A Little Something

Greek Lentil Soup and Fast French Bread

 

This simple lentil soup is very tasty and 'brothier' than my stewy lentil barley soup.

Greek Lentil Soup

1 pound lentils, washed

3 bay leaves

1 onion, diced

2 or 3 carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, sliced

good olive oil

fresh spinach, chopped

Combine everything except the spinach in a soup pot with eight cups of water. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on the top. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and let simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to an hour until everything is cooked. Turn off heat and stir in as many handfuls of spinach as you like. Stir in the spinach and just let it sit a few minutes to cook lightly. I like the spinach to remain a nice bright green which I find much more appealing than overcooked spinach. Add salt to taste, about 1 1/2 - 2 teaspoons, and serve.

Fast French Bread

French bread is simple by definition. With only the basics of flour, water, salt and yeast it is certainly the easiest bread to mix up. Due to its humble ingredients authentic French bread is supposed to be given several long, cool rises to develop its flavor, and then baked in a steamy oven to make a lovely crunchy crust. I do not disagree.

 

However, when time is of the essence I can mix up a batch of dough in my Zo in half an hour. I shape it into two long skinny loaves and let it rise in a warm place for twenty minutes or so, then bake for fifteen. And I don't always bother with adding a pan of boiling water to the bottom of the oven to provide steam. And when the loaves come out of the oven all hot and fresh and are placed on the table alongside some soup, or perhaps with just butter, fruit and cheese for lunch, absolutely no one ever complains about undeveloped flavor or less-than-stellar crust.  The bread all just disappears in no time and my happy family is hungry no more. ;-)

1 1/4 cups water

3 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 or 3 teaspoons yeast

Place ingredients in bread machine set on dough cycle - I use 2 teaspoons of yeast for a regular hour and a half dough cycle or 3 teaspoons yeast for a 'quick' half hour dough cycle. Divide dough in half and shape each into a long loaf and place on greased pan. I used this curved French bread pan that came from a yard sale about twenty years ago, but a regular cookie sheet will do.

Let rise however you like - long and cool or warm and fast. Bake in preheated 375 - 400 degree F oven for about 15-20 minutes. Place an old brownie pan on the bottom rack and fill it with boiling water when you put the bread in the oven to provide steam. (or not) Bread should be golden brown and sound hollow when thumped when it's done. Et voilà - delicious, disappearing homemade French bread!

The other night I served the lentil soup with French bread and hard boiled eggs for dinner and Mary Rose called it a 'three course meal'. Do I insert the smiley icon or the blushing?

A Word About Flour

 

With the current economic climate everyone seems to be tightening their financial belts, ourselves included. Feeding a family of nine is no small business so I've been paying more attention to prices looking for ways to trim the food budget, trying to be a better steward of our family's resources. With food costs skyrocketing along with everything else, we had this conversation in our home some time ago:

me: Do you think we should try using store brand flour? It's cheaper.

him: Why would you do that? Don't you always get King Arthur flour? How much different can the price be - just get the good stuff.

me: Well, the store brand is $1.66 for five pounds and the King Arthur is $3.99.

him: Oh! Why don't you try the store brand?!

And so I did. I ran out of sacks of King Arthur and replaced them with the store brand of both unbleached white and whole wheat. At less than half the price it seemed like a reasonable switch. The whole wheat was very different, and I noticed I needed to add more liquid to most of my recipes to make up for the different consistency. (Note: All of my recipes here on my blog calling for whole wheat are based on 'King Arthur white whole wheat' and you may need more liquid if using another brand, particularly for yeasted breads.) I resisted (mostly) the temptation to call the new flour sawdust, despite its coarse, flaky appearance and tendency to slurp up so much liquid. I also determined that I would not complain about the new, um, heftiness of our daily bread but instead just think of it as hearty whole wheat. I chose to avoid mentioning all those adjectives that came to mind such as chewy, toothsome, heavy, dense, bitter... We were saving lots of money and that's what mattered.

And then I found it.

Hidden away in the back of a pantry shelf was a long lost and forgotten sack of my favorite King Arthur white whole wheat. As soon as the sawdust store brand wheat was gone I opened the beloved sack and made some scones. One bite of that delicious sweet and mellow flavor, the look of that beautiful golden goodness and I knew I could never turn back. Everything tasted brighter and lighter, my yeast bread was the right size again, my scones were back to the right consistency, our cookies no longer resembled hockey pucks...

We've since made other cuts in our grocery bill - we've switched to store brand orange juice and stopped buying yogurt in little cups and things like that. We figure we already save so much money by making all our bread, cookies, muffins and all that we can splurge on the good stuff to bake with as it tastes soooo much better. We're happily back to King Arthur in the flour jar and in my kitchen, the King is here to stay.

Monkey Bread

I keep hearing about this stuff called Monkey Bread and I finally decided to try making some. I used the buttery rolls recipe from the Cheat Sheet, increasing the yeast to three teaspoons. I mixed the dough up in my bread machine set to quick dough. Then I used my metal dough scraper to quickly hack the dough up into about forty pieces. My trusty assistant then dipped each piece in melted butter and rolled it in cinnamon sugar, and then finally tossing it into a greased tube pan. We used about 1/4 cup of butter and 1 cup of cinnamon sugar. After letting the dough rise until it nearly filled the pan we baked it for about 25 minutes in a preheated 375 degree oven. We turned the bread out onto a plate and called for the monkeys to come. And then it was all gone (well almost - we saved a hunk for Dad). We will surely be making this again.

Real Cinnabuns

We often mix up a quick version of cinnabuns using a biscuit type dough. With summer here and more leisure time we've been enjoying genuine yeast raised cinnabuns. I use the buttery rolls recipe off of my Cheat Sheet, increasing the sugar to half a cup and using three teaspoons of yeast. I let the dough mix up in my Zo set to the quick dough cycle and it's ready in half an hour. Then we roll the dough out into a rectangle. Spread with half a stick of softened butter and sprinkle with half a cup of good cinnamon sugar.

 

Roll it up!

Slice it up! I find it's best to use a large serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion. Place the buns on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Let them rise in a warm place for about half an hour.

Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for approximately 13-15 minutes.

A thick powdered sugar icing (1 1/2 cups sugar and a few spoons of milk) is optional (ha!). 

Light Supper

When the days are hot and the nights are busy a simple meal is all that is wanted in the evening. Tonight we enjoyed a simple supper of focaccia and salad, enjoying the fresh greens from the garden. Some hard boiled eggs on the side add a bit more protein and you're set.

For the focaccia I started with this recipe from King Arthur. I cut the Italian herbs down to three spoonfuls in the dough, and I also used white whole wheat for some of the flour. After rolling it out and letting it rise I topped it with a generous drizzle of good olive oil, thinly sliced fresh tomatoes, fresh grated Parmesan, and finished with a heavy handed sprinkle of rosemary. (I sometimes add sliced black olives as well.) At 450 degrees mine was done in just under fifteen minutes. Delicious.