FitFool

Made this for first time because I had 2 small jalapeño peppers in the fridge and I wanted some cornbread to eat with the Succulent Braised Pork leftovers I wanted to heat up. I ended up with a little more than 2 Tbsp of diced peppers (discarding seeds). Realized at the end of making the batter that I had only used 2 Tbsp butter, not 2 ounces (4 Tbsp). I didn't want to melt more butter and add it so I just buttered the 10-inch cast-iron skillet with almost 1 Tbsp butter and then added 2 ounces of shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese to the batter and luckily, that worked out. I used 1 cup of canned sweet white corn since that's what I had.

Yum! Gave a little hint of heat but not really spicy (which is just about right for me) and tasted good with the pork. B liked it so much he helped himself to a big big second slice. Baked for 30 minutes at 400F in the 10-inch cast-iron skillet. Came out a little thinner than I would've liked. I would've baked it in an 8-inch skillet if I had one. Maybe I'll try baking it in a cake pan next time.

I'm still looking for a favorite zucchini bread recipe. Granted, I still need to give this one another chance since I didn't follow the instructions. I cut the sugar from 3/4 cup sugar down to 1/2 cup and I think that was a mistake since it came out tasting a bit bland. I also think I'll follow some of the other recipes I see and add raisins next time. Also, while I followed instructions and greased and floured the pan, I think next time I'll grease and sugar the pan instead. I find sugar easier to even distribute and things seem to stick less with sugar. Still good overall since I like zucchini bread and it still paired nicely with hot tea.

So have you been practicing baking bread since my last post about using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method? I hope a few of you tried it. I had promised to come back with variations and then got busy with other things. (No wait, I mean...I wanted to give you a chance to practice the basic version first.)

One of the things I love most about this ABi5 method is that it really made me feel free to play with the recipe. The ingredients are relatively inexpensive (compared to paying $3-$6 per loaf at our favorite bakery) and the effort is also low so I don't feel too badly if a batch comes out badly. I can shrug it off and try tweaking the next batch. After getting the hang of the Basic Boule recipe, I started playing a little with it. You can too! They've made it so easy with this method.




I put the rest behind an LJ-cut because it's long but PLEASE do click through because there are some beautiful loaves at the end and it hurts me to think that you might not see them. Partly because I want to show off. Partly because I think you'll then be inspired to try making this yourself since the steps really aren't difficult! OK...one more sneak peek photo to lure you on to the rest of this post:

I love fresh bread. Many years ago, my then boyfriend gave me a bread machine for Christmas. I was still in college at the time and after dinner, my roommates and I would throw ingredients into the bread machine and turn it on. Then a few hours later, we'd have fresh hot bread for our study break. It was magic! I tended to make this Cranberry Bread, which was my favorite bread machine recipe. Over a decade later and I still have that bread machine.

As I finally accepted cooking as a hobby instead of a chore, I decided I wanted to bake bread from scratch, but was intimidated by the process. Then mellybrelly posted step-by-step instructions and made it seem doable. I loved the resulting white bread and the sense of accomplishment that that bread had been made in my kitchen.

However -- it was tiring and I didn't attempt to bake bread again for 2 years after that. I'm glad I returned to making bread but it was still a time-consuming process. I wanted bread every day but I couldn't really work that into my schedule. Enter the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. The title's a little misleading in that it sounds like you can have fresh bread in just 5 minutes (yay!) but they're only counting the time spent actively working on making the bread. Still, even though it's closer to 10 minutes of active work a day for me, that's an acceptable investment of time to have fresh bread on a regular basis.

It tastes better than any of the plain white breads in the sliced bread aisle of the grocery store. It's as good as, or better, than the similar types of bread in my grocery store's fresh bakery section too. Granted, I didn't think the basic boule bread tasted amazing, but it certainly tasted good enough given how little effort it required. Certainly much less expensive. And for so little input, we enjoyed the gift of fresh, warm bread on a near daily basis.

Once I got comfortable with the basic recipe, I started playing with the dough and turning out variations that kept tasting better and better. First it was just adding some herbs to the dough, then sprinkling some cheese on top. We made pizzas and flat breads. My current favorite variation is cheddar cheese bread. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start with the Basic Boule recipe and save the variations for future posts.

I know...if the variations taste better, why not start with those? Well I figure it's easier to work out the kinks with a basic recipe first. That makes it a little easier to figure out where you might have gone wrong. And then once you're comfortable with the master recipe, we can add more steps and variations.

So go ahead and try this. If it works, then great! You have bread made from your own two hands. If it doesn't work, then the ingredients weren't too expensive and you didn't have to waste too much effort in trying it.

This is a quick recipe for homemade drop biscuits. I like them hot out of the oven for breakfast. Insides of these biscuits were soft and fluffy. Perfect consistency. I ate these with just a little smear of butter, while B didn't even add butter. You can start setting out the ingredients the night before to make it even easier to throw together in the morning. Takes maybe 10 minutes of prep work and then bake for 10-11 minutes. (I baked for another 5 minutes on top of that trying to brown the tops a little more but they remained just barely browned. Maybe I'll try brushing with melted butter next time. Would that help it brown?)

So the night before, I mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and then cover it with plastic wrap until morning. I also set a stick of butter out on a plate to let it soften overnight. Then in the morning, preheat the oven to 400F. Since the butter softened overnight, it's easy to mix it in with the dry ingredients with a fork (if, like me, you don't have a pastry blender). Since I was also making scrambled eggs, I just threw the recipe's leftover egg yolk in with some more eggs.

I'm trying to work my way up to baking bread from scratch. I mostly just use my bread machine for now. This recipe was temptingly easy and I'm so glad ballykissangel posted it at http://www.livejournal.com/community/food_porn/1937006.html

I love my bread machine. Until such time as I can figure out how to make real home-made bread, this little box has kept me happy. Throw in the ingredients, forget about it and then it magically rewards you with bread. What's not to love? But I did it wrong today. Not sure what the mistake was. When I opened the lid, the top of the loaf had sunk a few inches and the loaf refused to come out of the bread pan. I ended up ripping it in half trying to get the bread out and Michael rescued me from my frustration and wrestled the rest of the loaf out. Sad looking loaf. The crust was very tough and chewy. The fluffy bread part itself tasted fine though. The only thing I can think of that I did differently was that I let it sit in the machine for 30-40 minutes after it was done. I think it's supposed to be able to sit there as much as an hour though. Too bad.

Edited to add:
Here's a picture of when the bread machine works
So I think my mistake had been using half all-purpose flour and half bread flour.

( See picture and the basic recipe that usually works )