Tomato, Basil, & Garlic Filled Pane Bianco

This bread was the winning recipe in the 2009 National Festival of Breads, which is sponsored by the Kansas Wheat Commission. I first saw the bread on the King Arthur Flour site. I loved the flavors... garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and shredded cheese and knew I just had to make this loaf!

The dough was easy to work with and the baked bread has a soft center and a crunchy top. It is just wonderful!

I adapted the recipe to make one loaf. If you'd like to make two loaves, follow the link above to the King Arthur Flour site.

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Sweet Egg Braid

This is a slightly sweet bread that makes delicious toast. The dough can be put into a couple of loaf pans, or braided as shown here.

It's so much fun to make bread - I just love it. I've heard people say that they find it so satisfying to knead bread dough by hand while waiting for the moment it turns from being a fitful glob of flour and water into a smooth, puffy piece of dough. I can't speak to that as my Kitchen Aid does all the work, but it is satisfying nonetheless to take a gorgeous and delicious loaf of bread out of the oven and slather some butter on it. Mmm!

The original recipe called for bread flour, but I used all-purpose flour and added one tablespoon wheat gluten per cup of flour. The wheat gluten adds protein to the dough which helps with the rise.

The loaf seemed to be dry after only a day or two, so we ate most of it toasted. I still have some in the fridge and will make bread pudding with the rest of it.

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King's Hawaiian Rolls - Copycat Recipe

King's Hawaiian dinner rolls are my daughter's favorite rolls. I wanted to give this copycat recipe a try, and I'm glad I did. These rolls bake up fluffy and light and there's a secret ingredient... pineapple juice!

Olive and Sun-Dried Tomato Fougasse

Fougasse (foo-gahss) is a traditional Provencal herbed bread, that is formed and slashed before baking to resemble a leaf- or tree-shape.

I used sun-dried tomatoes and Kalamata olives for this recipe, along with rosemary. It makes wonderful, savory bread that's great to serve with soup, or as I've discovered, as a snack after slicing a piece in half and filling it with a few slices of cheese. 

Parmesan Cream Crackers

Buttery. Salty. Flaky. Cheesy. Addictive. 

I could end this post right here because that's all you really need to know about these crackers. Oh, you want the recipe? Okay, then.

This is Mark Bittman's recipe, but I first saw them at Diane's blog, Stylish Cuisine. I had everything in the house that is needed to make them, so I got up and did just that. 

These come together quickly and easily using a food processor. The recipe suggests rolling the dough out to 1/2-inch, but I rolled mine much thinner and was glad I did because they tend to puff up a little during cooking. I rolled the dough out right on the parchment, then just transferred the paper to the baking sheet.

You can watch Bittman make these crackers on this video. Don't miss the very end!

I'm linking this to


PARMESAN CREAM CRACKERS from Mark Bittman in the NY Times

1 cup all-purpose flour, more as needed

½ tsp salt

½ cup finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese

4 T unsalted butter

¼ cup cream or half-and-half, more as needed

Coarse salt, pepper, sesame or poppy seeds, minced garlic, or whatever you like for sprinkling (optional).

   Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or lighly dust with flour. Put flour, salt, cheese and butter in bowl of a food processor. Pulse until flour and butter are combined. Add about ¼ cup cream or half-and-half and let machine run for a bit; continue to add liquid a teaspoon at a time, until mixture holds together but is not sticky.     Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until ½-inch thick or even thinner, adding flour as needed. Transfer sheet of dough to prepared baking sheet (drape it over rolling pin to make it easier). Score lightly with a sharp knife, pizza cutter or a pastry wheel if you want to break crackers into squares or rectangles later on. Sprinkle with salt or other topping if you like.Bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Cool on a rack; serve warm or at room temperature or store in a tin for a few days. Yield: About 4 servings.

Hot Dog Buns

I bought some Brats the other day at the store. The next logical step would be to make some rolls, right?! I've used this recipe in the past, but thought I'd try one that I found on Tasty Kitchen. 

Sourdough Bread

After discovering that making and keeping a sourdough starter was a heckuva lot easier than most people make it out to be, I've been having fun experimenting with bread.

Cranberry Sweet Rolls

Q: What do you get when you mix milk, honey, vanilla bean, yeast, flour, salt, a stick-and-a-half of butter, 10 egg yolks and takes three days to make?

A: Milk and Honey Brioche

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Soft pretzels, hot out of the oven. I ate two.

This is a really good recipe. They don't taste like the pretzels you can buy at the mall. You know the place. (Psst! They're better!)

Rosemary Bread

This is my first month in the Secret Recipe Club! Each member is assigned a blog and from there you choose a recipe to make yourself. This recipe comes from Julie at A Little Bit of Everything. (Hi Julie!) 

Julie lives in Omaha and as I was going through her recipes, I was surprised at how many I had either made myself or saw a recipe that I'd been wanting to try. I'd been wanting to make the copycat Rosemary Bread from Macaroni Grill restaurant and saw that Julie had baked it. I love the smell of Rosemary and after reading how Julie loved the bread, decided to make it. 

This made two very small loaves of bread... just right for individual loaves at dinner. They could also be hallowed out to make a soup bowl.

I adapted the recipe slightly, using olive oil in the recipe instead of butter. 

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Rosemary Bread  (adapted from food.com, recipe 64446)

1 T yeast

1 T sugar

1 c warm water

1 tsp salt

1 T olive oil

2 ½  cups flour

2 T rosemary, chopped

1 T butter

Place yeast, sugar, water, salt and oil in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix for 1 minute. Add 2 cups flour and 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary. Change to dough hook and knead for 8 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, until dough is smooth and elastic.

Spray a bowl with cooking spray. Place dough into bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough and divide in half. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Shape each piece of dough into a small rounded oval loaf. Cover and let rise again until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375°. Bake 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. Remove from oven, brush with butter and sprinkle with sea salt. Makes 2 individual loaves.

Zucchini-Nutella Bread

I haven't shared much of our garden this year, but after a late planting, it's finally doing well. We've harvested all of the spinach and most of the radishes and a few ripe tomatoes, but the majority won't get ripe for another few weeks. We have red onions, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, sweet cherry peppers and bell peppers yet to come. 

One of our neighbors dubbed this summer for us as "The Summer of the Deck" and I have no doubt that my gardener ageed with her. He's been working on the deck, weather permitting, since he began tearing down the old one last March. We started with plans of replacing just the flooring, but the more we uncovered, we found pretty much all of the wood was rotten and needed to be replaced. So, it was built from the ground up. You can see a little of it in the picture above, but I'll post pictures of it another time.

Oh, zucchini. I love you. I hate you. 

But mostly, I love you. 

We check the garden nightly now for zukes, because if left on their own for too long, they tend to grow to the size of baseball bats. My gardener found one that he swears was three feet long. Take into consideration that my gardener is also an avid fisherman ;) He joked that he was glad his brother had a 2.5 ton pickup so he could take the thing home with him.

When I saw Emily's Marbled Nutella Banana Bread on her blog, Sugar Plum, I thought hmm, how about Zucchini-Nutella Bread, and so it was born.

This is one of those recipes that tastes much better than it might sound. This is an amazingly moist bread with all the goodness of Nutella and all the healthfulness of homegrown zucchini.

I adapted my favorite Banana Bread recipe from Emeril for this. 

I made another loaf today with bananas, but I'm sending that to my granddaughter, Kayla, so she can have a slice for breakfast before she starts her first day at Kindergarten next Monday.

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Zucchini-Nutella Bread

10 T butter, cut into 1/2" pieces

2 c grated zucchini

1/2 c sour cream

2 large eggs

1-1/2 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

3/4 c plus 2 T sugar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 c toasted, chopped walnuts

1/2 c Nutella

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 9x5 loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray. 

Puree the grated zucchini, sour cream, eggs and vanilla in food processor.

Sift flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer with a whisk attachment. Add butter and mix on low until blended. Add the zucchini mixture in 3 batches, scraping the sides of the bowl and mixing on medium speed between each addition. Fold in the nuts.

Divide half the batter into a medium bowl. Stir in Nutella until combined. Alternate spoonfuls of each batter into loaf pan. Swirl gently with a knife.

Bake until lightly browned and bread bounces back to the touch, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cook for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Three years ago today, I was sitting at my computer (looking up recipes, no doubt!) when I stumbled onto someone's blog. I then googled "food blogs" and found lots more! Having just moved from California to Montana and with plenty of time on my hands, I thought, hmm, I could do that! I went to Blogger and clicked on "create a blog" and the rest is history.

I've had so much fun with Karen Cooks these last three years and the best part has been because of you, and you, and you! I've met so many wonderful people in the last three years! So with my thanks for following, today I'm giving away a copy of Nigella Lawson's "How to be a Domestic Goddess". Just leave me a comment and you're automatically entered to win!

Bacon, Green Onion and Asiago Cheese Bread

My gardener takes a sandwich for lunch almost every day, so when Heather said this bread was perfect for sandwiches, I thought I'd make a loaf for something a little different. 

I started with what has become my favorite flour made right here in Montana. I blended the white whole wheat with the white flour for this bread and it was a perfect combination for this recipe.

A little crisp bacon...

Lots of green onions...

And your favorite cheese. Heather used bleu cheese, but my gardener isn't a fan, so I used Asiago.

This bakes up with a wonderfully dark, crispy crust and a dense crumb.

I especially like this bread toasted. All the flavors just pop when it's toasted. 

You can find the recipe here!

Karen Cooks has a blogiversary coming up next week. It's been three years and 300 posts, so stay tuned for a giveaway!

Golden Pull-Apart Butter Buns

I've been in California for the last month thoroughly enjoying myself with a couple of angels.

Kayla (5) and Emily (15 months)

Emily likes to do everything herself...

... which, of course, includes feeding herself!

And she *loves* books. If I read Yellow and Yummy once, I read it 1,000 times! I'd no sooner finish a book and she'd sign "more".

Kayla loves to be in the kitchen. Here she's making cinnamon rolls. We also made Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Chip Cookies and French Bread.

She was good at cleaning up in the kitchen, too ;)

And when she's not busy in the kitchen or with riding her bike (without training wheels, thankyouverymuch), she loves to dress up and be pretty.

And I can't forget to post a picture of my wonderful daughter and son-in-law, Cameo & Justin. They put up with me for 31 days and I came out with nary a scratch! This picture was taken at Lower Yosemite Falls. We met my nieces and nephew there and took a 3 hour bike ride along many of the trails at Yosemite. So pretty!

And this is Wrigley. He's a good boy. Every time I went to the pantry, he'd follow me, because he knows that Gramma's are good at handing out treats.

Yes... yes, I do have a recipe for you today. For anything bread, I find myself headed to the King Arthur Flour website. They have lots of recipe tutorials and an active blog where they actually answer comments and give baking advice to people who visit their site with questions. You can also choose to view their recipes by volume or weight. I find myself liking to bake bread by weight these days.

I liked these buns... they were soft and tender on the inside with buttery goodness on the top. Perfect for a dinner roll or sliders. A recipe makes 16 rolls, so you could double the recipe for Thanksgiving dinner and have mini-turkey sandwiches for leftovers!

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Golden Pull-Apart Butter Buns from King Arthur Flour

Buns:

3-1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

2 tsp instant yeast

2 T potato flour of ¼ cup instant potato flakes

3 T Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk

2 T sugar

1-1/2 tsp salt

4 T soft butter

2/3 cup lukewarm water

½ cup lukewarm water

Topping:

2 T melted butter

Directions:

1) Combine all of the dough ingredients in a large bowl, and mix and knead — using your hands, a stand mixer, or a bread machine set on the dough cycle — to make a soft, smooth dough.

2) Place the dough in a lightly greased container — an 8-cup measure works well here — and allow the dough to rise for 60 to 90 minutes, until it's just about doubled in bulk.

3) Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface.

4) Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces, by dividing in half, then in halves again, etc. Round each piece into a smooth ball.

5) Lightly grease two 8" round cake pans. Space 8 buns in each pan. Can you use 9" round cake pans, or a 9" x 13" pan? Sure; the buns just won't nestle together as closely, so their sides will be a bit more baked.

6) Cover the pans, and allow the buns to rise till they're crowded against one another and quite puffy, about 60 to 90 minutes. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

7) Uncover the buns, and bake them for 22 to 24 minutes, until they're golden brown on top and the edges of the center bun spring back lightly when you touch it. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the middle of the center bun should register at least 190°F.

8) Remove the buns from the oven, and brush with the melted butter. After a couple of minutes, turn them out of the pan onto a cooling rack.

9) Serve warm. Store leftovers well-wrapped, at room temperature.

Yield: 16 buns.

Mom's Blueberry Muffins

I wasn't sure it was going to stop snowing this past winter. Now, I'm wondering if it's ever going to stop raining! In May, Havre got dumped with 3.51" of rain (average rainfall for May is 1.84"). This month, we already have 2.33" of rain when the average is 1.90". Enough already! We should have planted our garden Memorial Day weekend, but it was raining. When the rain stopped for a few days, the ground was soaked and my gardener couldn't get in there with the roto-tiller. 

I bought some big, beautiful, healthy herb plants and kept them indoors until they begged to be repotted. I put them outside and they got battered by wind and rain. I think they'll all make it, but they sure don't look very pretty now.

Sage

 Rosemary

 Basil

 Lemon Balm

 Thyme

 Flat Leaf Parsley

Chives

Stevia

 My gardener was going to plant last weekend come hell or high water (hehe). We kept the garden covered with a tarp during the night and, if it wasn't raining, uncovered it during the day to dry out. He tilled the ground and we planted, but you can see the clods of dirt here, which was the best we got, as wet as the soil was. I planted three foot sections of mixed lettuce, radishes, and spinach on this end of the garden and will plant another three foot section each week. 

Here are the tomato plants, bell pepper, banana pepper, jalapeno, sweet cherry peppers and zucchini. They don't look like very happy plants, do they?

 You may have noticed that our deck is gone! My gardener has been busy already this summer. He built floor-to-ceiling cabinets in the garage and tore the deck down. We were hoping to keep the framing and just replace the floor, but all of the wood was rotten, so down it came. See the ladder beneath the slider? Those were our temporary stairs while the deck was down. 


Oh, see those two rugs draped over chairs and the grill? Our basement flooded, so yes, we've been busy. On top of that, my computer crashed and I was without for two weeks. I didn't even freak when the computer crashed because several months ago I ditched my external hard drive where I backed up files and signed up with Carbonite, an online backup system. So easy and no worries. They offer a free 15-day trial, if you're interested. This ain't no paid advertisement... Carbonite doesn't know me from Adam... I'm just super impressed with the service they provide.

When the skies weren't pouring down rain, my gardener has been out working on the deck and nearly has the framing completed. When it's finished, we'll have a party and you're invited!  

Now for the blueberry muffins! This is the recipe that my mom used and I've not tasted any better muffins than these. No mixer required; just put the ingredients into a bowl and mix by hand. So good right out of the oven with some butter! Be sure to sprinkle the dough with plenty of granulated sugar - it adds a little sweetness and a nice crunch to the top of these muffins.

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Mom's Blueberry Muffins

1 cup blueberries

4T butter

1-3/4 cups flour

2-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

Melt butter in a mixing bowl. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into the butter. Add unbeaten egg and milk. Beat until smooth. Fold in blueberries. Put cupcake liners in muffin tins and fill 2/3 full. Top generously with additional granulated sugar. Bake at 375 F for 20 minutes. Makes 8 big muffins or 12 smaller ones.