Bread Machine Baking: Breadsticks

Bread Machine Baking: Breadsticks

1 recipe Pizza Crust (pg 45)
1 egg lightly beaten with 1 Tbsp. water
3 Tbsp. sesame seeds

Pizza Crust recipe;

1 Tbsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1/4 c. cornmeal
3 tbsp whole wheat flour
3 c. unbleached white flour
1-1/4 c. water (plus an additional 1 or 2 Tbsp. if the mixture looks dry and crumbly after the first 10 min. of kneading)
2 Tbsp. olive oil

Have all the ingredients at room temperature.  Place all the ingredients in the machine, program for Dough or manual and press start.  Remove the dough from the machine and let it rest for 10 min. at room temp., follow the baking instructions on page 47.

We are not going to page 47 as that is the pizza dough baking instructions, go back to pg 52 for breadstick instructions.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees, grease 2 heavy duty baking sheets or line them with foil, shiny side up.  Divide the dough into 12 pieces (large machines) or 8 pcs. (small machines).  On a lightly floured board, roll each piece to a 4 x 2-1/2" rectangle.  Cut each rectangle lengthwise into four 4" sticks. Transfer the sticks to the prepared sheets leaving 1/2" between the sticks.  Brush the top with the egg glaze and sprinkle with sesame seeds.  Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.  When the breadsticks are completely cool, store them in an airtight container.

Again, putting the ingredients in the machine is super easy.  I did not cut the breadsticks down to their measurements as I wanted larger breadsticks, more like what Olive Garden serves.  Working with the dough was quite easy and shaping them into the size I wanted was easy as well.  Baking them for 10 minutes was perfect.  These were delicious and I would make them again, but I would probably add a flavored glaze or cheese to bring out more flavor, such as italian seasoning or garlic depending on the meal I was serving them with.

Bread Machine Baking: Garlic French Bread

Having a bread machine, one should use it to bake bread. Throwing all the ingredients into a pan and having someone (or something) throw it all together, knead it gently, watching it rise and baking it all in one fell swoop and then calling it your own is a dream come true! However, my favorite recipe and almost the only one I use for my bread machine is Pizza Dough.  I have tried several recipes for bread in my machine and not been impressed with most of them. So, I decided to try a bread machine cookbook, "Bread Machine Baking".  The cover says perfect every time, 75 foolproof recipes for every bread machine on the markiet including yours. Well, this is almost an uncertain challenge, isn't it? The first recipe I tried was Garlic French Bread. My family loves french bread and garlic bread, so this recipe has the garlic baked right in.

Garlic French Bread

1 Tbsp Yeast
3 c. unbleached white flour (plus an additional 1/4 c. if the dough looks very wet after the first 10 min. of kneading
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1-1/2 to 2 tsp chopped garlic
2 tbsp butter
1 c. warm wter
2 egg whites, stiffly beaten

Have all the ingredients at room temperature.  Place all the ingredients except the egg whites in the machine. Program fro French bread or if you want to form a baguette, then program for Manual. Press Start and follow baking instructions on pg 39.
Baking instructions; After all the ingredients are incorporated by the kneading blade, add the beaten egg whites.  Bake bread in the machine or if programmed for Manual, remove dough, then lightly grease a baking sheet and sprinkle it with cornmeal.  Shape the dough into a baguette about 10-12" long.  Place the dough on the prepared baking sheet, cover with a clean towel and set in a warm place to let it rise and  double in size. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, brush with egg glaze and bake for 10 min in center of oven, lower temperature to 350 and bake another 10 to 15 min. Bake until top is light brown and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

 Very easy to throw everything in the machine, and I did have all my ingredients at room temperature.  I added 1-1/2 tsp. of chopped garlic as I wasn't sure how "garlicky" it would be. The baking instructions said to brush with egg glaze, but it also had already said to put the egg whites in the machine.  I assume adding the egg whites was only for baking the bread in the machine but recipe did not make that clear.

  I baked mine in the bread machine, so as you can imagine it turned out like bread and not the fancy baguette in the store.  I could hardly taste any garlic, so next time I would add more garlic.  I wasn't that impressed with the bread recipe as I thought it would be much softer inside, while it was quite condensed.  It was too stiff for sandwiches the next day, while it was stored well, but it did make great paninis!  Not a bad recipe, just not the greatest.  Definitely needed more garlic and I am not sure 1/2 tsp. more would have done the trick.  

Perfect Italian

Perfect Italian: Spaghetti and Meatballs

Perfect Italian: White Bean Soup

Perfect Italian: Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

Perfect Italian: Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

On any given day I love a big bowl of pasta. It’s warm, buttery, salty and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like pasta. So when I saw this recipe for pasta in a cream sauce with bacon and then topped with parmesan cheese, it practically screamed to be made. But poor directions or “methods” as the book so lovingly refers to it led to a not so tasty result.

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

1 lb. dried spaghetti

1 tbsp. olive oil

8 oz. rindless pancetta or lean bacon. Chopped

4 eggs

5 tbsp. light cream

4 tbsp. freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti and cook for 8-10 minutes or until al dente. In the mean time, heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the chopped pancetta and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 8-10 minutes. Beat the eggs with the cream in a small bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper. Drain the pasta and then return to pan, add bacon and then add the egg mixture and half the parmesan cheese. Stir well, and then transfer to a warmed serving dish. Sprinkle with remaining parmesan cheese.

I don’t typically carry cream on a regular basis in my house. It’s a treat so when I do I make every recipe I know that contains this ingredient so I don’t waste any. I definitely had a lot to work with after buying the smallest container I could find and I was surprised that this recipe only called for five tablespoons. The ratio of cream to eggs was completely off. To only have five tablespoons of cream to four eggs became an overwhelming amount of egg and I have never seen a carbonara sauce with the ratio so in favor of egg.

So here are the difficulties I encountered. The ingredients list calls for the bacon and the pasta to be by weight. Not everyone has a food scale to be able to work with this so it would’ve helped to have back up measurements. For most people spaghetti comes in 1 lb. boxes so it shouldn’t be too difficult there. But finding pancetta was not possible at any of my local grocery stores and bacon had to do. It would’ve been nice to have an estimated number of slices for the bacon. I ended up using about 8 thick cut slices of bacon which leads me to my next difficulty. Chopping bacon is not easy. Either chop it frozen or crumble it after cooking, but attempting to chop fresh bacon was a chore.

As I’m cooking and following directions I encounter where the recipe calls for me to season the sauce, before cooking it, with salt and pepper to taste. I put it a good amount of salt and pepper but I was not about to dip my finger in a bowl of cold cream and raw eggs to see if it was salty enough. I ended up adding more after cooking and serving, which was more than fine. My other problem was that the recipe wants me to drain the pasta and then return it to the same pot and pour the sauce in. They make it convenient that the pasta and bacon are done at the same time so the time transition was smooth but now they’re asking me to pour the sauce, dominated by raw eggs, into a hot pot with pasta and to simply “stir well”. In my mind I’m thinking, this is wrong, there isn’t enough cream and the eggs will scramble under that much heat so quickly, but I followed directions and did it anyway. Guess what? The eggs scrambled. I kept that mixture moving to try to keep the eggs from scrambling but the heat was too much.

I was left rather disappointed with my not so pretty result but I do have to say, even with the strange texture from the scrambled eggs, it was still really tasty. I would recommend heating the sauce separately and slowly before adding it to a hot pot of pasta. I would also recommend a different cream to egg ratio. This was my first time experiencing carbonara (I’ve always been more of an alfredo girl), but I think next time I’ll go for a different recipe.

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking

If you have ever seen Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade’s tv show on Food Network, you would know what Sandra Lee is all about. Her cookbook is a definite extension of herself. Her point? Make delicious homemade food that looks like it took hours in a very short amount of time. Her shortcuts are to incorporate store bought items (like the pre-made sugar cookie dough I sprinkled over my berry cobbler). By buying particular items that would take a good amount of time to make you cut down your recipe time but achieve the same amazing result! I was initially fearful that having so many store bought items in a recipe would make it difficult to complete but everything sounded at least semi familiar to me and I think I could find all of these ingredients at my local grocery store. The amount of each ingredient was precise so I had no trouble determining the size of each item to purchase.

I adore looking at photos with a cookbook and I am proud to say this cookbook has gorgeous tantalizing full page color photos for most of the recipes. I need visualization to see how the recipe is going to look to judge whether I should take the time cooking it and these photos do the recipes justice!  The first 16 pages are discussing introductions and real basics in cooking. For most cooks you will bypass that.  An entire chapter is spent on breakfast, which for me, I would rarely use as breakfast in my house is always a quick fix.  Then the book carries on with typical chapters such as lunch, dinner, desserts, and appetizers and so on.  What did surprise me was the pet food recipes chapter at the end of the book. I rarely expect to see pet food recipes in a typical cookbook. Given how pets have become such a member of the family now, I would think it would be widely advertised or even given their own cookbook! Granted, this chapter is going to be subject matter that will not appeal to everyone. 

The layout of each recipe is extremely easy. Recipes are kept on a single page so there is no need to flip back and forth and possibly dirty up your cookbook! Also, each section is classically divided in a way that you just can’t go wrong! There are more than 100 recipes in this book and the ease of each recipe is enticing. Between that and the gorgeous pictures I hope to continue making recipes out of this book!

If you have seen Sandra Lee’s show, you know that presentation as in how you set your table, music and wine are part of the deal in making a meal entertaining and the book goes on to portray this.  A few pages on wine and music are also in the cookbook, but it wasn’t really much instruction.  However, the chapter on cocktails had some awesome simple recipes for delicious looking cocktails.  The book in its entirety was a good inspiring cookbook and picking out recipes from this is fun with the photos and ease of the recipe with store bought items added.

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking: Sesame Chicken Drumettes

Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade Cooking: Sesame Chicken Drumettes

Sandra Lee describes that she knew of a restaurant in Santa Monica, California, that served the most amazing drummettes and that was all that they served.  She says that when the restaurant closed up, she created her own recipe to take their place.  She says they are “full of flavor, the outside is always perfectly crispy and the inside is always tender and juicy”.  I love chicken appetizers, especially ones with an asian flavor as my palette is a wee bit too gentle for hot wings.  Will these chicken drumettes stand up to any restaurant appetizer and are they really that easy to make?

Sesame Chicken Drumettes

1/3 c. teriyaki sauce

1-1/2 Tbsp. dry sherry

1-1/2 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds

1-1/4 lbs. chicken drumettes (about 12)

1-1/2 Tbsp. bbq sauce

1-1/2 Tbsp. honey

¼ tsp. oriental sesame oil

Combine the teriyaki sauce, sherry and sesame seeds in a resealable bag.  Add drumettes to coat with sauce.  Close bag and refrigerate for at least ½ hr. or up to a day.  After marinating the drumettes, preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Using a foil lined cookie sheet, transfer drumettes to cookie sheet and throw away remaining marinade.  Bake until drumettes are golden brown, about 15 minutes.  While chicken is baking, mix bbq sauce (preferably a dark bbq sauce), honey and sesame oil in a small bowl.  After chicken has baked for 15 min., brush drumettes with honey mixture and bake 5 min. more.  Turn them over, repeat brushing and baking an additional 5 min.

This was a very easy recipe to make and drumettes were so easy, you will wish you had bought several packages.  Her recipe says serves 4 as an appetizer, but with drumettes being so small, you will definitely want more.  Excellent flavor with all of these ingredients and although most people don’t have cooking sherry and possibly the sesame oil in their kitchen, these items are worth getting as they really add to the flavor and make the recipe a success.  Besides you will want to make this again and again and then you will have those items on hand. My grocery store had just one brand of cooking sherry in the vinegar aisle and it worked fine.  We always have sesame oil on hand for stir fry so that was easy, but you can fine sesame oil in the “asian” aisle of your local grocery store.  I only marinated the drumettes for 30 minutes and they were full of flavor.  You will definitely want to line the cookie sheet with foil as the honey will tend to burn and be a nightmare scrubbing the sheet.  Use a dark barbecue sauce such as KC Masterpiece for a much better flavor as well.  An easy yummy recipe that will impress your guests!

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking: Berry Cookie Cobbler

Food network stars have enticing cooking shows to lure you in, watch their fabulous cooking and ease in the kitchen and then…buy their products.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love shows on the Food Network, and the chefs who started with cookbooks,  followed up with selling cookware, utensils and even kitchen appliances.  So,  I wanted to try a few recipes from a Food Network host to see if they stand up to how she portrays them on television.  Sandra Lee, host of the Semi-homemade cooking show is in my book, brilliant.  Take the base of items you buy in the store, add your own ingredients and less time to come up with a recipe that looks homemade and says you did it all yourself.  Unless you tell the truth, no one will know you didn’t slave for hours.  I started with one of her original cookbooks, “Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking”.  The first recipe I chose was Berry Cookie Cobbler. She says “this is easy, easy, easy, delicious, delicious, delicious”…is she right?

Berry Cookie Cobbler

2 bags (12 oz ea) frozen mixed berries, thawed

1 container (21 oz) apple pie filling

1/3 c. sugar

1-1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 roll (18 oz) prepared sugar cookie dough

   Optional: add vanilla ice cream with the baked dessert

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except the sugar cookie dough.  Place the fruit mixture in a 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish.  Crumble the sugar cookie dough over fruit, covering it completely and thickly.  Then bake uncovered until cookie crust is a crispy golden color and juices are bubbling, about 45 min.

Was this an easy recipe? Was it delicious? The answer is sort of and yes!  Mixing the berries and fruit was of course a no brainer.  Crumbling the sugar cookie dough is quite sticky but still easy enough.  She didn’t mention placing the dish on a cookie sheet if the juices were bubbling, which, luckily I did.  Place the dish on a cookie sheet or you may be cleaning your oven! I watched the dish after about 30 minutes to follow up with the time and 45 minutes was really right on the money for the crust to get a nice golden brown.  Everyone loved the dish and it was great with ice cream, but even cooled off, it was a bit runnier than I would have liked.  I think I may drain just a bit of juices off next time I make it.  I also don’t think you need that much sugar, I might reduce it to ¼ c. next time for my waistline.  The frozen berries we bought were a fantastic mixture of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. This was a store brand and by using frozen, when it thawed you had lots of juice. The canned apple filling I got had lots of cinnamon in it, so not sure that you needed a full 1-1/2 tsp of cinnamon either.  The mixture of fruit was a delightful party in your mouth! A keeper!

365 Favorite Brand Name Slow Cooker Recipes & More

365 Favorite Brand Name Slow Cooker Recipes & More

It’s that time of year. During the fall and winter my countertops receive a designated spot that my slow cooker rarely leaves. Who wouldn’t love the idea of buying a cheap tough piece of meat, putting it in your magic machine before you leave for work, and returning home to find the most tender, juicy and flavorful piece of meat you’ve ever tasted?

I’m always looking for new ways to expand my slow cooker’s talent and I love a good slow cooker cookbook. But I can not in good conscience recommend this one. Do not let yourself be fooled. When I look at this lovely long title I interpret it that this book will contain 365 recipes using my slow cooker that will contain brand name ingredients and there will be some bonus recipes on top of those 365 recipes. It does contain 365 recipes, no more, no less. It does contain slow cooker recipes, 174 slow cooker recipes to be exact. The second half of the book contains recipes done on your stove top or using your oven while your sad little slow cooker remains unused. Clearly their use of “& More” means that it will use your slow cooker “& More”.

As for the rest of the title “Favorite Brand Name” not many recipes featured brand name items which I was actually relieved about. Recipes that did contain “brand name” ingredients I had never heard of and could not obtain at any of my local grocery stores. So when a recipe specified one package or one can followed by a brand name, I was left puzzled, with no means of substituting because no actual measurements were given. Had they given how many ounces that can was or cups were in that package, I might’ve been able to continue. But I was actually frustrated picking out some recipes I could complete without improvising.

There is a great little section on slow cooker basics so if you’ve just purchased one and have no idea how to work it, it’s worth glancing at. The rest of the book is divided into your classic cookbook sections such as appetizers, main dishes, side dishes and desserts. It’s then followed by another set of sections that seems to repeat itself and this is of course because it contains a set of recipes that do not use your slow cooker. It does feature a standard layout for recipes, having the recipes in bold and never flowing onto a second page. This does make it easy to read and you never have to flip back and forth between pages.

You can find full page size photos on every other page, suggesting that this cookbook was well tested and you can see the end result for half of the recipes that you intend to make. I am all for having photos as it is certainly more appetizing than words! Since half the book is essentially photos I would’ve been even more pleased at two half page photos meaning that every recipe gets a photo. But I do have to commend this slow cooker book as it contains more photos than most cookbooks do.

The book was not a total loss. I did manage to find an awesome barbecue sauce that had a great mixture of both sweet and smoky. I also managed to find a great beef stew that I will no doubt make over and over. But I say to copy these recipes down and move on. For how big this cookbook is I definitely expected to be able to find more and in my small bookcase of worthy cookbooks, this one does not qualify.

365 Favorite Brand Name Slow Cooker Recipes & More: Favorite Beef Stew

365 Favorite Brand Name Slow Cooker Recipes & More: Favorite Beef Stew

How can you go wrong with a recipe titled: Favorite Beef Stew? This stew is pictured in this cookbook and it looks mouth watering, savory and delicious! This is one recipe I am happy to say does not disappoint!

Favorite Beef Stew

3 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces

3 celery ribs, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ inch pieces

1 ½ cups chopped onion

3 cloves garlic

1 bay leaf

1 ½ tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

¾ tsp. dried thyme

¾ tsp. dried basil

½ tsp. black pepper

2 pounds lean beef stew meat, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 can (about 14 oz.) diced tomatoes, undrained

1 can (about 14 oz.) reduced-sodium beef broth

¼ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup cold water

Layer all of these ingredients in the slow cooker with carrots, celery and potatoes on the bottom followed by onion, garlic, bay leaf and Worcestershire sauce. Follow with thyme, basil, pepper beef and tomatoes and finish by pouring the juice and broth on top. Cook for 8 to 9 hours on low setting.

Remove all beef and vegetables and discard the bay leaf. In a small bowl combine flour and water and mix thoroughly. Add mixture to slow cooker and cook 15 minutes covered. Pour sauce over meat and vegetables and serve.

What I love about this recipe is that you don’t have to brown the stew meat before tossing it in the slow cooker. The meat comes out tender and flavorful and falls apart on your fork- it is perfect. What I also love about this recipe is that I am more than likely going to have all of the ingredients for this in my cupboard and can throw it together on a moments notice. I do have to reiterate that the recipe calls for reduced-sodium beef broth. I had trouble finding this in the store and went ahead with normal beef broth. It was a bit too salty for me but my husband who puts salt on everything I make, thought it was perfect.

What I didn’t love about this recipe was that it wanted you to thicken the stew at the end which I thought was a bit unnecessary. I accidentally put the flour in at the beginning of the cooking process and felt the stew was plenty thick and looked possibly even a little thicker than the stew pictured in the book. If you’re missing onion or don’t have beef broth, a can of French onion soup is a great alternative. If you don’t have a recipe for a great, easy slow cooker beef stew, consider this a new staple in your winter menu!