We Want Food- Itsa Pizza Pie!

As an anxious child, I had many fears - burglars, thunder storms, bananas. In some respects, I was very lucky though. I never had to worry too much that my parents would split up. They had a pretty great marriage and rarely fought, so when they did it felt dramatic and the reverberations of the fight would ring in my ears for days after. As an adult, I don't remember the details of any of them except one. It was a doozy. The cause of said row? Barbecue pizza.

Yes, you read that correctly. The biggest fight my parents ever had was over pizza topped with some kind of saucy pulled pork barbecue. My dad thought it sounded disgusting. My mom, a great lover of both pizza and barbecue was anxious to try it. Tempers flared. Pizza was ordered. I told you so's were issued. I hid in my room with the dog and covered my ears. My parents eventually came in and comforted me; the argument had just been the result of hunger-induced tempers and misunderstandings.

Unlike in other pizza-ordering situations, where leftovers were always consumed the next day along with a pre-prandial drink and a viewing of MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHours, on this occasion the uneaten remains were tossed. All was forgiven. But not forgotten. For the rest of my childhood, it was the marker for every other disagreement. The barometer against which other fights were measured. From that day on, whenever my parents argued, if I felt the slightest amount of concern that it would escalate into something more sinister, I would look at them and say, "Is this barbecue pizza?" And they would reassure me that yes, this fight too had a bark far worse than its bite.

While Daniel and I have had many a food-related disagreement (when my blood sugar drops, my temper escalates), we share what may be an unlikely love of barbecue pizza. It's one that developed during Daniel's 28th birthday party, which was also the historic election night of Barack Obama. We ordered a cheese-free barbecue chicken pizza. When the guests had left and we felt free to eat a few extra slices, we discovered that this barbecue pizza, which also featured jalapenos and red onions, became even more delicious when dipped in Sabra hummus. Decadent? Yes. Carb heavy? Oh yeah. We've enjoyed the combo many times since, and it has become our go-to food to enjoy while watching event television - election night, Super Bowl, and of course, the Oscars.

So yesterday, in honor of the Academy Awards (my personal favorite TV event), I tried my hand at making my own BBQ pizza.


I used an overnight pizza dough recipe from Epicurious .



Marinated some chicken breast in a mix of spicy red barbecue sauce, a splash of Carolina mustard, a dash of ketchup, and a dollop of canned tomato sauce. Sauteed up three jalapenos. Sliced a red onion.


Topped the 9-inch pizzas and let them bake on my brand new pizza stone (courtesy of my buddy Ariel). The result? Delicious. And if need be, worth a fight.

The Bread Project - Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

I was itching to make a loaf of my mom's cranberry nut bread yesterday (I'd only made and devoured two loaves over the holidays, which just won't cut it), but alas Safeway had no fresh cranberries on hand (that stupid grocery store regularly lets me down, which is perhaps why it's parking lot is strangely the site of the majority of Daniel's and my tiffs - we are not this couple.)

Anyway, I wanted to make a quick bread and had thought that I might return to the comforting King Arthur Oatmeal Applesauce Bread that I made a while back. But then I came across a recipe for a similar quick bread based on a Dorrie Greenspan goodie on the blog Eggs on Sunday. It had the divine Dorrie and a streusel topping in its favor, so I decided to give it a go.

I made a few alterations to it, and it came out a little dryer than I might have liked, but still it's a nice, satisfying quick bread. It satiated both my need to bake and Daniel's rumbling stomach. Plus, I think it will make yummy toast. And I love toast.

Oatmeal Breakfast Bread
Adapted from Dorrie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, by way of Eggs on Sunday

Ingredients

For the streusel:
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar (I used a bit less)
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

For the bread:
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups unsweetened applesauce
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch ground cloves
1 cup old-fashioned oats

Directions

1)Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9×5 inch loaf pan, and tap out the excess flour.

2) In a small bowl, use your fingers to toss together the streusel topping ingredients (brown sugar, pecans, and cinnamon.) Set aside.

3) In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, applesauce, oil and yogurt until they’re well blended.

4) In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, and cloves. Stir in the oats.

5) Pour the liquid ingredients over the flour mixture in the large bowl, and fold until they’re combined (do not overmix.)

6) Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Scatter the streusel over the top, and lightly press it onto the surface of the batter with your fingers. Bake for 55 minutes.

7) Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes before placing on rack to cool completely. Wrap tightly and store.

The Bread Project- Yogurt-Zucchini Bread with Walnuts

Before leaving for this three months sojourn of food writing, girl book researching, and couch hopping, I wanted to bake some bread to exercise those muscles before what has the potential to be a bread dry spell (which is better than a dry bread spell as that would just be lots of croutons.)

I had wanted to do some sort of luscious yeast bread for a really big hurrah, but that week in San Francisco before coming back to NY was so hurried and frantic that quick bread was all I could muster. That I chose to do a zucchini bread might come as a surprise to those who know me since zucchini has long been one of the few vegetables that I somewhat actively avoid. My distaste is nowhere near that approaching how I feel about bananas, and I will happily eat the suckers with certain preparations or to avoid being rude, but that texture, which is prone to slippery sliminess is just not my thing.

However, when I saw this recipe in b for Yogurt-Zucchini Bread with Walnuts, I was intrigued, and I thought, why not? I'm being bold in my life decisions, I might as well be bold in my bread as well. Here's how it turned out -


Looks good, no? Moist and shiny. That's the jalapeno chutney glaze that I added to give it a little more kick. I also made a few other alterations because when I tasted the batter it was a bit sweeter and blander than I wanted. But the end result was very satisfying. Good for dessert, breakfast, or a little snack. Especially with some of that aforementioned Roquefort spread on it...

Here's the recipe. Adapted from Food and Wine with my alterations in italics.

Yogurt-Zucchini Bread with Walnuts

Ingredients
-1 cup walnut halves
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 t baking powder
-1/2 t baking soda
-1/2 t salt (I used 1 t salt)
-3/4 cup plus 2 T sugar
-2 large eggs
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-1/2 cup fat-free plain Greek yogurt
-1 cup coarsely grated zucchini (from about 1 medium zucchini - I used 2 small)
-3/4 cup low-fat grated cheese
-jalapeno chutney (for brushing on top as glaze)
-a dusting of sea salt

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Butter and flour a 9-by-4 1/2-inch metal loaf pan.

2. Spread the walnut halves in a pie plate and toast them for about 8 minutes, until they are fragrant. Transfer the toasted walnuts to a cutting board and coarsely chop them, then freeze for 5 minutes to cool.

3. In a large bowl, whisk the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a medium bowl, mix the sugar with the eggs, vegetable oil and fat-free yogurt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients along with the grated zucchini and toasted walnuts and stir until the batter is evenly moistened. Fold in the cheese


4. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes (in my oven it took about 1 hour and 20 minutes), until the loaf is risen and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Using a pastry brush, brush on about 2-3 tablespoons of jalapeno chutney (any other slightly savory/tangy chutney or preserves would also work). Add a dusting of sea salt if desired.

6. Let the loaf cool on a rack for 30 minutes before unmolding and serving.

The Bread Project - Lahukh (Yemenite Flatbread)

The experiments in Israeli cuisine continue.

This Yemenite flatbread is very simple and surprisingly flavorful. I would definitely eat them on their own, but when used to scoop up something delicious (like the amazing lamb Albondigas that I made to go with it - post soon to follow), they are delicious.

The recipe comes from Janna Gur's The New Book of Israeli Food. I made a few alterations and it worked just fine. My notes are in parentheses.

LAHUKH
(Makes about 20 pancake sized flatbreads)

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups flour
1 oz fresh yeast (I used a packet and a pinch of regular dry active yeast)
3 cups water (plus additional for soaking)
1 T salt
1/2 T sugar
3 slices white bread (I used 2 1/2 white French rolls)
Oil for frying (I used spray olive oil because you really only want a minimal amount of oil)


Directions
1. Put the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in a deep bowl and mix with 3 cups of water to form a batter.

2. Soak the bread in water for about 5 minutes (I did about three), remove, squeeze off the excess water and mash in a blender. Add to the batter and mix well.


3. Cover the bowl, leave at room temperature for about two hours to allow the batter to rise to twice its size.


4. Heat a non-stick pan and oil it lightly. Wipe excess oil with a paper towel- no further oiling will be required during frying. (I used an electric skillet and olive oil spray. I resprayed a few times through the process. It worked great. Gur recommends cooling down the pan with cold water between batches if you're using a traditional frying pan.)


5. Ladle a portion of batter into the pan. Fry on medium heat until the top of the lahukh fills with bubbles and the bottom turns brown (it's like making a pancake, and they took about 5 minutes to cook once I found the right temperature. However, for the record they taste pretty good with a little gooeyness in the middle too...)



They were delicious and I will make again. Also they freeze really well, so don't be thrown off by the bounteous quantity that this recipe produces. The day after we made them, I defrosted a couple in the toaster oven and used them for tuna sandwiches. Yum indeed.

The Bread Project - Lender's Romanian Challah

As I have talked about before, I have been on a long search for a challah recipe that will create the kind of chewy, soft, non-cake-like loaves that one can purchase in certain stores in NY and that Daniel reminisces fondly over having eaten in Israel.

In digging through several Israeli cookbooks last week, I found pictures of a bakery in Jerusalem called Lenders. Now generally I have bad associations with bread products and the name Lenders (if you want a piece of bread with a whole in the middle, Lenders "bagels" are just fine. If you want a bagel, please look elsewhere.) However, I showed Daniel, the Israeli challah expert, a picture of Lenders bakery, and he thought that based on the image any recipe from them would be a-okay. So I decided to give the recipe in Joan Nathan's The Foods of Israel Today a try.

There were some interesting oddities about this recipe...



The dough, unlike every other challah recipe I've ever seen contains NO EGGS! The reason is that interestingly, most Israeli challot don't have eggs in them because as Mr. Lender explains, "In old Jerusalem people were poor and mostly dependent on outside contributions. Eggs and sugar were out of the question...It was already a luxury to have bread with white flour on the Sabbath." In spite of the lack of eggs, the dough adhered quite nicely and looked pretty darn good and smooth. (must have been the 4 T of vegetable shortening)


After two rises, it was time to braid.


The recipe makes the requisite two loaves, and Joan Nathan's instructions on how to do a four strand braid are much clearer than in her other cookbooks.




They really came out quite nicely.


I was feeling pretty good about things, until I got to the part where the braiding instructions throw a giant curveball - this challah is double decker. See my astonishment in the video below:



Woah indeed.

When fully braided, the challot were brushed with a mixture of cornstarch and water instead of the usual egg wash. Then another rise, another brush of the mix, a sprinkling of sesame seeds, 45 minutes in the oven, and voila-



The results? I definitely missed the egg wash on top, but the bread itself was really very, very good. It had that soft quality that good challah has, where you can almost see little tendrils as you pull it apart. The flavor was excellent, although the corn starch water combination gave it a slightly funny color.


If I were to do this again (which I think I will), I would break the rules slightly and add an egg wash. I really missed the sheen and the bottom egg goo that challah usually gets. Other than that, I highly recommend it. And for vegans everywhere, in its original form, this should definitely be the challah of choice. (Plus, it made a mean French toast the next day. I stuffed it with some Laughing Cow and pomegranate jelly. Delish.)

The Bread Project - Carolina Strawberry Bread

Do you like my attempt at artful food photography here? What's doing it for you? The fresh berries? The dirty window sill?

Well, what I lack in photog skills, perhaps I make up for a bit in sweet sticky quick bread making skills?

Two things I've learned about San Francisco in the last little bit. On the down side, it seems that there is no summer, which I still don't quite understand. We lived in Mountain View last summer, where it was constantly (some might argue too constantly) sunny, but just a few miles up the road in San Fran, apparently, summer is pre-emtpted by gray, cold, and wind. My friend Blythe says that she wears her coat more in the summer than she does in the winter. My friend Mark Twain says that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

So that's the negative. The positive (yes, I can be positive) is that the best apple I ever had was a strawberry in San Francisco. That's because they have HUGE, ripe, delicious strawberries here. The sweetest, plumpest, most gorgeous things you've ever seen. No superlative is too extreme.

To honor these beautiful beasts, I decided on Sunday afternoon to make some strawberry bread. I thought it would make me feel more sunny and summery on that cold, gray afternoon. So I hunted around the internet for a good sounding recipe, and came across one that was serendipitously called Carolina Bread. Twas my roots, and so I gave it a try. The results were delcious. Nicely scented. Moist. Good crusty bits on the ends. Pink and sweet inside. A lovely breakfast or late night snack.

Here's the recipe from Big Oven:

Ingredients
-3 cups all purpose flour
-2 cups sugar
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon salt (I used kosher, so I upped it by a bit)
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-3 eggs
-1 cup canola oil
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-1 pint fresh strawberries (or 10 oz frozen); chopped
-1 cup chopped pecans (I left these out)

Directions
-Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
-Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon
-Blend eggs, oil, vanilla, and strawberries in separate bowl
-Add strawberry mixture to dry ingredients and mix well
-If using, stir in pecans.
-Pour into two greased 9x5x3 loaf pans
-Bake for 45-60 minutes (in my slow oven it took almost the full 60)
-Cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove to wire rack to cool completely.

All mixed up and ready to go

Twins

The Bread Project - If you call it a muffin it doesn't count as a cupcake

Last Christmas, Daniel gave me a vegan cupcake cookbook, by the same ladies who wrote Vegan with a Vengeance. The pictures inside are gorgeous, and I've been wanting to try my hand at some of them for a while, either in cupcake form or all mushed together into a big old cake.

However, while in school, any kind of organizational system that I'd ever developed has fallen to ruin, and my bookshelves are no exception. So the vegan cupcake cookbook had disappeared. Until this morning when I decided I wanted to bake some kind of breakfast pastry. I flipped through several options in some of my cookbooks, but without molasses for kasha muffins (my molasses had fallen victim to an ant problem earlier this year) and no lemons for a loaf of lemon bread, I was becoming discouraged, until suddenly, out of nowhere the VC cookbook (that's vegan cupcake, mind you, not Viet Cong), reemerged miraculously. I thought to myself, "Well, why not?" Without frosting, cupcakes become muffins.

I went for the vanilla cupcake recipe because it didn't involve any vegan baking oddities like egg substitutes or arrowroot. But I wanted to jazz it up a little and make it more breakfasty. So the vegan blueberry lime poppyseed muffin was born.

Here's the recipe
Adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

Vegan Lime Blueberry Poppyseed Muffins
Makes 12 Muffins

Ingredients
-1 cup soy milk
-1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
-1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
-2 tablespoons cornstarch
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-3/4 teaspoon baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/3 cup canola oil
-3/4 cup granulated sugar
-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-the juice of a lime
-a few handfulls of blueberries (frozen or fresh)
-some poppyseeds (to your liking)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease two muffin tins
2. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar together and set aside to curdle a bit (mine didn't really)
3. Beat the soy milk mixture, oil, sugar, vanilla, and lime juice together in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix all together until no lumps remain.
4. Stir in the blueberries and poppyseeds.
5. Fill muffin tins about 2/3 of the way and bake for 20-22 minutes (mine took about 25, but my oven tends to be slow)
6. Transfer to a cooling rack.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with these little guys. They're very shiny because of the soy milk, I think. And a little purple in color because of the blueberries, I know. They're also a little stubby and dense, but in a charming way. It's a good vanilla flavor, and a very quick and easy recipe. Next time, I'll go wild and call it a cupcake.

The Bread Project - What could be sweeta than a pita?

So one of the many things I miss about my beloved New York is the Middle Eastern food. Oh the hummus (Damascus Bakery.) Oh the shawarma (Zaytoons.) Oh the lentil soup (also Zaytoons.) Oh the pita. (for Daniel Damascus, for me Hummus Place.) Out here they mysteriously call all Middle Eastern food "Mediterranean," which seems to be a euphemism for not that good. (Just to clarify, I know that much Mediterranean food is delicious, just not in this context...)

So, when Daniel was in NYC for a couple of weeks, I had him bring me back whole wheat pita from Hummus Place, which being a mensch, he did in spades. And so I just finished my last bite of hearty, nutty pita goodness last week. My pita needs had been whet, and nothing was fitting the bill, so where was a girl to turn? To her own crafty resources.

I found a recipe on Epicurious that had gotten good reviews, and so yesterday while plowing through my enormous load of end of quarter homework, I began my quest for the perfect whole wheat pita.

While the recipe required several rises, the cooking time itself was a mere 3 minutes, directly on the oven rack (which you see above left an impression), and the kneading wasn't too bad or intensive. A pretty easy afternoon yeast bread. Here's the process...

The pitas all shaped, waiting for their final rise

In the 500 degree oven, now slightly mis-shapen from the trip from pan to oven

One beautifully puffed-up pita

Tuna sandwich with warm fresh pita

The verdict: These were good, and who can argue with fresh, homemade bread? They were not as heartily whole wheat as I would have liked, so I might up the whole wheat to bread flour ratio next time. And I would add a bit more salt and honey. But I will definitely make them again, and if anyone has a good pita recipe, send it my way. I've got a fierce pita hankering.

The Bread Project - Coconut bread

Thanks to the Times of London's list of the 50 Best Food Blogs, last week I discovered a whole bounty of new recipes. I wanted to try one out immediately, so I looked through my cabinets and realized that I had a pantry calling out for me to make this Coconut bread recipe from The Wednesday Chef.

At my suggestion, and Daniel's immediate acceptance, I added chocolate chips into the mix. It took a good bit longer to bake than the hour the recipe suggested, and since we had dinner plans (at Burma Superstar!), I had to take it out of the oven while it was still a bit ooey gooey, but really, when it comes to chocolatey baked goods, a little ooey gooey never hurt anyone.

I have to say, this is not a recipe I'll probably return to. I found the combination of cinnamon and coconut here a little odd, but Daniel has been enjoying it as toast, so it's not a total loss, and the rest of the recipes on the site sound great. More to come...

The Bread Project - Corn muffins

With the workload these days, the bread project his pretty much defunct, but I did manage to whip up some King Arthur Flour corn muffins the other day, and since they're listed in the Quickbreads and Muffins section of that auspicious website, I'm including them here.

They were yummy, especially when rewarmed and served with the maple butter I mixed up or with a little schmear of apricot jam. Nothing extraordinary, but certainly satisfying. Next time, I may add some cheese and jalapenos and serve with veggie chili.

The Bread Project - Parmesan Pull-Aparts

We had our buddy Scott and his lady friend over for dinner on Saturday, and although I didn't end up getting the key lime cheesecake made that I'd been planning on (settled on Pear Brown Betty), I did get some rolls made - Parmesan Pull-Aparts to be exact.



The recipe from Gourmet, promised that they would be brioche-like "rich and tender" with a "gorgeous brown crust" but without the labor-intensive madness of brioche. On the non-labor intensive front, Gourmet was right. Although they were work out for my hand-held mixer and my Cuisine-Art (oh Lord, I need a stand-up mixer), they only required two short rises and no kneading. They rolled up nicely and looked cute all squished up in the pan.



They smelledd heavenly coming out of the oven, and I think compared to many of my baked goods, they looked pretty pretty too.


And as promised, they pulled apart with aplomb. The taste though, was a little eh. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but nothing to write home about. In their defense, my timing was a little off, so they had cooled considerably by the time we ate, but even warmed in the oven the next day they were still a little bland. But, I have my mother's brioche tins, and I'm not afraid of hard work, so next time, I'll make the real thing...

The Bread Project - In knots

The bread project returns.
In the form of pretzels.
From the Street Food cookbook.
Varieties - salt, cinnamon sugar, poppy seed, sesame seed
The verdict - while the attractiveness varied, the taste was delicious.
Here's how it went down this Sunday past:

The dough, post-rise.

Rolling it out

Getting all twisted up

The blanching

The eggwash

mmm

mmm up close

The Bread Project - Challah French Toast

The Bread Project was back in full force last week with an old standby - challah, the bread that launched my desire to learn how bake leavened goodness in the first place.

I tried a new recipe this time as I was doing the baking at 10,000 feet in Keystone, CO and needed to make adjustments for the altitude. But even with a recipe tested in mile high Denver, the two loaves still cooked a full twenty minutes faster than the 45 minutes the Denver recipe called for. Luckily, the nose knows when something in the oven is in danger of burning. In the end, the loaves stuck a bit to the pans, and I lost some of the bottoms, making them pretty fragile. But they served their purpose for Friday night dinner, and even did double duty in Steve Berson's famous challah French toast for Father's Day brunch on Sunday...


Mmmm. It was delicious. The brunch also featured...

Turkey sausage (casing free) and...


A lovely fruit salad (notice that the bananas are on the side, respecting my extreme banana fear.)

The three handsome Berson men celebrating Father's Day in the fine Colorado sun. Good company. Good eats. No complaints. (notice Daniel's Madras shorts!)

The Bread Project - Whole Grain Focaccia

Yesterday, as I was making myself a little breakfast (the usual English muffin with Laughing Cow and jam - gotta stock up now before Passover and Europe interrupt my flow), I realized that we had no bread for Daniel's lunch.

Being the crafty baker that I've become, I thought, "Looks like a job for the bread project," and I thumbed through my recipes for something that I could make fairly quickly with ingredients that we had already in house. And so whole grain focaccia was born. I have no idea where I found this recipe, but with only one half hour rise, it fit the bill. I adapted it slightly, substituting a cup of white bread flour for one of the whole wheat cups to make it a little lighter, and forgoing sprinkling garlic on top. Instead I went for some rosemary, oregano, and gray sea salt. It came out very nicely, and I think Daniel's sandwich (turkey, hummus, and hot sauce) looked pretty good...

The Bread Project - Bagels!

I made bagels today! If I can't get proper bagels in California, I'll have to learn to make them myself (although, I hear the secret is New York water, so maybe I'll have to import that.)


While I'm still no Terrace Bagels (frankly, I'm probably not even a Lender yet), I'm determined to get there some day. In the meantime, these little fellows are nothing to turn one's nose up at, if I do say so myself...