Kitchen Sink Banana Bread

My Holiday Baking this year has been pretty lack luster. It consisted of baking a couple loaves of orange cranberry bread, though I didn't have cranberries so I substituted mixed berries, and a single loaf of my Kitchen Sink Bread (so named because I put everything in it but the kitchen sink). It's a big favorite in my family, especially by Jeff who I once watched eat almost an entire load in the span of about 30 minutes.

Here's the recipe which I adapted from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and from which I got the adding coconut to keep it moist.

Kitchen Sink Banana Bread

1 stick butter (plus more to grease pan)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cupped chopped pecans
1/2 grated shredded coconut
1 cup chopped fruit (apples and pears work well)

Preheat oven to 350, grease 9x5 loaf pan.

Mix together dry ingredients. Cream butter and mix in eggs, bananas and vanilla. Stir into dry mixture but do not overmix. Gently stir in remaining ingredients.

Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 45 to 60 min until center is pretty set. Cool for 15 min, then remove from pan. Store by wrapping in wax paper. The bread will be moist and delicious!

Enjoy! Merry Christmas. We're heading to the in-laws for a few days where I imagine I won't be getting much posting or cooking done, but tune back in because in January we're going VEGAN for one month. Hooray!

Escarole & Walnut Pizza

Last night a couple of couples came over for dinner and to talk about doing effects for our movie. I figured that since it was Friday night and I wanted to keep it casual, so I decided to make it another pizza night. Sick of pizza recipes yet? Well I did a couple of my standards and then added the Escarole and Walnut Pizza. I think it's my new favorite. Here's the recipe:

ESCAROLE & WALNUT PIZZA

Ingredients
1 recipe pizza dough
4 walnuts, chopped coarsely
Walnut oil
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 small red onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small head Escarole, washed and cut into 1-inch pieces
S&P
Balsamic vinegar to taste
pinch of chili flakes
5 oz Fontina cheese, grated

While the dough rises, preheat oven to 350. Toss the walnuts in a splash of walnut oil and roast for about 5 min.

Heat 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil in a skillet and saute onions for 3-4 min until softened. Stir in garlic, escarole, salt and cover. Reduce heat and let cook down for a few minutes. Adjust salt and add vinegar, chili and pepper.

Preheat oven to 500 and warm pizza stone for 20 min.

Shape dough, place on parchment paper and cut around dough. Brush with olive oil. Distribute most Fontina, cover with escarole, walnuts and the rest of the cheese.

Bake for 12 min until the edges are nicely browned.

Enjoy!

Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! and the SATs

Ok I'm back. Sorry for the delay in getting more of these recipes up online. I've been studying for the SATs.

SATs!?!?! you exclaim, upon reading this. You're no high school Junior! What are you doing?!?!

Well, let me tell you. I just got a job tutoring for the SATs. I did this back when I was in college but it didn't pay well enough to balance out the cost of gas to get to students' houses. Now, however, the folks I used to work for have formed a new company that only hires experienced SAT tutors and pays them about 3xs the going rate. So it's a no-brainer. I'm in.

I spent the weekend in training and was supposed to go in and do a pretend lesson with my trainer to determine my pay rate, but he's sick and so here I am, posting recipes.

I last posted about the Enchiladas I made on Christmas Night, so that brings us to the day after Christmas. Another full day of entertaining, Christmas Post was a day filled with lunch with Kristie and her new husband and stepdaughter, and then dinner with the Reynolds (my mom's side of the family). So we'll do lunch today. I figured that as there was a seven-year-old coming, the safest and most fun thing would be pizza. So pizza it was.

First of all, if you remember from before, I posted a recipe for Grape and Gorgonzola Pizza that I adapted from Gourmet magazine. I'm a huge, huge fan of this recipe, though it's not really the kind of thing you want to eat more than one or two slices. I thought a plain cheese would be safe, as would a veggie pizza. Because there were 10 of us I made an additional pesto pizza.

Here's the breakdown:

For the Dough (I quadrupled this recipe)
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour mixed with 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cups warm water (105-115F)
1 tsp salt
1/2 Tbsp olive oil

Pizza stone and parchment paper are ideal!

Make Dough: Stir together yeast, 1 Tbsp flour and 1/4 cup warm water and let stand until mixture appears creamy on surface, 5 min. (If mixture isn't creamy get new yeast)
Whisk salt into 1 1/4 cups flour in a large bowl, then add yeast mixture, oil and remaining 1/2 cup warm water. Stir in enough flour (1/4 to 1/2 cup) for dough to begin to peel away from side of bowl. (this dough may be stickier than others you're used to)

The dough also rises

Knead dough on a floured work surface with floured hands, adding flour as necceassary but as little as possible, until dough is smooth, about 8 - 10 minutes. Form dough into a tight ball and dust with flour. GENEROUSLY dust the inside of a bowl with flour, place dough in bowl, cover with a damp towell and let rise in a draft free place until doubled in bulk about 1 1/2 hours.

Shape Dough and Make Topping: At least 45 minutes before baking pizza, put pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 500F. Don't punch down dough. You want to work it as little as possible at this point. Gently stretch it out into a circular shape and place on a parchment lined pizza peel. Cut the parchment so that there is about an inch extra around the dough. Now top!

For the Toppings

Pizza Sauce
I made this myself from scratch by using my basic tomato sauce recipe leftovers from the lasagna. I'll post that recipe tomorrow along with the lasagna recipe. For now, suffice it to say that I processed the sauce until it was smooth.

Cheese Pizza
I used Fontina, Mozarrella and some Parmesan on this pizza, along with the sauce.

Veggie Pizza
This had a similar blend of cheeses over sauce, but then I also added sliced mini bell peppers, purple onions, marinated artichoke hearts, thinly sliced tomatoes, and some goat cheese.

Pesto Pizza
I'm embarrassed to say that I used pre-made pesto sauce from a plastic container from Jimbos. I just didn't have time to make mine from scratch. Over the pesto I used whatever cheese I had leftover and that pizza was finished.


The key was really the order in which these were served as I could only cook one at a time. Cheese came out first, in case any young ones were starving, then the veggie, grape and gorgonzola and finally the pesto. The pesto was really my extra one, but even that got almost completely consumed. What was leftover became appetizers for dinner.

It was the kind of cooking day that had the first group of people leave at the exact same time the next group arrived. Intense. No one ever said Christmas was meant to be restful. If it was, we'd all go to spas.

Tomorrow....more recipes.

Grape and Gorgonzola Pizza

About a month ago I was in the check out line at Gelson (just for a few of those hard to find ingrediants that seem to never be carried at any other grocery story) when I noticed in the rack beside me the most beautiful magazine I'd ever seen. Seriously, it was far more interesting even than the Tabloids above it. Gormet Magazine, the cover informed me and I immediately reached for it a bought it, as I often do in times of finding things of great beauty for under $5 (that could be a lie, I don't actually remember how much it cost.

So the brilliant thing about this particular issue was that they picked the greatest ingrediants of all time and had a series of recipes for each one. The ingrediants were things like Pomegranates, Duck, Mushrooms, and as in the case of this recipe, Grapes.

Lately I've been on a deconstruction kick where once a magazine arrives via mail or grocery bag I immediately flip through it and then take out scissors and disassemble it into categories. I have all these files now. One is recipes to try. When the recipe is successful it goes into my "Tried and True recipe box" which Bryan thinks I should rename "Fried and blue" but I digress.

This particular recipe caught my eye and since I've been on a now-successful bread making kick, I thought Pizza was the next obvious step. I freely admit that I am lacking pictures of the final result, which was not only pretty but extremely delicious, becuase the recipe calls for wine. I partook in the wine myself and misplaced my camera in the process. Not to worry, it didn't cat baked, I found it this morning in my purse.

So here's the recipe. It calls for Vin Santo, which I wiki'd and discovered is an Italian dessert wine. It is seemingly impossible to find Vin Santo at any of my regular haunts so I substituted a symphony white wine that I know to be very sweet.

Grape and Gorgonzola Pizza

Ingrediants

For the Dough
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour mixed with 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cups warm water (105-115F)
1 tsp salt
1/2 Tbsp olive oil

For the Topping
1/3 cup Vin Santo (or sweet white wine)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 cup seedless red or black grapes, halved lengthwise
5 oz Fontina cheese, cut into 1/4 inch dice
2 oz Gorgonzola dolce or creamy, crumbled
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

Pizza stone and parchment paper are ideal!

Make Dough: Stir together yeast, 1 Tbsp flour and 1/4 cup warm water and let stand until mixture appears creamy on surface, 5 min. (If mixture isn't creamy get new yeast)
Whisk salt into 1 1/4 cups flour in a large bowl, then add yeast mixture, oil and remaining 1/2 cup warm water. Stir in enough flour (1/4 to 1/2 cup) for dough to begin to peel away from side of bowl. (this dough may be stickier than others you're used to - says the recipe, like we all spend a lot of time trying different pizza dough recipes - please)

The dough also rises

Knead dough on a floured work surface with floured hands, adding flour as necceassary but as little as possible, until dough is smooth, about 8 - 10 minutes. Form dough into a tight ball and dust with flour. GENEROUSLY dust the inside of a bowl with flour, place dough in bowl, cover with a damp towell and let rise in a draft free place until doubled in bulk about 1 1/2 hours.

Shape Dough and Make Topping: At least 45 minutes before baking pizza, put pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 500F.
Don't punch down dough, instead gently dredge it in a bowl of flour to coat, then transfer to a parchment-lined pizza peel. Lightly flour parchment. Pat out dough to form a 13-inch round, working it as little as possible. This is a lot harder than it sounds, but from my experience a little over-handling and punching down doesn't really hurt it.
Bring Vin Santo or wine to a boil, add sugar, dissolve and reduce to 1 Tbsp. Add grapes to cover and cook for 1 minute. Transfer grapes to a bowl, add cheeses and pepper; stir to combine.

Grapes, so many grapes!

Assemble Pizza: Arrange topping on dough leaving 1-inch border.
Slide Pizza on parchment onto pizza stone. Bake pizza until dough is crisp and browned and cheese is golden and bubling in spots 14-16min. Using peel, transfer to a cutting board. Cool 5 minutes, remove parchment and slice. It's important to wait the 5 minutes, otherwise pizza will seem to shloopy. It will firm and be perfect.


That's it. Surprisingly easy for a gourmet recipe. The trick with the parchment is that it keeps you from making a big corn meal mess on the pizza stone. The other trick is to trim the parchment to just an inch around the pizza. I didn't and it burned on the sides of the oven, filling the house with smoke. Otherwise it was a fairly disaster-free culinary adventure.

When I told Bryan and Kevin that I was making Grape and Gorgonzola pizza for dinner they both looked at me extremely skeptically - but then Kevin asked for the recipe when he left. So I guess it's fair to say this is Bryan and Kevin approved.

Bread Again

Remember that whole thing about how I was going to conquer bread? How I was determined to make an edible loaf? Well thanks to Mr. Daniel Leader and his book, I have succeeded. I've spent the last two days following his step by step directions on how to make a good loaf of country bread. I read, several times, the breakdown of what happens in the milling process of wheat. I can even tell you what the difference is between whole wheat and white flour.

The end result, however, was that tonight we actually ate the bread I baked. That's a first, and I've made a lot of bread.

So I started out fermenting the poolish. Here it is nicely bubbling.


Once I mixed in the other ingredients, I kneaded that sucker for 20 minutes. That's a serious workout.

Here are my two loaves proofing (that's rising for the second time in their baskets, or in this case bowls.


And here they are baking in my oven.


What I learned by using an oven thermometer is that if I set the oven to 400, it cooks at 475, and then if I turn it down to 350, in 10 minutes it'll be at 300. Fabulous, I know. So I'm working out the kinks of how to actually bake in it.

Regardless the final product was not only edible, it was tasty.


I think using organic stone ground flour makes a huge difference. It tastes like good bread instead of cardboard. Now I'm moving on to the more elaborate recipes.

If you've ever considered baking bread you must first buy this book Bread Alone. Seriously, do yourself and your bread tasters this favor. You'll thank me.