Breads

 

I  have long aspired to stop buying bread from the grocery store and make all of my own from scratch. 

While my sister was staying with us for 6 months she very kindly took on the job of making bread for us and came up with two fabulous recipes that she made many times and since she has left I have made several times. It was during her time here that I stopped buying commercially made bread products - apart from tortillas. I buy a lot of flour tortillas and it suddenly hit me today that I should try making my own, and so I did. WOW! What an incredible difference. Before sharing the recipe and how I served them here are the other two bread recipes I frequently make:

The Ciabatta Bread is so very easy to make and is delicious - most especially with soup! 

It literally takes minutes to prepare the dough and then you can let it sit all day or all night and then just pour onto your baking dish. Seriously easy and so good!

The  Hamburger Rolls are incredible - I don't think I can go back to store bought rolls, these are so delicious and they really are very simple to make, you just need to account for the rising time and plan accordingly. Esther made them look so fun with different toppings sprinkled on hers, I just used Italian seasoning.

I made them this week and served them toasted with BBQ chicken breasts from Schwan's - their chicken is my new favorite! So tender and yummy.

 

I used the left over BBQ chicken and mixed in some black beans and added some cheddar cheese and rolled it up in the homemade tortillas - so tasty and simple. Paul requested that it become a regular dinner! What a sweet compliment. 

Homemade Flour Tortilla Recipe

• 4 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 2 TBS butter (called for lard, but we don't use it), softened
• 1.5 cups water

1.  Mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter and mix with your hands - it will be sort of lumpy but not really. I almost panicked as it didn't seem like a proper consistency, but it worked out fine in the end! Add the water and mix (I continued doing so with my hands) until the dough is a smooth and elastic consistency.
2. Divide the dough into 24 pieces and roll into balls. I patted each ball with flour as I shaped them - it helped make the ball easier to shape and also made rolling it out easier too. This recipe really does make 24 balls, however several times I did combine two balls to make one larger tortilla.
3. Preheat a large skillet to medium-high heat. I used a tiny bit of butter in the bottom, but I don't think it's required.
   Using a floured rolling pin roll out the tortillas - getting them super flat takes a bit of work, as does getting a nice circular shape. Mine were either perfectly thin or perfectly shaped - I didn't nail both in the same tortilla. (And you know what? No one cared!) 
4. Place the rolled dough in skillet until golden and bubbly and then flip - about 30 seconds per side.
5. Continue rolling and cooking the tortillas as you eat the ones you have prepared.

...while writing this out I had a sudden weird feeling that maybe I have made these in the past, but having searched this blog and my recipe blog I can't find any mention of it. But regardless, this recipe will now become a constant. 

Ciabatta Bread

My sister has made quite the contribution to our waistlines meals and we have enjoyed almost all of her kitchen creations - the braised cucumber I could have lived without trying! But the rest have been great successes. By far my favorite of her recipes is this One Minute Bread. It is so easy and delicious! She has made it three times for us in the past week. Recipe taken from her blog.

Ingredients

• 2 cups warm water
• 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• 4 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt

1. Mix the yeast and warm water in a medium sized bowl. I used a 12 cup bowl and it might have overflowed if I left it for the correct amount of time.
2. Add the flour and salt and mix with a spoon until well mixed.
3. Cover with plastic wrap or a dish towel and place somewhere safe for 8-12 hours. I left mine for 5 hours and it turned out nicely. 
4. Preheat the oven to 375. The original website says 400 but the bottom of my bread slightly overcooked and I don't think the inside was as cooked as it could have been.
5. Gently pour the dough onto a floured or greased cookie sheet and sprinkle the top with dried oregano, basil, and rosemary or any other herbs you think would taste good.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes. If you lower the heat you may have to bake longer, I did mine for 25 minutes on a floured cookie sheet and some of it stuck.

 She also made a delicious Olive Oil Dip for the bread too - it went so well with the bread I would recommend making it to go along with the bread!

 

Interested in GREEN SMOOTHIES? Check out my latest post on how we used them on our 4 day road trip for healthy, inexpensive meals and snacks.