kitchenmage

Cheddar Cheese and Onion Breadsticks Recipe

I am moving recipes over from A Year in Bread before it goes dark. First: Cheddar Cheese Onion Breadsticks Step away from the Olive Garden breadsticks and try them. You will never go back.

When I was a young'un, I moved from "Baja Oregon" to a very small coastal town in southwest Washington. A town where the locals joked, in some cases bragged, that, upon arriving, you should turn back your clock 20 years - to the '50s. (um, no) A town where, in the only 'ahead of their time' moment I witnessed there, they hated Calif…er, Baja Oregonians with a vengeance.

Well, mostly.

Some folks (read: young men, sadly, with an emphasis on the young in all its myriad dreadful meanings) were utterly fascinated by the strange creature in their midst and vacillated between semi-awe and hormonal stupidity with occasional forays into West WTF. The strange creature, being a child of the coolest artistic little beach towns in Baja Oregon, thought this was mildly amusing behavior...for about 15 minutes.

I arrived in late-spring and my first summer there was, to put it mildly, not my best year. Two things saved me that wet, foggy summer. The first was a job at the local pizzeria, where Gina, a wise-cracking New Jersey girl — everyone swore we were sisters — taught me to toss rounds of dough high in the air and, much harder, catch them again. She also let me play with the brick oven.

I loved Gina.

Rosemary Fan Dinner Roll Recipe ~ v.Simpler

This is a slightly simpler, straight dough version of these Rosemary Fans. (Straight dough is mixed at one time, versus recipes using starters, etc.) If you have the time to do the original version, which requires an extra few hours for the starter to ripen. I encourage you to do so, the bread flavor is a bit richer, somehow more "grainy" in a good way. It's all those lovely enzymes and tasty bits...

Rosemary Fans

These rolls bloom in the oven into charming little fans, each with its own look. The bread dough is simple to make and shaping the rolls is quick, easy and (happily for small hands) not an exact science. You can substitute almost any other savory herb for rosemary, though fresh herbs really do work best for this.

Makes 12 large rolls

1 1/2 cups water (at body temperature)
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 cups flour (bread flour is better, but all-purpose will work)
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon rosemary fresh, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil (or melted butter)

1. Put the water, yeast, whole wheat flour, three cups of the bread flour and the olive oil in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. (Use low speed on a stand mixer.) Sprinkle in the last cup of flour while mixing, stopping when the dough clears the bowl and stops absorbing flour. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 20 minutes.
2. Turn the dough out on a well-floured counter and sprinkle the salt on it. Knead the dough 5-10 minutes (stand mixer: 5-6 minutes on medium) until it is firm yet supple and smooth. (You may need to use a bit more flour on the counter.) Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour. (Use the rising amount, not time, to determine if dough is ready for next step.)
3. When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out on a lightly floured counter and flatten into a rectangle with your hands. Let the dough relax for a minute while you prepare a muffin tin by lightly coating each cup with olive oil.
4. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 12x18 rectangle. If the dough starts resisting and springing back, let it rest for a few minutes and then finish rolling. Brush the dough with olive oil or melted butter and sprinkle liberally with chopped rosemary.
5. Cut dough in half crosswise and lay one piece on top of the other. Cut that stack in half and stack the pieces to make one four-layer stack that's about 6x9 inches in size. Make three cuts crosswise and 4 lengthwise to give you 12 rolls about 1 ½ by 3 inches. It doesn't matters if the sides are uneven, it's what gives them their charm.
6. Place in oiled muffin tins, one stack per cup with a short edge facing up. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour. When the rolls have increased in size by about half that amount, turn on the oven to 425 to preheat.
7. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden brown. Cool in pans for 15 minutes and then gently turn them out onto a rack to finish cooling. Don't handle the rolls too roughly; they occasionally fall apart when warm.

Small Batch Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls

Happy Thanksgiving!

While you are baking, these Rosemary Fans are a staple at my Thanksgiving table. If you need something a bit quicker to put together, try these simple, flaky biscuits. While the dough is rising, get yourself in the holiday spirit with A Christmas Miracle, a dizzyingly tall tale very true story (I swear) of heroism and Cheerios.

Were I to guess at such things, I'd bet that "How many calories are in one of Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls?" is an awfully common question in some people's mind. The rolls are very popular and look seriously decadent with that generous helping of gooey icing on top of the fluffy rolls.

The answer is, perhaps not as many as you think. 

Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls recipe, however, makes a HUGE batch of cinnamon rolls. I mean, sure if you live on a ranch and have to feed hungry cowhands (which are neither cows nor hands, discuss), make them for holiday gifts, or you have a big freezer you can stuff full of them you might be able to cope with 40-50 cinnamon rolls, but what about apartment dwellers or people with an itsy-bitsy little freezer? Like a large percentage of the people I know.

Well, how about a small batch recipe?

Caramelized onion and cheddar breadsticks recipe

May I just say, I love my new box of light! Following the Strobist's excellent instructions for photography on the cheap, in this case the  DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio, I transformed a cardboard box into, if not a thing of beauty itself, a thing that will give that "thing of beauty" quality to other things.

When I was a young'un, I moved from "Baja Oregon" to a very small coastal town in southwest Washington. A town where the locals joked, in some cases bragged, that, upon arriving, you should turn back your clock 20 years - to the '50s. I, being a child of the coolest artistic little beach towns in Baja Oregon, thought this was mildly amusing...for about 15 minutes.

I arrived in late-spring and my first summer there was, to put it mildly, not my best year. Two things saved me that wet, foggy summer. The first was a job at the local pizzeria, where Gina, a wise-cracking New Jersey girl — everyone swore we were sisters — taught me to toss rounds of dough high in the air and, much harder, catch them again. She also let me play with the brick oven. I loved Gina.

The second bit of salvation arrived one night when I met Becky and we instantly became BFF, before there even were BFF. This bread, made in loaves, was Becky's favorite. I baked some every week or so for years and years. Then Becky and I lost touch. I also mostly stopped baking this bread. Both sad things.

Simple, flaky biscuit recipe

Scattered.

If I had to pick one word for my life the last while, it would have to be scattered. Just as one crazy thing is brought under control, the next careens into view. Like garlic butter in your cake pan. Or a teetering stack of biscuits.

One of my surest cures for scattered is bread. As I gather the bits of ragged dough and knead them together into a cohesive whole, I am, likewise, remade just a bit, my loose edges reintegrated and all that. It's one of my favorite meditative states.

Rosemary Feta Beer Bread recipe

Some people insist on doing things the hard way, the complicated way, and I will gladly admit to being one of them - especially when it comes to bread. Not all the time, mind you, there are days when I need bread today and throw together a quick batch of baguettes, but on the other hand...well, lets just say that when I had to make fresh sourdough starter - after doing unmentionable things to my old one (the pretty pink stuff growing on it was cute but unappetizing) - I insisted on doing it by capturing wild yeast.

Worse, I made three kinds of starter: rye, white whole wheat, and white. This met with varying degrees of success, let's just say that if you plan on doing this at home, you can skip the plain white flour version. After ten days of nurturing three starters along, however, my kitchen is but a Bunsen burner away from qualifying as a mad scientist's lab. And I still haven't made any bread from the wild yeast starter, two jars of which are bubbling along in the refrigerator.

Rosemary fan rolls recipe

I think every baker needs a few never-fail recipes in their back pocket. Recipes that they can play with endlessly with a fair degree of certainty of success. This recipe is a variation of one of my standby recipes: a poolish baguette from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. If I had to pick just a few breads to bake all the time, this would be one of them. In its original form, it makes wonderful baguettes and is well suited to being shaped for breads like epis and I have been  able to corrupt... err, vary it pretty endlessly over the years.

In fact — confession time — I once made a double batch of this bread. Except I didn't double the yeast. And I tripled the oil. (don't ask, it was late, I was rushed and had no business driving a KitchenAid...) As I kneaded the dough, stumbling my way through a series of "this feels all wrong" corrections, I slowly figured out how badly I had screwed up. Ever the good food writer, I trudged on, determined to take photos for an article titled "How to waste two pounds of flour" that I would write someday. Except for one problem: the bread was fine. It wasn't great, but it was good. This recipe earned its place in my back pocket that day.    

Potato bread recipe

This recipe was originally posted at A Year in Bread. You can read that article,  which includes a whole wheat version of this recipe here: Beth: Potato Bread

 

For reasons perhaps best explained by marketing, a lot of kids — even those who usually make sane food choices — seem to prefer bland, white bread. Sandwiches, toast, pretty much anything has to be white bread, but especially sandwiches. And kids eat lots of sandwiches.

This potato bread recipe is one I made for the first time way back when theKid craved that stuff that came in the blue, yellow and red dotted bags - you know, the stuff that makes you Wonder who buys it. The potato tenderizes the dough and amps up the yeasty rising action, creating bread that is softly chewy with a bit more substance than most white breads.

kitchenMage's Leftover Oatmeal Bread recipe

 

When you bake bread as often as I do, it is easy to find yourself looking around covetously at ingredients in your kitchen that might have been headed for another use. Cooked cereal is one of those things that lends itself to ad hoc bread making, adding a whole grain depth to otherwise white bread. This also appeals to the frugal side that many home cooks have, turning leftovers that might otherwise be thrown away, into tasty bread.

This is less of a recipe and more of a formula to use up leftover cooked cereal, which it seems all too easy to end up with. I have a soft spot for oatmeal bread, but you can make this with any cooked cereal. Or leftover brown rice, for that matter.

Multigrain Rosemary Sage Crackers

One of the year-long herbs in my garden is rosemary, which I love paired with olive oil and a bit of salt. All three flavors come through in these deeply flavorful, yet delicate, cracker that I am sure to be making many variations in the months to come. Let's call this Weekend Herb Blogging, because it still is the weekend and I haven't played a meme all week. Kayln's got interesting herbs collected on her blog every weekend, do go check out this week's offerings.

These crackers were inspired by a combination of things: the flavor profile was derived from a recipe for Herbed Olive Oil Crackers from Jerry Traunfeld's The Herbfarm Cookbook, the addition of yeast was due to a recent batch of Lavash from The Breadbaker's Apprentice, and the use of the pasta machine comes from a recent conversation with Farmgirl.