BA, could you put a pan on your stove top on the lowest flame and put your husband's pizza in it and cover it? Or if you have cast iron you could heat the cast iron while baking the pizza then turn off the heat when the pizza comes out and put it in the cast iron.
Fennel on turkey is a smart idea. It would work well on ground pork as well. Most Italian style sausages have fennel in them. So you could buy ground pork or ground turkey and add fennel, garlic (if you like that) and whatever else. When I was making Italian sausage mix (chicken or pork) we used salt, garlic powder, and fennel. Sweet sausage had demerara sugar and hot sausage had red chili flakes. I do not know exact amounts since it was pre-mixed.
I, like your husband, do not like olives. But the first two pizzas I make are cheese (my youngest will only eat cheese) and olive. I also make five pizzas and I do not do the layering BA does. I use to put vegetables on the sauce and cheese on the vegetables but my family likes it better with sauce, cheese, vegetables.
But that's the beauty of making your own pizza - you can figure out what you like best and make it! We live in a town that has one pizza shop per person (I am only slightly exaggerating) and my family still cannot find a place they like better than what I make specifically for them. And, honestly, most of the pizza in our town is mediocre. Who says competition breeds excellence?
I also do not saute any vegetables that I put on my pizza before baking. If I use ground turkey, I do saute it before topping the pizza. I like my mushrooms in thin slices, and my black olives halved.
I start by smearing some tomato paste from a tube onto the unbaked pizza crust. I sprinkle with garlic powder and Penzey's Tuscan Seasoning (no salt). I then put the meat on, usually salami or ground turkey. If I use ground turkey, I usually sprinkle some fennel over it to imitate sausage, as ground turkey on its own is pretty flavorless. I then add the sliced mushroom, some chopped red bell pepper, the halved olives, and some sliced green onion. I sprinkle it with grated mozzarella cheese, then grate some parmesan on top. It's important not to overdo the cheese.
My husband does not care for olives and does not use much of the red bell pepper. We found with his pizza that we need to bake it for 10 minutes, and then put the cheese on before baking it another 5 minutes. (He also puts on more cheese than I do and does not add the Parmesan.)
I use the KAF ultra-thin crust pizza, and I bake it on a pre-heated pizza stone.
As we like different toppings, I bake my husband's pizza first, then mine. I need a way of keeping his warm while mine is baking. I only have the one oven. I tell him to go ahead and eat it, but he prefers to wait for mine to be done. Maybe I should top it with foil?
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
BakerAunt.
I made turkey meatballs from an Otto Lenghi's Jerusalem cookbook. It had a sauce my wife made but she would not touch the ground turkey. Can't blame her. Ground turkey is unpleasant and I eat it. It had garlic and scallions and zucchini mixed in. My two boys loved it and one of them though it was lamb. I guess he just assumed it was because of the Otto Lenghi book. If you've never seen his they are works of art independent of what they offer in recipes and cooking techniques.
Mike - how much salt do you put in your dough? I'm down to two tsps. for four pounds of dough. If we make the sauce the sodium is low but if we use jarred it's 340 mg per serving. I may start making my own sauce now to see if I can get that reduced. The cheese is 190 per serving but since it has 16 servings per 16 oz. and the sauce is eight servings per 32 oz jar the cheese is higher.
I like your idea of tomato paste but I'm not sure how that would go over with my family. We actually use jarred marinara sauce unless company is coming and then we make our own. I've tried jarred pizza sauce and the ones I've tried are sweeter and don't taste as good.
My wife likes lots of sauce so I tend to be heavy handed there. Also if I suspect a pizza will go into the refrigerator and eaten the next day I use extra sauce because it dries out some.
Next time I make pizza dough I'll pay attention to quantities. I start with three cups of water then add two tsp. of instant yeast (I use SAF red) and add white whole wheat and cake flour in equal portions. The WWW is KAF and the cake is Bob's Red Mill and I add flour until it feels right. I also add 2/3 cup of both red flax meal and chickpea flour (both from Bob's Red Mill). I add a tsp of salt and I am adding in the flour.
I had never heard of serving cinnamon rolls with chili until I moved to Nebraska. (And of course the kids dip the roll in the chili.)
To me a pot roast isn't done if the meat isn't falling-apart tender. But a (top or bottom) round roast is not one that I would generally use for a pot roast, I prefer cuts like chuck (preferably a 7 bone roast), rump roast or arm roast.
Today I made the no-salt challah that I posted a link to the other day. As expected, I had to add additional flour before the dough wasn't really sticky.
It's a bit bland, but not bad with a little peanut butter on it. (I'm allowed SOME sodium, after all.) I put sesame seeds on half of it, but left the other half without seeds so we can try making French toast with it.
I also made a batch of 4 cinnamon rolls using a total of 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the batch, so I figure each roll has about 100 mg of sodium, maybe less. (Cinnamon rolls with chili is sort of a requirement in Nebraska. The public schools here have been serving cinnamon rolls with chili for many years, and even most of the local restaurants will often bring a cinnamon roll when you order chili.)
Today I'm making a batch of chili using ground beef, onions, red peppers, no-salt-added beans and no-salt-added tomatoes, plus some tomato sauce from the freezer. I tastes OK but I think it's going to need some doctoring with herbs and spices, so far it's got some pepper, some celery seed and some parsley. I'm thinking about adding a few dashes of tabasco or dried chipotle pepper, but I'll wait until my wife is home, because I don't want to go overboard. That may be added at the table. (Many chili powders have garlic in them, so we don't even have that on the shelf.)
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
Thank you Baker Aunt and ItalianCook.
The recipe I used is Braided Bread Recipe that I found on the former RecipeZaar which has morphed into geniuskitchen (I miss the old recipezaar, they had great forums, sigh). I slightly tweeked it for myself, I use 8 1/5 ounces of milk, olive oil instead of butter and I reduced it from 4 tablespoons to 3 and I use 50% whole wheat. I also usually skip the egg wash. I have also found that the right amount of flour is 14 ounces by weight, which I divide up to 7 ounces bread and whole wheat flours each. If you were using 100% white flour, the 1 cup of milk would probably be right. I also reduce the salt by half. The recipe claims a bake time of 40 - 45 minutes but 35 minutes does it (14 minutes for buns - recipe divided into 8 buns). I like this recipe a lot, I make loaves and sandwich buns with it.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
RiversideLen.
I feel your salt-reduction pain, Mike. I hope there don't turn out to be many foods you have to give up completely.
For lunch, I roasted a chicken and served it with rice and gravy. I put the chicken in the pan breast side down. Nancy Fuller of Farmhouse Rules (Food Network) claims that keeps the breast moist. I can't verify that, because I ate a leg and thigh. I'm planning on making chicken salad with the breasts, so I'll never know for certain. If it's cooked with the breast down, the top of the chicken isn't fit to take to the table whole. The skin stuck to the pan, so the breast meat was exposed when on the plate. The bottom of the roast was beautifully brown, though.
It's out of the oven now. Other than being a little lopsided (unevenness in the strands, I'll have to work on that) it looks good.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by RiversideLen.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by RiversideLen.
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There was a reference in a previous thread about a round 6 strand braid. I decided to try it although this morning I was having doubts as my recipe is about 3 cups of flour (14 ounces) whereas the link to that braid was using a larger recipe. I didn't know if it would be effective dividing my recipe into 6 strands. I went on youtube and looked at various braiding methods and ran across the 6 strand round, basket weave they called it. Well, that inspired me again so I went ahead and did it. It's proofing right now. I'm using an improvised proofing box which is top cover of a cake carrier with 2 shots of hot water under it to give it a little humidity.
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BakerAunt, I will try the poke next time. Mike, I'll watch for the soaker or mash explained further in the books that were recommended. I have another question. On the KAF site, there are several other 100% whole wheat bread recipes that I tried. The pictures showed high loaves with the "ears" (I don't know how else to describe it when the bread rises high and then hooks around just above the middle of the loaf.) Neither of my loaves got nearly that high. I thought I followed directions exactly but thost pictures sure didn't look anything like mine did. Any ideas? I'll keep trying. That is my goal for the winter, to have whole wheat bread that is bread shaped.
Blanche, did try the windowpane test? Here's a video of it: windowpane test
I usually find when dough doesn't rise as much as I expected it to, it was either under-kneaded or a bit on the dry side. That's something you kind of figure out as you make a recipe several times. Most doughs should be a little tacky but not really stick to your hands. (There are doughs that are supposed to be very sticky, but that's a lesson for another time.)
Hopefully the bread was good tasting, that's the most important part!
The point to autolysis is to let the flour absorb the liquid and start to break down before the yeast is added. Some authors recommend adding salt after the autolyze step, others add it up front. Some add it as the very last ingredient during mixing. Salt absorbs water and that will produce a noticeable 'tightening' of your dough if you add it last. The challenge is you don't want to wait TOO long, or it might not get thoroughly mixed in.
I don't know that it would make much difference whether dry milk was added before or after autolysis.
Not to confuse you, but you will find some whole grain recipes that utilize a soaker or a mash, where some of the whole grain flour is mixed with water (the latter is generally heated) and left to sit overnight. Either way, the point is to soften the whole grains.
King Arthur's weight-to-dry measure conversion is on the light side compared to what some authors use. (I've even seen one that assumed a cup of flour weighed 5 1/4 ounces.) It's generally a bit easier to add flour to a dough that's too moist than to add moisture to one that's too dry. When I make a new recipe, I always assume 4 1/4 ounces per cup unless the recipe specifically states otherwise, and even then I usually hold some flour back until I see how the dough looks.
Interesting. So, are the Applegate meats actually any healthier? Inquiring minds (and their pocketbooks) want to know.
