to be able to sit outside, eat fresh, local produce and drink crisp wine under the shade of big oak trees, all without getting our shirts damp.










The beautiful is my new KitchenAid 5 Quart Architect Series stand mixer. She is a beauty and currently sits on our counter waiting for me to make all sorts of pies, cookies and bread with her. J and I hope to add these attachments to our collection eventually, which expand her uses to pasta and ice cream making. I intended to make some french bread this weekend, but the coconut cream pie I made took up too much of my Sunday afternoon to make that possible. All the ingredients are in my pantry though, so I plan to take her for a spin again soon!

Hello lover!

Speaking of pie, we now move to the ugly, which is the end result of my coconut cream pie. See, while it tastes delicious and looked perfect right out of the oven, it never set up properly. Also, the meringue on top began to pull away from the sides of the pie (even though I pushed it all the way to the edges like the recipe suggested) and began to weep. Cream pies are J's favorite though, so I will have to try it again. Thinking back on my execution of the recipe, I do not think I let the cream base cook down and thicken enough, which could explain the liquid soup center. As far as the underwhelming meringue, who knows! Whipped egg whites have been known to be temperamental!! Since the recipe didn't turn out the way I planned and I'm not sure why, I am not going to share the recipe as I normally would. I don't want your pie to turn out like mine did. I did want to mention the experience, however, because around here, we like to keep it real.

How was your weekend?

These Boots are Made for Walking

Tonight, J and I are meeting friends for dinner and line dancing at a local country bar. These are the closest thing I own to cowboy boots--I think that I need to find some new ones!

This weekend I plan on spending lots of down time with J, cooking up a banana cream pie for the two of us with my new KitchenAid stand mixer (!) and cleaning off my desk--it's a big pile of indistinguishable items right now! What do you have planned for one of the last weekends of summer?

Happy weekend, everyone!