We’ve already seen ricotta take its place in deserts and baked goods.Ricotta Cookies and Crepes Three Ways
Today in honor of ‘Not Thanksgiving” ( in that there is absolutely nothing about this recipe that has turkey, stuffing, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. in it), here is a lovely white pizza with broccoli. Light, non-greasy, filling. Yum.

White Pizza with Broccoli – you will need three kinds of cheese: Romano or Parmesan, Mozarella (a small block about 2×2x1 each) and Ricotta (2 cups)

Pizza Dough:
1 package of dry yeast, dissolved in 1.5 cups of hot water with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Put into a warm oven (turn off the pilot) for 10-15 min. until the mixture is bubbly and smells like..yeast.

Put into a big bowl with a couple of cups of flour (if you are including whole wheat, put in 1.5 cups of regular flour first and mix well, and use the whole wheat at the end to absorb the extra moisture.

Put a handful of flour on the counter (clean the counter first) and empty the bowl onto of it. Turn to coat the dough with the flour and knead until the dough is smooth, elastic and starts to have little blisters on the surface.

Place in a greased bowl, turn over, cover with a towel and put into the oven to raise for 45 min. to one hour.

While you are waiting for the dough to raise, cut up and sauté any of the following, singly or in combination:
Green or red peppers
Onions
Garlic

Also, cut broccoli (you will need a small head for a whole pie) into small florets, boil up briefly and drain.
Shred up enough of the following to make 2-3 cups:
Parmesan or Romano cheese
Mozzarella

Once the dough has risen. Take it out, punch it down and knead it a bit again. Set the oven for 400 degrees. Grease either a cookie sheet or a pizza pan and press the dough out into it to cover. Cover the dough with the ricotta. Grind black pepper on it and sprinkle oregano and basil on it. Put on the broccoli and other veggies and sprinkle the Mozzarella and parmesan or Romano cover.

Put the pan into the oven and bake until the cheese is all melted and bubbly and the dough is crispy – this should take 15-20 minutes. Serve with a green salad.

Enjoy!

A lot depends on what sort of bread you’ve got – garlic bread, cheese bread, breads with herbs in them are prime candidates for stratas (the main dish version of bread puddings); raisin bread or plain white bread can be used in desserts. We’re all familiar with French Toast (the French do not call this dish “French Toast” just as they do not call the musical instrument we know and perhaps love as the “French Horn” – in France, this dish is referred to as ‘pain perdu’ which means ‘lost bread’–which is rather ironic, since it is really bread that has been found and turned into something rather nice), and something to think about is using left over raisin bread as a nice change.

But back to basics. If you want to recycle bread into bread pudding, strata, or French toast, the basic thing that you are doing is…soaking the bread (either in slices or cubes or just mushed up) in eggs beaten up with milk and either spices and cheese (for the strata) or sugar and spices for bread puddings and their dessert-y ilk. What you are doing, frankly, is whipping up a basic baked egg custard which you are changing with sugar and spices for dessert or cheese and other spices for the main dish meal.

Basic recipe for baked egg custardy stuff: ½ C. of milk for every egg you use. So, if you use 2 C. of milk, you use 4 eggs.

For bread pudding/desserty type of stuff: add to that 2 c. of milk and four eggs: ½ stick of butter, ½ c. of sugar, ½ tsp of vanilla, ¼ tsp nutmeg, 1 C. of raisins (or other dried fruit – if you don’t like this you can leave it out) and enough cubed, stale bread to fill a really big mixing bowl. Mix the butter and sugar in with the milk and heat until it boils, turn off, stir in the eggs, vanilla, etc. and pour over bread in a greased baking pan. Cook at 375 for 45 min.

For strata/main dish sort of bread pudding, add to the 2 C. milk and 4 eggs things such as: 1 tsp dried mustard, ¼ c. of minced onion, a little cayenne pepper, or ¼ tsp of curry powder, ¼ c. butter(half a stick), and at least 8 ounces of shredded cheddar or other hard cheese. Put the bread and cheese into a big greased baking pan, pour heated milk, spices and stirred in eggs over it and bake at 350 for an hour or 375 for 45 min. You can mix in things like sausage, or cooked broccoli or spinach before you bake.

And now for something (ahem) completely different: the soup course (courtesy of Carol Field, “The Italian Baker”, Harper and Row, 1985 – this book has two complete chapters on stuff to do with left over bread including Corn Bread):

Panada di Milano (Rich Easter Soup)
Makes servings for 6
½ C. plus 2 Tblspoons bread crumbs
6-7 C. beef broth
3 eggs
3 Tbs. Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Place ½ C. bread crumbs in a small bowl and pour ¼ C. of the broth over the bread. Heat the remaining broth in a large saucepan to a rolling boil.

About 10 min. before serving, heat the butter in a small skillet over low. Add the moistened bread crumbs and sauté until golden, about 5 min.

Place the 2 table spoons dry bread crumbs in a soup tureen and break the eggs into the bottom of the tureen. Add the cheese and beat with a fork or whisk until well blended. Pour the boiling broth into the tureen and add the sautéed bread crumbs. Beat vigorously for one to two min. and serve immediately.

Here is something totally different in terms of use of stale bread: Salad course: Bread and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:
1/4 Loaf Italian Bread — Cubed
1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 Cucumber, Seeded, Sliced — Peeled
5 Green Onion Tops — Thinly Sliced
1/2 cup finely diced red onion
1 pound Tomatoes — Seeded, Chunked
6 basil leaves — chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

In large bowl, moisten bread with broth; squeeze out excess liquid and discard. Sprinkle bread with 1 tablespoon vinegar; toss to distribute vinegar flavor. Mix lightly with cucumber, green and red onions, tomatoes and basil. Add olive oil and remaining 1 tablespoon vinegar. Season to taste with salt ad pepper. Toss gently; refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Can be made a day ahead. Season to taste. http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/17/Bread_And_Tomato_Salad2141.shtml

Finally, we’re going to go off into the next dimension – think of something sort of like bread..only better…think of (cue scary music) CAKE. Regular, not terribly exciting, not frosted..cake. Cake like: pound cake, yellow cake, angel food cake….heck, let’s go off the deep end and think about: sugar cookies, Vienna fingers, chocolate cookies — any cookie that is not filled. During WWII, in the UK, my mom and her nurse friends used to treat themselves to a dish whenever they could pull together leftover cookies, a tin of evaporated milk and some other things. We have better things to work with however. With this sort of stuff, milk eggs and sugar, we can make: Trifle. Trifle is NOT bread pudding – it’s pastry cream….and bread pudding.

• Pastry cream:
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 5 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Plus enough broken up plain cookies or cake that will fill a big veggie bowl – one whole pound cake’s worth.

Plus some sort of fruit, fresh or frozen, ½ c. of sugar, ¾ c. of fresh orange or other juice, (and if this is being eaten by adults, ¼ c. of some sort of fruit based liqueur – Grand Marnier, Chambourd, etc.)

Preparation
To prepare fruit, combine 3/4 cup sugar, orange juice, and liqueur in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat; cook 3 minutes until sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. Add fruit to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 8 minutes. Spoon mixture into a bowl; cover and chill.

To prepare pastry cream, combine 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch in a medium, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Gradually add milk to pan, stirring with a whisk until blended; bring to a boil. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Gradually add half of hot milk mixture to eggs, stirring constantly with a whisk. Return milk mixture to pan; cook over medium heat 1 minute or until thick, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and salt. Place pan in a large ice-filled bowl until custard cools to room temperature (about 25 minutes), stirring occasionally.

Arrange half of cake cubes (or broken up cookies) in the bottom of a 2-quart dish (if you have a fancy glass trifle dish, use that – any clear glass bowl will do – it’s just so you see the layers of stuff in it). Spoon 1 1/2 cups fruit mixture over cake/cookies; top with 1 1/2 cups pastry cream. Repeat layers. Garnish with grated orange rind, slivered almonds or whatever neat sweet thing you’ve got (hey, jimmies!! Chocolate chips!). Cover loosely with plastic wrap, and chill at least 4 hours.

So, don’t throw away the last two pieces of bread or those half a dozen tired cookies. Put them in a plastic bag, put that in the freezer and collect them so that you can recycle them into something nummy later!!

This post can also be found at Oxdown Gazette.

If you are someone who feels you just can’t make bread – perhaps you’ve tried and it didn’t rise, or didn’t know when it was risen enough or baked it not long enough or too long, then go read through yesterday’s lesson:

Beginner’s Bread

Today’s bread is slightly different than yesterday’s example. This bread is slightly more nutritious. My ingredients list looks like this:
Wheat Flour….1/2 c. of whole wheat flour. The rest is regular flour (I’m using bread flour)
Yeast……………1T of dried yeast
Yeast ‘food’……..1 teaspoon of honey, because that is what I’ve got a whole lot of
Water……………Hottest out of the tap (if your water has been tested and is safe – otherwise, one part boiling water, two parts cold) – 1 C
Milk……………..1C – zapped for 1min. in the microwave so that it isn’t stone cold
Salt………………1 pinch
Fat………………..2 tablespoons of: olive oil or melted butter or other vegetable oil

Aunt Toby understands “Bread Fear.” We are all about the simple, controllable bread today – not the bread that you come back into the kitchen and find has taken over your stove, refrigerator and is crawling toward the dining room, looking hungrily at the dinette set. No, this is a friendly little bread that you can control and turn into things you and your family will love to eat.

Step 1: Preheat your oven a little bit so that your hand feels warm but not hot. Turn off the oven and close the door.

Step 2: Proof your yeast: Put a cup of the hottest water out of your tap (or one parts boiling water, two parts cold) into some sort of (heatproof!) vessel with 1teaspoon of whatever sweetener is your choice and 1tablespoon of yeast and stir that around. Put that into the stove for 10 min.

Step 3: Put 1 cup of milk (any type will do – full fat, 1%, you name it) into a microwave safe container and zap it for 1 min.

Step 4: After that 10 min. in the oven, take out the yeast/water/sugar. Sniff it and look at it. It should smell like beer and have a head like beer.

Step 5: Pour the milk and the water/yeast/sweetener into the big bowl.
Put in the flour. If you are using that ½ cup of whole wheat, put that in first; other wise, dump a good cup of bread flour in and slowly stir it around.. Put in your pinch of salt and your oil or melted fat.

Step 6: Keep adding flour and stirring it around until the dough (hey, you’re making dough!!) basically starts cleaning off the sides of the bowl. It will be sticky but it is now ready to knead.

Step 7: Clean off the kitchen counter. Dump a couple of cups of flour onto the counter and scrape out the dough from the bowl. Knead the dough and flour together. Your bread is ready to rise when it’s not sticky any more and you start seeing little blisters rising on the surface. Make your dough into a ball and put it in the bowl and cover. The ball of dough should be about half the size of the bowl.

Step 8: If your oven has cooled off, again heat it a little bit. Turn off the oven, put in the bowl and shut the door. Turn on the oven timer for 1 hour.

Go take a shower, clean up in the kitchen, read a book, play with your kids, watch a movie. Don’t mess with the oven or the dough. Leave it alone. After an hour, the dough should basically take up most of the bowl.

Take it out, punch it down, put out a little bit of flour on the counter top and scrape the dough out on top of it. Knead it a little bit with the flour to give it a bit of a rest.

You now have something you can turn into some really tasty things. Here is how I made the three things in the top picture. I divided the dough into thirds.

Loaf of bread: This is a small loaf. The bread pan is 7.5”x3.75”x2.25”. The bread dough rose 2” over the top of the pan, so the slices are going to be about 4”x4”. Grease the inside of the loaf pan and take one third of the dough. Roll it around on the counter a little bit until it is approx. the side of the inside of the pan and put it inside. Put that inside the oven. You’ll want to raise that for about 30 min.

Cinnamon rolls: Take the next third of the dough. Put a little flour on the counter, put the dough out on top of that and sprinkle that with a little flour also. Roll it out with a rolling pin until the dough is about ¼ in. thick. Oh, you don’t have a rolling pin? OK…do you have a wine bottle (full or empty)? Make sure it’s good and clean on the outside and use that instead. If the bottle is full, so much the better – when the goodies are done, you can also open the bottle of wine! Sprinkle all over the dough: cinnamon, a handful of sugar (brown is preferable, but white will do), chopped up nuts (if you like them; it’s not required), raisins (or currents or other dried fruit – even the stuff used for fruit cakes will do). Then, roll it up like your diploma and slice it to make rolls, about 1” thick. Place cut side down on a greased cookie sheet or in a cake pan. Now, put THAT into the oven to raise.

Italian finger rolls for the toaster oven: Take the next third of the dough, and roll that out like the cinnamon rolls (make sure the counter is clean – we don’t want bits of nuts and raisins in THESE rolls). Sprinkle this with dried oregano, basil and some parmesan or romano cheese. Roll up, cut into pieces and roll out a bit so that it’s about the size of a hot dog. Put on the greased baking sheet that came with your toaster oven and put THAT in the oven to raise. When the oven timer rings, all three of these should be raised enough. The bread will be way over the top of the pan; the cinnamon rolls will be little bit poofy and so will the finger rolls. Take all three pans out of the oven.

Set the oven temperature for 375 degrees and preheat. Set the temperature in the toaster oven for 350. There is usually no pre-heat on a toaster oven, so just leave that for a couple of min.

Toaster oven rolls: You’re going to have to watch this a bit. Toaster oven temperature controls are not as good as the ones in ovens. What you are looking for is browning on the outside and firming up, so, after 10 min., take out the pan and poke one of the rolls with your finger. If it gives, put the pan back and wait another 10 min. and check again. Twenty min. should be enough; 25 for sure.

Bread: If you are making a big loaf of bread (like, half the dough put into a pan bigger than the one I used), you can count on baking it for 30-45 min. at 375 degrees. The way you know it’s done is to take your fingers and flick it on the top. It should make a hollow sound. Take it out and put it on a cooling rack. If you don’t have a cooling rack, lay the pan on it’s side on a heatproof cutting board. Resist the urge to cut the loaf out of the pan and start eating it immediately – you will burn yourself. Show some restraint…and take out some butter or cheese.

Cinnamon rolls: These are as close to “fast food” as you can get: 15 min. baking at 375 degrees. Take them out and put the pan on a cooling rack. Again, resist the urge to dig in – that sugar gets very very hot and you will burn yourself.

Your biggest challenge will be waiting until they are cool enough to eat – use the time to clean up, pour the wine, and smell that heavenly smell.

Some “Aunt Toby Hints”: if you are going to make your own bread, you may as well “make every calorie count.” Make sure you work as much nutritional advantage into that dough that you can. And as readers know, I am a big proponent of getting the most protein “bang for the buck” as possible. American “general purpose flours” are actually not very good – unlike Canadian general purpose flours, which test out at 14% protein. Ours are really quite bereft. So, how do you put protein into your breads? Put one or more of these in right at the beginning.
Substitute this for some of the flour:
Dried Milk or Dried Dairy Whey……………up to 1 cup of flour
Soy flour………………………………………….no more than 1/3 c. (it gets very “beany”)
And add-ins like: chopped or slivered nuts, sunflower and other seeds, oat meal

Another thing to remember is “keeping qualities.” There are ways to make your bread stay fresh longer. Commercial bakers use all sorts of additives; we can use honey or molasses as a sweetener – they are both hygroscopic.
Always put in a couple of tablespoons of fat

For richer dough than this one for sweet rolls, heat your milk with a half a stick of butter (make sure when you put it with the yeast that it is not too hot), put in 1-2 eggs and, depending on whether or not you will be filling it (like with the cinnamon rolls), ¼-1/2 c. of sugar or honey.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

To make yeast dough (which is what everything from bread, rolls, and pizza is made of), you need only the following things:
Bread or general purpose flour, dried yeast, sweetener of some kind to feed the yeast, hot water, salt, and a little fat.
You will also need 2 bowls:
One to mix in(something the size of a mixer bowl) and
One that is larger(grease the inside with oil or shortening).
You will also need a couple of wooden spoons and a rubber scraper.

If you have these ingredients, you can make: Basic white sandwich bread, French bread, Cuban bread and pizza. It’s not a terribly exciting sort of bread, but it is a very good basic bread and will give you the skills necessary so that you can bake other more interesting things. Here is how it works:

Mix up the sweetener (honey, sugar, molasses), 1T of dried yeast and a cup of hot water and put in a warm place like the inside of your stove if you’ve heated it a little bit. Go away for 15 min. When you come back, it should look like the picture (frothy!) and smell like beer. If it does not, put it back for another 10 min. If it still isn’t like that – throw it away and go back to the store and get a fresher packet of yeast (the expiration date will be on there).

If you’ve got that nice beer smell and foam, then you have now “proofed” the yeast – you’ve proven that the yeast is good and is going to work.

Pour this and another cup of hot water into your mixing bowl along with a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of melted butter or olive oil or some other vegetable oil.

Pour in a cup of flour and mix this all up. See how it looks and smells. Keep putting in flour, a cup at a time and mix it up. The more you mix it, the more the gluten in the flour will get developed. When the dough starts to clean off the sides of the bowl when you mix it around (by now, your arm may start to hurt), it’s time to knead it.

Kneading does two things: The warmth from your hands develops the gluten AND as you add more flour, the dough gets less sticky. Pour a cup of flour on your clean kitchen counter and dump the dough on top. Pour some more flour on top of the dough so your hands don’t stick. What you will do is basically fold, punch down, roll up, and work the dough and work the flour into the dough. Keep doing that until you start seeing little blisters form on the outside of the dough – it’s ready to raise the dough.

Preheat your oven at the lowest temp you can – leave that on until when you stick your hand in, it feels good and hot, but not so hot that you can’t keep your hand in for the count of 5 or so. If it is, leave the door open for a min. Turn off the heat in the oven and shut the door.

Take your dough and put it into the other, greased bowl – turn it over so that both sides now have a little bit of grease on them and cover the bowl with a dish towel, plastic wrap, and put into the oven. Close the door and set the timer for 45 min.

Go away and do something else. When the timer dings, open the door – your dough should now look like this – it almost fills the bowl!!

If it doesn’t, put it back for another 15-20 min. Take out your dough, punch it down and put it back on the kitchen counter with a little flour and knead it a little bit. Now is time to bake it.

Put your hand back into the oven – still nice and warm? If not, heat it a little bit like before. Grease whatever baking container you are going to use for the bread: bread pan, cookie sheet, whatever.

Take your dough and squeeze it into the form you want. If you want to put it into a loaf pan, spread it out on the counter (your hands will do) in about the length of the pan. Roll it up and put it into the pan.

Let’s say you don’t have a loaf pan. You can still bake this, free form style. Grease a cookie sheet or even a doubled up heavy aluminum foil piece in about the size of a cookie sheet. Take your dough and make it into any shape you want: a big flattened ball, French Bread sticks, animals…whatever you want. Put it on the sheet.

Put it into the oven and set the timer for 30 min. It should rise nicely. Take it out.
Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees F. Put in your pan of bread and bake for 30 min.

Check the bread – you can tell if it is done by rapping the top of it with your fingers. If it makes a hollow sound, it is done. If it does not, leave it in for another 10-15 min.

Take the pan out. If you have a cooling rack, put the pan on that. If you do not and are using a loaf pan, lay the loaf pan with the bread in it on its side on a (non-plastic!) cutting board. If you are doing this on a cookie sheet or aluminum foil, then leave it on the top of the stove to cool.

Control yourself – this stuff is going to be hot for a while. Give it a good 30 minutes to cool off before you try to dive in. Take out the bread from the loaf pan by running a knife around the inside edge of the pan and giving the pan a good rap on the counter. The bread should pop right out. With free form, run a spatula underneath it and pick it up. There you have it – bread for you!! Let it get completely cold before you put it into a plastic bag to store it in your fridge.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)