Improving My Bread Baking Skills: Part One

Ever since first starting to make bread in January, I've been becoming increasingly addicted to making bread. Lately I've been making different kinds of breads at least once a month, sometimes even once a week. I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is because it's a true challenge. Each time I make bread, there's nothing seriously wrong with it (meaning, it's edible), but there's always some small improvement I can make to it. One example is in making ciabatta bread. I've made it three times so far, two of which I've blogged about, and it's astonishing how much you can improve your bread making skills with each attempt.

My third attempt has been my best yet. Instead of the couple loaves I've done previously, I decided to make buns. One problem I had when making ciabatta bread before was that I never got the large holes that are characteristic of ciabatta. I always just got smaller holes. This time the bread came out holier, and I'm pretty sure I know how. First of all, my starter mix was left in the fridge much longer than the 12 hours it's supposed to be left for. As a result, it came out with lots of bubbles in it. Secondly, I left the dough for its first rising about a hour longer than the recipe said. I realized that the recipe mentioned the dough would be ready for the next step when there were bubbles dotting the surface, but there weren't any visible after the rising time, so I just waited until I could see them. As a result, my third attempt at ciabatta bread resulted in beautiful big holes.

A Beginner Knitter

For the most part, I consider myself to be a beginner when it comes to knitting. Yes, as a child my grandmother introduced me to some basic knitting techniques including the knit stitch, and I learned how to cast on much later, learned to purl, taught myself the elongated stitch, and with my grandmother's help, even completed a keyhole scarf, but other than that I've never completed anything. I seem to keep coming back to knitting over the years, always tempted by the lovely knitting patterns and colourful wools, but I haven't accomplished much.

About a year and a half ago my sister and I were in a local wool store and suddenly got tempted by one of berroco's knitting pattern books. In particular, we really wanted to have the red sweater on the front, and so we quite spontaneously bought nine balls of berroco's blackstone tweed yarn with the intention that we would each knit half of the sweater. A year and a half later, I'm only just starting on it, and definitely not without a struggle. In case you're interested, you can find a picture of the sweater at the following URL: http://www.berroco.com/287.291/288/288_nectarine_pv.html.

I've found that the yarn splits very easily, so it took me a few gos before I managed to get the stitches cast on properly; I kept breaking the yarn and always had to start over. I finally cast the stitches on very loosely so that I wouldn't have to be as forceful with the yarn, and so far so good. I have about two inches of the lower ribbing on the back of the sweater done, with only one more inch to go before I have to go onto the next step. I'm quite please with the consistent tension of my knitting so far, and it already feels like a big accomplishment to have something that resembles a piece of the sweater.

I'll keep updating my progress here. Hopefully this is a knitting project I will finish!

A Homemade Meal: Hamburger Buns, Molten Lava Cakes, and Coconut Ice Cream

I haven't been cooking a lot lately, but recently I had a burst of energy and enthusiasm, and decided to dive into making some homemade hamburger buns for hamburgers. My mom has been doing a lot of the cooking lately, but upon wondering what we should have for dinner and discovering ground beef in the freezer, I decided making homemade hamburger buns was a good idea since we didn't have any store bought buns.

I decided to try the hamburger and hotdog bun recipe on allrecipes. It's probably one of the fastest bread recipes I've tried, and it was incredibly easy. I decided to brush the buns with a bit of egg wash and sprinkled them with sesame seeds before baking them in the oven.

These buns are incredibly soft and perfect for a hamburger. I'd definitely make them again.

In addition to the hamburgers and hamburger buns, I also decided to make molten lava cakes. I've never made them before, so it was definitely an interesting process, although easier than I thought. I used the recipe at the following URL: http://mehanskitchen.blogspot.ca/2012/02/molten-chocolate-cake.html. I just didn't use the liquor, espresso powder, or orange zest in it, although I'm sure either of these things would have been lovely. I just didn't have any of these ingredients on hand.

Homemade Pasta in a Bacon and Tomato Sauce

My sister and I decided back in August when our parents went away on a trip that it was the perfect time to make homemade pasta, as we would only have to make it for the two of us. Homemade pasta takes a really long time to make, as you have to mix the dough, allow it time to rest, roll the dough through your pasta machine (which can sometimes be really difficult), cut the pasta, and then finally cook it. When we make it for the four of us, we usually make two--three balls of dough, but this time we only had to make one ball. To be perfectly honest, it did still seem to be a lot of work to make just for the two of us, but it was so worth it.

You can find the basic pasta dough recipe here: http://www.italianfoodforever.com/2008/05/spinach-ricotta-ravioli/

One of our favourite pasta sauces is Canadian chef Michael Smith's Tomato Bacon Sauce, so that's exactly what we decided to use for this recipe. It's a very simple sauce to make, using only a can of crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic, bacon, herbs, and salt and pepper, but it makes for a very flavourful sauce. I think anytime bacon is added to something, a dish is brought up a notch, and it's astonishing how much flavour can come from adding a combination of fresh basil, oregano, and thyme from the garden. This recipe created a really lovely, smoky flavoured sauce for our homemade pasta noodles.

If I have one critique at all for this dish, it would be that we may have overcooked the noodles slightly, but it was still one of the best pasta dishes I've eaten.

Lemon Meringue Tarts

These lemon meringue tarts were made for father's day, but I thought I'd write this post any way. My sister and I decided to make these for our father and stepfather. We made something similar for our mom for mother's day, which she enjoyed, only we just used the tart shell and lemon curd, and topped them each with a raspberry and a bit of kiwi. The tartness and sweetness of the fruit went really well with the slightly tart and sweet lemon curd and added a bit of freshness to it. For father's day, however, we topped the lemon curd with meringue and baked them in the oven until lightly browned.

Lemon curd is surprisingly easy to make and takes few ingredients. This simple lemon curd included sugar, lemon juice and zest, and butter; I can't remember if there were any other ingredients, but I don't think there were. The lemon curd got cooked in a double boiler until it was very thick and then cooled and refrigerated.

I chose to use some frozen tart shells from the grocery store, as they are tasty and relatively inexpensive. The tart shells were pre-baked before filling them with the curd.

The final step was to mix up a basic meringue and put the tarts under the broiler to brown the meringue.

Potato Gnocci

Potato gnocchi is one of those things that I've heard is really challenging for the home cook to make. However, due to my love of potatoes, I've always been tempted to try cooking it myself. I've tried the store-bought gnocchi from the pasta aisle at the grocery store, but I really wasn't that impressed with them, but nonetheless, hearing people talk about how lovely and light these potato dumplings can be, I had to give it a try.

The website Italian Food Forever has been of constant inspiration to me over the last few months, and I've found a number of fantastic recipes there, so I decided to go with the potato gnocchi recipe on that website. If you do plan on trying to make gnocchi, have a look at the step-by-step guide to making gnocchi too.

I've heard that one of the most challenging things about making potato gnocchi at home is that people tend to overwork the dough, so the gnocchi end up being really tough and dense, but this recipe seems to work because you bake the potatoes rather than boil them. This means that you don't have to add as much flour to the dough, and it also means you don't have to overwork the dough as a result. I combined the baked potato, egg, salt, and only one cup of the required flour until it was just mixed. Then I kneaded it as the recipe calls for until it was a smooth ball of dough. At this stage, I found rolling the dough out into ropes was incredibly simple. Then I cut the dough into 1-inch pieces and used a fork to make a few indentations. Then I set them aside in the fridge until I was ready to cook them.

Like pasta, you boil a pot of salted water to cook the gnocchi. Then you drop the gnocchi into the water and wait for them to float. Once they're floating at the top, they're cooked. 

I really wanted the gnocchi to shine, so I made a very basic tomato sauce using a can of crushed tomatoes, an onion, three or so cloves of garlic, some fresh oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, and pepper. I began by cooking the diced onion and chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil. Once those seemed soft, I added the can of tomatoes, a pinch of red pepper flakes, pepper, and the fresh oregano. I saved the fresh basil to garnish the gnocchi along with a bit of parmesan cheese.

I was surprised at my success making the gnocchi for the first time, as they were light, didn't fall apart on me, and weren't dense at all. I love Italian Food Forever's recipe and highly recommend it for first-time gnocchi makers.

Spring Mushroom Ravioli with Asparagus

I love ravioli and have only ever made homemade ravioli at home once, but it's just so much time and effort to just get 10 raviolis per person. However, my sister and I were at the grocery store one day deciding what to have for dinner, and I noticed some wonton wrappers and suggested to her that we buy those to make some kind of ravioli. I had heard of using wonton wrappers instead of making your own pasta dough to make making ravioli from scratch a lot easier on time and effort.

Making your own pasta dough from scratch is really fun and rewarding, but the mixing of the dough combined with allowing it time to rest, and also rolling the dough out makes it a really big effort. Not to mention, you still have to make a filling, fill the dough and cut the raviolis out of it, make a sauce, and cook the ravioli. Using wonton wrappers meant that I only had to make a filling, assemble and cut the ravioli, cook them, and make a sauce. It's still a lot of work, but it's a lot less than if you make your own pasta dough.

Here's the recipe I came up with.

Pasta Dough

1 package of wonton wrappers

Mushroom Filling

1 package of roughly three portobello mushrooms
1 package of white mushrooms
1 small onion
4-6 garlic cloves
butter
fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce 
parmesan cheese
olive oil
garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch of asparagus
salt and pepper to taste

For the filling, cut the onion into chunks. Peel the garlic. Process the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cloves in a food processor.

Heat a pan with a bit of butter and once heated, toss the mushroom, onion, and garlic mixture into the pan to cook. At the stage that you start to cook the mushroom mixture, add the fresh thyme, and salt and pepper (I don't recall exactly how much thyme I used, but keep in mind that it's a strong flavour, so you probably only need 3 teaspoons or so; I just eye-balled it.)

Once the mixture looks cooked, take it off the stove and set aside to cool slightly.

Once the mixture is cooled enough, you can began filling the wontons with the filling. Take a wonton sheet and spoon roughly a teaspoon of mushroom filling in the middle. Cover the filling with another wonton sheet and carefully press the dough around the filling to get rid of air. Use a ravioli cutter to cut the ravioli; a ravioli cutter will not only cut but seal the ravioli. When the ravioli are assembled, place them on a floured baking sheet and cover so that they don't dry out.

When you're ready to cook the ravioli, bring a pot of salted water to a gentle boil and when it's at a gentle boil, drop the ravioli in. When they float, they should be done.

Cook the asparagus in a pot of water until just cooked; the asparagus should be a bright green still and you should be able to stick a fork our knife into it easily.

For the sauce, heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and, once heated, add the chopped garlic. Once the garlic looks soft and cooked, add the cooked asparagus to the mix and some salt and pepper. Toss the cooked ravioli in and some parmesan cheese to taste.

For serving, you can top the pasta with more cheese. This recipe makes approximately 10 raviolis for 3 people.