Strawberry Almond French Toast Casserole

While searching a healthy French toast recipe, I found one for Blueberry Almond Baked French Toast on a site called Mr.Breakfast. It was pretty healthy looking, but I made some adaptations to ensure it was low in Weight Watcher points. This is 7 points per serving, and it is a generous portion. It is made with whole wheat grainy bread, delicious maple syrup and crunchy almonds.
This is a delicious and filling brunch food!

Strawberry Almond French Toast Casserole adapted from a recipe from Mr. Breakfast.com

• 4 slices of whole wheat bread, cut into cubes
  
• 1 large egg
• 2 large egg whites
• 1/2 cup 2% milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 Tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 1 cup strawberries (frozen or fresh)
  
• 2 Tablespoons sliced almonds
• 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

Prepare a 8x8 baking pan by spraying the inside with cooking spray.

Place the bread in a single layer in the baking pan.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and egg whites with the milk, vanilla, cinnamon and maple syrup. Pour this mixture over the bread in the pan. Scatter the strawberries evenly over the top and sprinkle with the almonds and brown sugar. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (at least 4 hours).

Bake for about 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.

To keep it healthy, serve with some applesauce instead of butter and maple syrup.

Baguettes

I have gotten out of practice of making my own bread lately. But I had a craving for some baguettes to put some fresh summer tomatoes on, and I decided to make my own. I topped it with tomato bruschetta!
I almost always make my bread according to the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method, which is very easy.

Baguette (Adopted from recipe by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day)
Makes enough dough for 4 1-lb loaves/baguettes.


In a counter-top mixer or large bowl, add three cups slightly warm water, 1 1/2 tablespoons yeast, and 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt.
Add 6 1/2 cups all purpose flour. Then use your dough hook attachment to mix all the ingredients. You don't have to let it run long at all, just until all the four is mixed in there.

Dump it in a large container with a lid (It is not supposed to be air tight, and mine is so I only latch two sides of the lid on.)
Let it sit at room temperature for about 2 hours, until it looks like this.

Then put the lid on and stick it in the fridge for several hours, or overnight is best. (Yes, I still have a sticker on there that came with the container. hehe)

Then to make the baguettes I use a baguette pan. It is curved to hold the shape of the bread, and has lots of tiny holes to let the air flow. (It is from Williams Sonoma)

The next day I cut off 2 1lb chunks of bread. Shaped the bread, pulling four corners around to make a ball. Then elongate the ball, placed it on a dusted dish towel in the baguette tray, covered it with the ends of the towel and let it rise for 20 minutes.

Then I sprayed the tray with non stick cooking spray, and turned the oven onto 450 degrees F. Put the bread back in the tray, and put it in the oven with a broiler pan with one cup of water. (The steam from the water helps with a crisp crust.) Let it bake for about 25 minutes, until it was brown and firm to the touch.

I feel French eating this.
The crust wasn't as crisp as I would like, so I am going to work on that for next time. But it was still very good, and very satisfying to make my own bread again!

Hamburgers: Part 1 The Rolls

It is seriously warm here in PA, it feels like summer right now!! To celebrate, we have been cooking on our new charcoal Weber grill.
So tomorrow we will be grilling hamburgers!
I like burgers but one thing I don't like is figuring out what to put them on. The rolls in the grocery store are full of high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, and other weird things. The bakeries near us that make their bread from scratch don't usually have hamburger rolls. So for the first time, I decided to make my own rolls!
I found a great recipe over at Coconut and Lime. Today she posted this recipe for Onion-Studded Hamburger Rolls.
I am not going to re-post her recipe, but if you click on the link above you can see step-by-step instructions. And they are not difficult to make, especially if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook. Here are some shots of my rolls being made.

The first step, heating up some milk, water, butter, salt and sugar.
The cooked shallots to go in the rolls. (I used shallots instead of onion)

Kneading the dough in my stand mixer.

The dough after it has risen the first time.
The finished rolls!
I haven't made bread the traditional way for a while, I have been using Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day method, which doesn't involve punching down the dough or kneading. I think I developed a fear of making bread the normal way. But it wasn't that much work, and I had today off so I had the time to wait for each stage. Thanks to Rachel of Coconut and Lime for the great recipe!
Tomorrow, the hamburgers!

Homemade Bagels!

When I bought Artisan Bread in 4 Minutes a Day last year, I was excited to make a lot of thing in the book. But not the bagels. It sounded like too much work, with the boiling and what not.
But recently I have decided to take the challenge to make my own! Any bagels in the grocery store have high fructose corn syrup in them. There is a place here that makes their own bagels from scratch, but it's a good 20 minute drive from our house.
So here we go!
First, make the dough.
Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois
The Dough
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (1 1/2 packets)
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
6 1/4 cups bread flour

Mis the yeast, salt, and sugar with the water in your stand mixer bowl. Add the flour to the bowl and mix it with the dough hook attachment until all the flour is incorporated. Put the dough into a lidded container (not airtight). Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for about two hours. Then put the container in the fridge. I left it in overnight.
Making the Bagels
Put a baking stone and an empty broiler tray in the oven. Twenty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Also, get the boiling pot going on the stove. You'll need 8 quarts of water with 1 tsp baking soda and 1/4 cup sugar mixed in with it.

Here is the pretty dough, just taken out of the fridge.

Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 3-oz piece of dough (about the size of a small peach).


Dust the peice with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go.

Here is the piece of dough formed into a ball.

Push your thumb into the middle of the dough and pull it apart until the hole is three times wider than the width of the bagel. I had a little trouble getting my bagel holes to remain open wide enough, my dough was very elastic.

As you can see they are not perfect looking, but that is ok.
Drop the bagels in the boiling pot one or two at a time, don't overcrowd.

After the bagel boils simmers for 2 minutes, flip it over to the over side and cook it for another minute. Then, dip the bagel in your favorite topping. I did three types of bagels, poppy, cheddar cheese and...


Everything bagels, my favorite! I don't know if these actually have everything, but they have poppy seeds, sesame seeds and dried onion flakes. You could also put garlic and salt on, but I opted to leave those out. Another thing you have control of when you bake your own bagels!
Put the bagels in your preheated oven, on the stone. Put one cup of tap water in the broiler pan below and close the door. The steam from the water helps form a crisp outer crust.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until they start getting golden brown.
Here are the finished bagels.
The cheese bagel.
The poppy bagel.
And the beautiful everything bagel!
We made ham and cheese sandwiches with our fresh bagels.

Beer Bread!

I need to get my act together and make the meringues chantilly for barefoot bloggers. I will do that this week, hopefully tomorrow.
But for now, I'd like to share a recipe I found at allrecipes.com. I use that website a lot, I like it because of all the reviews from people who have already cooked the recipes. It usually gives you a good tip.
I made this beer bread for a large group of people who came over for dinner, and it received raves. I like to make it because you can make it with things you have around the kitchen already (if you have a bottle of beer), and it is faster than yeast bread.
I made this to go with some mexican-style chile, I think it goes well with soups also.
Whole Wheat Beer Bread
First, grease a bread pan. (I spray with canola oil.)
Get your two kinds of flour.

100% whole wheat flour, and all purpose. Measure 1 and 1/2 cups of each and put in a mixing bowl.
Then add 4 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1 and 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/3 cup packed brown sugar. Now, what you see in my bowl is 1/3 cup raw cane sugar, and a little molassses since I didn't have brown sugar. If you run out of brown sugar, you can use regular sugar with some molasses! Now grab your bottle of beer.
This is what I used. If you live near Harrisburg, PA or somewhere near it I recommend you get some beer from the Appalachian Brewing Company. Not just for this recipe, just to try! I'm not a big beer drinker, but I really like their beer. And this one is organic! But most beer will work. Just use a beer that you would drink. Don't use Coors Light or something like that. Get a real beer with some flavor! The type of beer you use will change the flavor some.
Now dump the beer in the bowll with the other ingredients. It will foam up a lot, like this. That is fine. Just mix until it is all incorporated, it will be thick and lumpy.
Put the batter in the bread pan, and here is where allrecipes.com is great. The butter on top is not in the recipe, but if you browse the comments most people recommend putting some on top. And they are right, the butter makes it even better.
The recipe says to bake in a 350 oven for 50-60 minutes, but mine was definitely done in more like 30 minutes! So just check on it, it is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Eat, with butter or plain.

Barefoot Bloggers: Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

I never would have thought to put sour cream in pancakes! Bananas are standard pancake/waffle but the combo of that with sour cream was very tasty. I also added a handful of pecans to the batter.
The only thing I had issue with was the fact that you put the bananas in one cluster in the pancake. Next time, I would mix the bananas in with the rest of the batter. My husband liked it the way it was.

Barefoot Contessa's Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• (My addition-about 1/2 cup of chopped pecans)
  
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• Unsalted butter
• 2 ripe bananas, diced, plus extra for serving
• Pure maple syrup

Directions

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the sour cream, milk, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, mixing only until combined.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat until it bubbles. Ladle the pancake batter into the pan to make 3 or 4 pancakes. Distribute a rounded tablespoon of bananas on each pancake.

Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until bubbles appear on top and the underside is nicely browned. Flip the pancakes and then cook for another minute until browned.

Wipe out the pan with a paper towel, add more butter to the pan, and continue cooking pancakes until all the batter is used. Serve with sliced bananas, butter and maple syrup.

Thanksgiving Leftovers-Post 2 Cranberry Cream Cheese Muffins

I love muffins with cranberries. I enjoy the tart flavor breaking through the sweetness of the muffin. One problem, there are never enough cranberries for me when I get a cranberry muffin. Also, if I could, every muffin would have cream cheese in it if I had my way.

So I used some cranberry sauce to make my own. So I actually made cranberry sauce to make these muffins, so technically mine were not made of leftovers. But I wanted to make the cranberry sauce tarter than you would eat plain to put in the muffins.

The cream cheese part actually, may not be necessary next time. The cranberry flavor was nice enough. But take it or leave it depending on your tastes in muffins.
This makes 12 regular muffins, or 6 Jumbo muffins. I made jumbo muffins, because for some reason, I have no regular muffin pans.

Ingredients:
About 1 cup cranberry sauce
3/4 block of cream cheese, softened
1 TBSP maple syrup
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 1/3 cups flour and 3/4 cup oats)
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsps baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 beaten egg
3/4 milk
1/4 cup cooking oil (I used Canola)

Put the softened cream cheese in a food processor/mixer with the maple syrup. Whip until smooth.

Here is my cranberry sauce-just finished cooking. I used 100% cranberry juice to make it, so it was pretty tart. It was sweetened with some maple syrup though, I based the recipe on Pioneer Woman's.

Grease your muffin tins or line with paper cups, set aside. Pre-heat the oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. (I used raw sugar)

In another bowl combine egg, milk, and oil.

Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened.

I layered the batter with the cranberry and cream cheese.

Then I mixed it up a little to get some good cranberry distribution. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Bruschetta!

What is better than bruschetta? Tomatoes, garlic, bread, Parmesan cheese. It is good.
It can be bad. Don't order it at Bennigans...ever. Looks like they made garlic bread with hot dog rolls.
Real bruschetta is easy. This is like a "non recipe" because I went more by feeling for the amounts. This is what you'll need.

-Fresh, local ripe summer tomatoes (I also threw in some halved sun-gold cherry tomatoes!)
-Freshly baked Italian bread (Or use a French baguette)
-High quality Parmiggiano-Reggiano (Not pre-grated)
-Extra-virgin olive oil
-Fresh basil
-Garlic
-Salt n'Pepper

I chopped up my tomatoes, taking out the seeds. Put them in a mixing bowl, ripped up some fresh basil and threw it in with them. Poured some olive oil and a little bit of chopped garlic, and some fresh ground pepper and sea salt.

I let this sit in the fridge for a few hours. I don't know if this is standard Italian procedure or not. But it worked. I think it let the flavors get together and party a little.
Then, you cut your bread into about 1 inch or so pieces, and toast them in the toaster oven.
When they come out, take a garlic clove and burn your hands rubbing it on the cut surface bread.
Then, just put the tomato mixture on top, throw some shaved parmiggiano-reggiano on top and some more basil, and even sprinkle some balsamic vinegar. It was so good I considered eating it all and not the gnocchi bake I had made as the main dish.

Deconstructed BLT

I wanted to enter an additional recipe for the chicken contest. I had some bacon at home so I thought up this. I called it a Chicken BLT Salad when I entered it....but really like calling it a "Deconstructed BLT" better.

I had seen a bread salad recipe somewhere else, where the bread is seasoned and toasted, then mixed with the other salad elements. I used that basic idea here. I think this salad will be better this summer with fresh, local, heirloom tomatoes and lettuce. We joined an organic CSA last year, and have again this year. All that good produce spoils you! I would like to try this with the arugula we get. It is the best darn arugula I have ever had. I can just eat it plain.
But anyway I loved the crust on this chicken and the mustard dressing. The bread I used is Pan Bigio, an Italian wheat bread. Using good bread is very important in this recipe. I think sourdough would be great also.

Chicken BLT Salad

8 pieces-bacon

¼ cup-olive oil

½ tsp-dried dill

¼ tsp-salt

fresh ground pepper

1 pound loaf-Italian bread, ripped into small pieces

3 tsp-mustard seeds

1 ½ tsp-black pepper corns

½ tsp-sea salt

1 tbsp.- canola oil

1 lb chicken tenderloins

1 head-romaine lettuce, ripped into bite sized pieces

1 tbsp. + 1 tsp.-whole grain mustard

2 tbsp-white wine vinegar

¼ cup-olive oil

1 bunch-green onion

2-3-tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook the bacon on the stove top until crisp. Reserve the bacon on a plate with paper towels to cool. Save 1 tablespoon bacon drippings.

In a large bowl, mix the ¼ cup olive oil, dill, salt, pepper and bacon drippings. Add the ripped bread and toss to coat. Spread the bread out on a large baking sheet. Cook in oven, stirring occasionally until lightly toasted, 10-15 minutes.

Using a mortar and pestle, crush the mustard seeds, pepper corns and sea salt. Coat the chicken tenderloins in the mustard mixture. Heat the canola oil in a non-stick pan. Cook the chicken until no longer pink inside. Remove to a cutting board, let cool then slice.

Meanwhile, in the same large bowl, whisk together the grain mustard, vinegar and ¼ cup olive oil. Add the lettuce. Thinly slice the green onion and add to the bowel. Cut the bacon into bite sized pieces. Add bacon, chicken and bread pieces to the salad. Toss all ingredients to coat well in the dressing. Put in the fridge for 45 minutes.

Chop and de-seed the tomatoes. Add to the salad and toss again before serving.

Serves 4-5

The Epitome of Real and Good Food-Bread

Since this blog will be all about cooking and eating only food that is REAL, I am starting with what should always be real but sadly is not.
Bread in the supermarket is just plain gross. Filled with sweeteners, preservatives... so your options are to buy expensive bread from a real bakery or spend lots of time making your own bread at home, or use a bread machine.
Personally bread machine bread leaves me cold. So I resorted to buying fresh bread most of the time.
Until I discovered this book on Amazon. While you literally won't be able to spend five minutes a day making bread, it comes close. You simply mix flour, water, salt and yeast in a mixer until combined. Then let it rise 2 hours. Then store in the fridge until ready to use. No kneading, no waiting to punch down.
I have made baguettes, English muffins, pizza dough, stromboli, brioche, and all without spending hours.
My most recent recipe using the bread used a portion of brioche that I made weeks ago and stored in the freezer. I found a brunch casserole in the newest Rachel Ray magazine. I had five hungry guys eat it up!

Ham and Scallion Brioche Bread Break (from Everyday with Rachel Ray May 2008)
8 large eggs
3 cups milk (I use organic whole milk)
1 tsp salt
fresh ground black pepper
1 1/2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 bunches scallions, white and light green, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bunch asparagus, top parts (I added this in, wasn't in magazine recipe)
pinch red pepper flakes
One 1-lb loaf brioche, cubed (I used the Brioche recipe from Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day, baked in a loaf pan)
1/4 lb ham, chopped
2 cups shredded gruyere cheese

1. Grease a 9-by-13 inch baking dish. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, and black pepper.
2. In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the scallions, asparagus, garlic, red pepper and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes.
3. Transfer the bread cubes to the baking dish. Add the scallion mixture, ham, and half of the cheese. Pour the egg mixture on top. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour.
--I actually put it in the fridge overnight to have it ready for Sunday!
4. Preheat the oven to 350F. Bake about 45 minutes, let cool for 10 minutes before serving.