A Bread for All Seasons!

I tried making brioche a long time ago, before I properly grasped the fundamentals of bread baking. I adhered strictly to the recipe, following each step but without the understanding of what the dough should feel like I ended up with a flour laden dough that was just to dense to rise properly. This resulted in unsatisfying loaf of bread that I just didn’t understand what went wrong. Numerous, simpler loafs later, I have a better feeling of what a proper dough should feel like so that I don’t weigh down my bread with excess flour.

With the added experience I decide to tackle brioche once again and used this recipe for Bubble Top Brioche.

Below is the picture of the dough after sitting in the fridge overnight. Tacky but not sticky dough that has rested and is ready to be formed into the final product:

 

The end result, a dozen delicious muffins that tear apart to sop up jam, gravy or whatever else you can think of!

Chili, Hold the Meat

After what can only be described as a foodie holiday to Vermont, we came home to a nice light full turkey dinner with more side dishes than you could shake your fist at. Needless to say a bit of healthy eating was in store for us to readjust to our normal lives with normal portion sizes and balanced meals.

This recipe for Southwestern Black Bean & Corn Chili was the perfect meal to pack on the vegetables and have a healthy protein in black beans. I made one change to the recipe by adding a handful of chopped prunes that I learned from previous chilli cook offs is the perfect way to add a little sweetness to your chili.
We served the chili on top of rice, but Katie has suggested that serving it on top of mashed potatoes is a great option as well!

*Note to our avid readers: The bun in the top of the picture will be posted about at a later date.

For our #1 Fan… aka Mom

 I swear it hasn’t felt like 6 months since I last posted to this blog, but as I am reminded on our weekly calls with my parents, nothing new has been posted for quite some time. This hasn’t meant an end to new and interesting food in this house, just a seasonal reprieve due to sunny weather, weddings and a little bit of being lazy. Of late I have been utilizing the library as my main source of new recipe ideas and am often with at least 4 cookbooks out at any given time. This method is practical for the wallet and helps to avoid dud cookbooks with only 1 or 2 interesting recipes.

To kick things off again I am going to post about a calzone recipe I thought up the other week utilizing the leftovers from thanksgiving. The recipe is broken down into 3 parts. First is the Tomato Chutney I envisioned as the base, replacing the traditional pizza sauce. I found the recipe on Jamie Oliver’s website. My only qualm with this recipe is that it ended up being rather sweet, so I only added a tablespoon of the chutney to each calzone to avoid overpowering the other flavours.

 

Next I took 2 leeks and slowly sautéed them in 2 tbsp of buttter for 25 minutes until they were soft and creamy.

Last I made the pizza dough*, and assembled 2-3 tbsp of leek, 1 tbsp of chutney, a small handful of leftover thanksgiving turkey and a grating of emmental cheese and folded over the pizza dough. After baking for 15 min at 475 degrees the calzones were done and along with a side spinach salad dinner was served!

 

Note*: Dough recipe is enough to make 8 calzones. I froze half and made 4 for this recipe.