My "French Bread" Recipe

Reposted (with minimal editing) from Philosophy of Housekeeping

I never know how to call my recipes. I always start with someone else's recipe... and then end up with a recipe that isn't exactly theirs, but which owes a great debt to theirs. This one started out life in a Baptist Mothers' Group cookbook put out by my Grandmother's congregation, and which she graciously gave me a copy of.

For one batch (but I always make a double, even if it's only for one person):

1 t yeast (For most beginners, I recommend starting with 1 T; I explain this below)
1 c. water
1 T sugar
3/4 t salt
1-2 T olive oil

Combine the above ingredients. I usually use cold water. Let them sit for anywhere from ten minutes to a couple of hours (but you might want to make closer to ten minutes if you're using a whole tablespoon of yeast).

Add:

2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. white flour

and knead it in. You don't have to knead it for any longer than it takes to get the flour in. Pour a little (one tablespoon or less) oil in the bottom of the bowl, roll the whole lump around in it, and then cover it with plastic wrap so that it doesn't get nasty-crusty while it rises. Let it sit for oh, about five or six or eight hours, maybe overnight. Punch it down. Let it rise again (covered, again, though oiling isn't usually necessary the second time), and punch it down again (or, you can skip this if you only want to take two days instead of three to make bread). At this point, form it into either one loaf or two, depending on your fancy.

Oil a cookie sheet or pan, or else use parchment paper (my preferred method) as your bottom layer instead of oil. Sprinkle it with a grainy product which in the U.S. is known by the brand name of Cream of Wheat, but in Australia is known as Farina or Semolina. Put the loaf on the prepared surface. Cover it with plastic wrap again and let it rise one last time.

When it is time to cook it: put one rack on the bottom position in the oven, and another in the middle. Put an empty Pyrex or other casserole-type pan on the bottom rack as the oven is preheating to 350 Celsius and then put a pot of water on to boil on top of the stove (today when I did this, the water boiled just as the oven finished preheating, so it worked out perfect). Pour the boiling water into the pan by pouring it through the higher rack (easier and safer than sliding the rack out and then back in again), and then immediately put the bread on the upper rack and close the oven. The steam gives the bread an AMAZING crusty French-bread texture. Cook it for approximately forty minutes, or until the crust looks the right shade of golden-brown.


NOTES:

In a drier climate (I'm in Maryland now, but have lived in Utah), I keep all of the proportions the same except the flour, which I put less in of because the climate there is much drier, and therefore the flour there is much drier, and as it absorbs the water the bread itself becomes more dry and not as tasty.

I always eyeball the salt amount. As long as there is less than a whole teaspoon and more than half a teaspoon, it works out fine. Please, do not let me ever find you fiddling with a half teaspoon measure and a quarter-teaspoon measure on this, when there are better ways you could be using your time, such as doing practically anything else.

The yeast amount kind of doesn't matter so much. The original recipe called for a whole tablespoon, and if you choose to do that, your bread will be completely edible and even tasty, and will also probably take less than three days to be done. On the other hand, slower rising bread does taste better, to me, and that is why I do it the way I do it. I just wait for as many hours as it takes for the bread to be risen as much as it needs to be.

Another way to speed up the rising of your bread, if you want it to be ready to bake in, say, six hours from the time you started it: turn the oven on warm. Get the steam ready as directed for when you are actually going to bake it. When all is preheated and steamy, turn the oven off, put the bread dough in, and leave the oven door slightly ajar. Check it after a couple of hours, and then, say, every half hour after that (depending on how fast it seems to be rising).

This steaming method is 100% taken from the back of the Rhodes Rolls frozen bread dough package, except that they don't specify to use a pyrex pan and to preheat it with the oven. I like the pyrex because it is much less likely to tip than, say, a cake pan or a pie pan, and it is also much easier to clean hard water spots off of with some vinegar and/or scrubbie. In the past I tried other methods, but after discovering this one I have not gone back.

Julia Child's husband, Paul, used to put a red-hot brick in to a pan of water in her oven for her, and I once had a bishop who was teaching himself to make fancy French bread who tried using a regular rock, heated up on the stovetop; when one of his daughter's friends walked by and saw it, he shouted, "Emily, your dad's cookin' granite!" They also have extra-fancy steam injection ovens made specifically for this very purpose, but I don't even daydream about those. I'd like my own oven, first.

Also, you can pop loaves of not-quite-risen bread into the oven as it is preheating for baking, and let that heat finish rising (raising?) the bread at the same time it gets hot enough to bake it. I don't do this unless I have to, though, because the results are somewhat unreliable.


There are lots of random factors which influence how fast bread rises, so I have learned to just enjoy the time it takes. Bread, like washing machines and dishwashers, should be started and then left to work its magic on its own (if at all possible).

Crepes

Crepes-- also known to certain Americans as really, really thin French pancakes-- are one of the cheapest, most elegant, not to mention most delicious foods on the planet. I've taken them to friends' houses for dessert twice within the last week (or, to be more precise, I've taken the batter-- no one has minded yet that I cook them right after dinner) and the second time, the family was almost eerily excited for the advent of dessert. Turns out that it had been a family New Year's Resolution to learn how to make crepes. For cool!

Ingredients (makes about 10 crepes; you will want to eat at least two, often three or more per person):

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c. water
• 1/2 c. milk
• 3/4 c. (plus a little-- adjust for batter consistency) flour
• 1 t sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 T oil or melted butter
• filling: your choice of stuff like the following: cherry pie filling; blueberries; sugared apple slices; bananas (sliced); ice cream; nutella; chocolate chips; whipped cream; yogurt; you get the idea

Beat the eggs. Add the oil, the water, and the milk. Sift in the flour, using that strainer that works terribly for pasta but great for flour sifting, so:

You put maybe a third of the flour into the strainer (if you put more in, it will not go as fast) and then sort of bounce the strainer over the bowl, so that a little bit of flour goes in at a time. Whisk in that batch, and then repeat the process until all of the flour is in/the batter is the right consistency-- which is to say, runnier than store-bought cake batter or pancake batter, but still thicker than just eggs and water and milk would be by themselves. The whisking goes especially fast if there is one person doing the sifting and one person doing the whisking, but if your bowl holds still, it can still be a one-person job.

The other option, of course, is to use a food processor or blender. I hate cleaning blenders, so for me it's wire whisk and strainer. If you use the blender option, use a full one cup of flour so that the consistency of the batter will turn out correctly. I I knew why this was, I would tell you, but I truly don't know. Sorry.

Once the batter has been mixed, it should look approximately like this:

At this point, the batter should be refrigerated for at least an hour. It will thicken slightly; if it gets too thick, thin it out with a mixture of water and milk. I experimented with just water and no milk once, and it makes the edges of the crepes flip over as you are trying to get them to spread out.

Butter or oil the pan. You can do this for every crepe, or for every other crepe, but sticky crepes do not come off the pan in one piece happily, so under-use the oil at your own risk. Preheat the pan until the butter is bubbly and runny but not brown.

Pour a pool of batter into the pan. Just under 1/4 c. worked pretty well for me today with my 9" pan, but how much you will need will vary with how thick your batter is, how big-- exactly-- the bottom of your pan is, and how quick you are at tilting the pan; I strongly recommend experimenting. Then, quick! tilt the pan to get the crepe to begin spreading out:

Tilt the pan around to get the batter to distribute as evenly as possible. I generally use either a circular motion or a back-and-forth to get the job done:

If you don't quiiite cover the whole pan-- which I didn't this time, as you can see-- you can add a little more batter, thus:

And if you get too much batter, you can just pour it back in the bowl. Sorry this next picture is fuzzy-- it's the best I got, and I felt the need to show you that it's OK to have that weird extra peninsula of crepe which happens when you pour the batter back. It just ends up being a slightly-differently-shaped crepe (and I personally would much rather have a weird-shaped crepe than one that it too thick. But it's up to you.)

But whatever happens, you had better be quick! Because they cook fast. When the crepe comes loose easily, you can flip it. You know it's good when it has that nice goldeny-brown color, like this:

And that's it! And now that I think about it, I feel quite silly for not having taken a picture of my finished crepes. Oops. Maybe I'll have to make more tomorrow. To eat, a crepe, you put the filling in and roll it up sort of like a soft-shell taco, and then cut off pieces with a fork.

Make Your Own Energy Bars

Better than store-bought in almost all ways. I originally found this in Runner's World--those people know what they're talking about.

1) Mix dry ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup each of dates or raisins, raw almonds, sesame seeds, and cashews

2) Mix wet ingredients:
1 1/2 cups tahini or natural peanut butter with one cup honey and one teaspoon vanilla. Microwave this business for one minute.

3) Combine the mixtures. Then on a greased baking sheet, spread mixture into a one inch deep rectangle. Cut into 12 bars, or if time allows, bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Cookbooks as Maps

Image from The Graphics Fairy

You may blame this on the fact that I wanted to be a cartographer in the fifth grade, but one of my favorite ways to think about a cookbook is as a map (thank you, Alton Brown!). Sometimes you use a map so that you can get to a place you've been before, but never with you, personally, driving; sometimes, you want to go somewhere spectacular, whether it's a new place or not, particularly if you have guests in town; and sometimes you use one to plan an adventure to somewhere you haven't been, just for the sake of going somewhere new.

So, the analogous recipes/cookbooks would be: 1) cookbooks which help you learn the basics and/or fix food which you may have seen prepared and definitely have eaten before; 2) recipes or cookbooks which showcase truly fantastic food, meant for guests and/or special occasions (early cookbooks focused on these kinds of recipes, since they assumed everyone knew how to do basic stuff); and 3) recipes or cookbooks which you can thumb through when you are feeling creative and you want to go somewhere new.

If you are just starting out, you will definitely want at least one source for that first type of recipe. I like Better Homes and Gardens (any "thrift store edition"-- these are in my price range, and besides which, the older ones often have more "basic" recipes than the newer ones), though I know a few people who swear by The Joy of Cooking, and of course there is the ever-present Internet, which can give you any kind of recipe; you will recognize "basic" recipes sometimes simply by what they are and sometimes by where they are-- beginning cooking sites abound.

What counts in the "truly fantastic food" category will depend greatly on your taste and that of the people you normally cook for (even more than it does in the "basic" category). I don't actually have just one cookbook I use for this category; what I do have is the results of trying out new recipes for years, and saving the best ones to use when company comes.

For "going somewhere new," it depends slightly less on taste and a lot more on a sense of culinary adventure; for some people (particularly of the under-five-set and similarly picky eaters) this category may be nonexistent. My best cookbook in this case is-- ahem-- again, a thrift-store find. There are PICTURES on EVERY OTHER PAGE, and I have grown up enough now to realize that beautiful pictures are not just for children's books. This marvelous book is called The Step-by-Step Cookbook by Judith Ferguson (catchy name, I know) and while it is out of print, it is as of this writing available on Amazon.

In the end, you will start collecting your own recipes in your own binder or recipe file.  The best idea I've ever heard for this is what my grandma does: she collects recipes into a magnetic-page photo album. I myself use one of the little, one-photo-per-page photo albums.The recipe card file is also very popular, and of course there is the virtual recipe file option. Whatever option your choose, it becomes your personalized map to the places you go or want to go in the Land Of Cooking--because, of course you will be recording your thoughts and experiments-- and then you will have the best cookbook ever.

Not yo mamma's casserole

Unless yo momma is incredibly awesome*, that is.

-1 cup water
-1 cup cubed cheese (something not too soft; sharp white cheddar is good, but a mozarella/feta mix works well too. . .)
-1 onion, chopped
-1 1/2 cups raw penne pasta, preferably whole grain
-2 (15oz) cans of diced tomatoes, including liquid
-1 cup breadcrumbs, lightly toasted on the stove top in olive oil or butter
-1 tsp salt
-Pepper to taste. I also add whole squshed garlic cloves and a variety of Italian-esque herbs, but this is optional.


Dump all ingredients except the breadcrumbs into an 8X8 casserole dish and bake covered at 350 for an hour. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top and broil them for about 8 minutes till they brown. Serves 3-4.

Vegan Version: Still delicious without the cheese, although it has more of a stew-like texture; add an extra 3/4 cup of breadcrumbs, toasted with garlic and olive oil.



*and/or wrote The Clueless Vegetarian, from whence this is adapted.

Garlic Penicillin

David's variation, at the bottom, is the very best comforting food for illness that I have ever, ever tasted, bar none. It's pretty good when you're healthy, too. . .



(Original) Garlic Penicillin

- 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced fine
- 1 8oz. can of chicken broth
- The juice of half a lemon

Saute the garlic, add the broth and bring to a boil, take of the heat and add the lemon. You're done.

David's Modification:

All the ingredients above, plus:
- 1/2 cup each of chopped Onion, Celery, and Carrot.
- can substitute Bell pepper for the carrot,
- can also add 1/2 cup of chopped mushrooms. Just try for 1 and 1/2 cups of veggies, no more than 2 cups.
- 1 more can of chicken broth
- the zest of 1 lemon
- a handful of either Italian flat leaf parsley, or cilantro, chopped fine

1) Saute the onion, celery, carrot/bell pepper, and mushrooms on medium till just soft

2) add the garlic, continue to cook just for about a minute so the garlic gets soft,

3) add 2 cans of chicken broth and bring to a boil. reduce the heat to medium, add the lemon zest and a handful or two of egg noodles if desired.

4) Turn of the heat and let the noodles and lemon steep for no more than 3 minutes, the noodles should be al dente not soggy.

6) add salt and pepper to taste, and last the handful of parsley or cilantro, I prefer cilantro. Serve immediately if made with the noodles, you don't want them soggy.


You can make the soup in advance without the noodles and then bring it back to a boil and add the noodles just before serving, or leave them out entirely. I also like to cut up a grilled chicken breast and throw it into the pot at the last minute.

To heal

Like many, I have problems with disordered eating, although not a full blown disorder. I was and am protected by self awareness, as well as a handful of supporters I'm deeply grateful for. My main ballet teacher always accepted me and helped me to excel in the body I had, my parents disdained anybody's quest for the beauty ideal, and my therapist strongly supports my decision not to purge or diet (though I've been overweight for my entire adult life) until I can do it in a healthy way. I've also had friends who provided deeply needed reality checks.

Though the problem hasn't gone away, I'm slowly learning to deal with it. Exercise, when it's about being in your body and loving movement, is nourishing. Cooking--not for necessity, but for fun--makes food more than expensive, inconvenient, and necessary. Flavors, temperatures, textures, and ingredients make a puzzle game with intense sensory and social rewards. Cooking usually means you're planning on eating, that you aren't ignoring the problem. Feeding other people can be satisfying, and it can help you give yourself permission to feed yourself.

We're hoping to explore disordered eating at some length here. The point is that eating when you're hungry, enjoying your food without being ashamed of it, and stopping when you're full should be a natural part of life--without getting excessively stressful or time consuming.


Some most helpful links:

http://www.ellynsatter.com/what-is-normal-eating-i-62.html

http://www.intuitiveeating.org/content/10-principles

http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/if-only-poor-people-understood-nutrition/