Potato bread experiment

For the past three weeks I've been making potato bread. I've been experimenting with how much whole wheat flour and how much all purpose flour I can use. I like to use as much whole wheat flour as I can. Gotta eat your whole grains kiddies! The first week I used 1 cup Of White flour and it was a VERY soft and doughy bread. It was great for sandwiches, but throughout the week, it got almost soggy on the bottom. The second week I didn't use any white flour and I baked it on the oven rack for 5 minutes to dry out the bottom. This week I tried using 1/2 cup of white flour.

To begin. Cut up 1 russet potato into large chunks and add to cold water. You could peel them now, but I peal them afterwards because it's faster and I like burning my fingers. If you cut them into large disks, and then cut them in half, they're easier to peel.

Bring the potatoes to a boil, and then turn the heat down to medium high so they do not boil over. They should boil for about 10 minutes or however long it takes to soften them. Test them with a fork. Drain off all of the water and then carefully, pull off the softened peals. They're hot. I'm not too picky about getting 100% of the peals, just do your best.

While the potatoes are boiling, measure 3 cups of whole wheat flour into your big mixing bowl.

Look at those awesome whole grains!

Add between 1/2 and 1 cup of all purpose flour. I used 1/2 a cup with this loaf and it was denser than sandwich bread should be. Next time I'll use closer to a whole cup.

Also while your potatoes are cooking proof 1 heaping tsp of yeast in 1 and 1/3 cup of luke warm water. We don't want the water too hot or the yeasts will die right off. I always proof my yeast no matter what kind of yeast I'm using.

Add 1 tbsp of sugar so the yeasts have something to munch on while they're waking up.

Don't forget to season your bread. I used "this much" salt. I'm bad about measuring when I make bread. Also, keep in mind that if you're making sandwich bread and you make a delicious garlic bread, it's going to taste bad with your peanut butter. I tend to just use the salt.

Also, add about 1/4 cup of powdered milk. If you'd rather not, you can slightly heat up some real milk and use that to proof the yeast instead of water. Milk adds a bit of protein that helps out the consistency of the bread.

When your potatoes are cooked and pealed, using a fork give them a very good smash. You don't want any large chunks of potatoes in your bread.

Make a well in the middle of your flour mixture and begin to work the potatoes into the flour using your fork.

Then, switch to using your fingers to mix in the potatoes. Crumble up any large chunks you find until your dough looks like sand.

Make another well in the middle of your dough and add the water and yeast.

Using your trusted wooden spoon work as much of the flour into the dough as you can. When you've done as much as you can with the spoon, switch to your hands and work the dough until all of the flour is incorporated. You do not need to kneed.

When your dough is completely mixed together, remove the dough from the bowl and spray the bowl with cooking spray. Add the dough back to the bowl and rotate the bowl to form the dough into a nice tight ball.

Cover the bowl with a slightly moist kitchen towel, not dripping, and leave it in a warm place to rise for 60 minutes. This is what it looks like when it's done rising.

Grease your bread pan with cooking spray. With quick jerky movements, wiggle the bowl to release the dough. You should be able to "pour" the dough into the pan.
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You can use your fingers to push the dough into any corners.

Your dough can now rise uncovered in another warm spot for another 60 minutes. Or if you go outside to talk to your neighbor and forget that you've got dough rising, 90 minutes. This is what it looked like when I remembered to check on it.

I always give three lateral slashes to my dough with a steak knife. Back in the days of community ovens, those slash marks identified whose bread was whose. Now it's just a nice touch.

Bake your bread for 30-35 minutes at 350. You do not need to preheat your oven. Turn it on and throw the bread in.

After 35 minutes I pulled the dough out, ran my knife around the edges of the pan, and eased the hot bread onto a cutting board. Then, with hot pads, I transferred it from the cutting board to the oven rack. I baked it for another 5 minutes straight on the rack. This keeps the inside chewy, but prevents the outside from being soggy as with the first loaf of potato bread I made.

After 5 minutes, I was gifted with this. The color on that crust is amazing!

It will be very difficult, but if you can, wait 30 or so minutes until the bread has cooled to cut into it. I never can. I ate my first slice of this loaf with salted butter. Other great choices for homemade bread are honey, or a dipping oil of olive oil, ground black pepper, and Parmesan cheese. Fresh bread out of the oven is one of the reasons to get out of bed in the morning.

Chicken stock

There's nothing better in soup than homemade stock. Making your own stock is a great way to stretch a buck; you're using food that you've already bought and doesn't require any additional ingredients besides water and herbs. It's also delicious and easy!

Whenever I roast a chicken, or even part of a chicken that's bone in, I stick the bones, fat, extra juices from the roasting pan, skin, and any other non edibles into a plastic container and stick them into the freezer until I feel like making stock. Also, as I'm preparing vegetables, I always save the root and tip ends of onions I'm chopping, the tops of carrots, and the stems of mushrooms. You could really add any extra vegetable bits you want. I also store these in the freezer until I get around to making my stock.

On stock making day, I take out those containers and dump them into my big pasta pot. If you have a big stock pot, I'm sure that's fine too. I don't have one. This stock is missing carrots. I think stock is way better when you've got some carrot tops to add in, but husband isn't a huge carrot fan so we haven't had any lately. I think you have to have onions though. They add a lot to the stock. You'll want the bones of at least half of a chicken or more. I also added in some beef fat from a roast we had. Repeat after me, "Fat is flavor." I'm sorry if you're concerned about your triglycerides, stock is not the place to skimp on the fat. You're adding so much water into the other ingredients that it's really not doing that much damage.

I also like to add some fresh rosemary and bay leaves to my stock. There's probably some rosemary already in the containers because I usually add some to my roasted chicken, but adding fresh wont hurt anything. You can see I'm using the bottom of the bay leaf container here.

How much salt should I add, you might ask. NONE!!! You can add your salt when you make your soup. This allows you to control how salty each soup is. I use dried black beans a lot when I'm making soup, and they will not cook and soften properly if there's salt in the liquid.

Fill your pot up with water leaving about 1/2 inch of room at the top so it doesn't boil over. Cover. Bring your mixture to a boil, then turn down to medium high so that it will continue to bubble, but not boil over. I usually cook my stock for about 2 hours, but I was extremely exhausted when I made this and only let it go for one hour.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the big chunks from the pot and throw these away. I'm sure you've got a nice strainer in your kitchen, but all I have is a colander. I set my colander over my plastic container. I like to use those plastic containers from take out soup because if they crack in the freezer I'm not out any cash. Very carefully, ladle your stock into your strainer. IT'S HOT.

Let the stock drain into your containers leaving behind any chunks you missed before.

Even though I only let my stock cook for an hour, I still got an amazingly rick broth. Look at that awesome color!

Make sure you leave a centimeter or so of space at the top of your containers. The stock will expand in the freezer. You'll want to wipe off the bottoms of your containers because there's probably some condensation or excess stock on the bottom that you wont want in your freezer.

I can tell you for sure that the stock is good for at least 3 months in your freezer, but I've never kept any for longer than that. It makes for some amazing soups, stews, and chilies. I've also made seafood stock before from the tails of some shrimp I had saved. You can really be very creative with your stock.

*Update* since I've written this post I've saved up another batch of ingredients in the freezer. This one has mushroom stems and celery!

Oh my god, I'm a hippie.

My husband and I went for a hike today. We went to a a park we'd never been to before. It was really nice to get out and stretch my legs. The whole park had these gorgeous flowers blooming all over the place.

I'm so glad spring is here! The weather was so warm and humid I broke a sweat. I'd say that that's unusual for Iowa, but no weather is unusual for Iowa. This beauty was at the trail head.

Hubby and I followed the trail to a dead end, and then kept going. Probably, we were following a deer trail for a while. We followed a creek for a ways until it turned and went towards the road. This is what we saw when we stopped to turn back.

I think you get a 1up if you eat it. (Just kidding. Unless you're Mario or Luigi, don't eat red mushrooms!)

We hiked through the steep terrain for about an hour, and then decided to eat lunch. As I sat there eating my peanut butter sandwich on homemade whole wheat potato bread, looking at my Honda Civic (that should have been my first clue), and thinking about how I'd rather spend my Saturday hiking than playing with my new iPad, I realized, "OH MY GOD, I'M A HIPPIE!" I've probably been one for a while, I just didn't know it until today.

We also saw a lot of these all around the park. Very pretty foliage. Anyone know what it is?

Friday night

So it's Friday night and you want some junk food but once again you're broke. It's time to make pizza. This is my sour dough pizza crust.

(NOTE: You must have sour dough starter to make this recipe. Starter is not something you can make right away, but takes about a week to ferment. Suzanne McMinn's post on sour dough starter is a great resource. Chickens in the Road Sour Dough Starter


One tip I would offer to you is that your house must be warm for the yeasties to ferment. I made a batch this winter that didn't work out because my house was too cold. However, if you turn on your oven light, your oven temperature will increase 10-20 degrees F higher than the rest of your house, which is warm enough for the yeast to reproduce.

Start out by proofing your 3/4 tsp (ish) of yeast in 1/3 of a cup of luke warm water with 1/2 a tbsp of sugar. Proofing yeast is the process where the yeast is allowed to "wake up" after it's hibernation in your refrigerator. I always give my yeast warm water and sugar so it has something to eat. You know your yeast is good if after 5 minutes there are bubbles on the surface of your water.

While the yeast is proofing, add 2 cups of flour to your work bowl. I always use whole wheat. You could go half W.W. and half A.P if you want. This is also the time to season your dough. Of course you want about 1 tsp of salt. I also like red pepper flakes for a spicier crust, or oregano for more of an Italian flavor. You can really add whatever you want. Just please don't leave it plain. Pizza crust needs flavor.

Make a dent or well in the middle of your flour and add 1/3 cup of your sour dough starter.

Add your water/ yeast mixture. This week I was trying to make a chewier crust so I added an egg. If you want a crispy crust, leave the egg out.

Finally, forget to add about 2 tbsp of olive oil until you've already started mixing the dough. Or you can be more organized than me and add it right away. Using your big ol' wooden spoon, stir your dough together until you have 90% of the flour incorporated. At this point you'll need to use your hands to work in the last 10% of the flour. And if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, STFU!

After all of the flour is mixed in, grease your bowl with some cooking spray and add the dough back to the bowl. Rotate the bowl so that the dough rolls around and forms a nice tight ball that is lightly coated in the oil.

Your dough is now ready to rise. Cover the bowl with a damp (not wet or dripping) kitchen towel and put in a warm place to rise. It's not a warm day, so my dough is going in the oven with the light on just like my sour dough starter. In the summer, I'd find a patch of sunshine.

After rising in a warm place for an hour, your dough should be about double in size. It wont be as big if you're just using the W.W. flour. It's harder for the yeast to lift the denser flour. Generously, GENEROUSLY, flour yourself a flat workspace and a rolling pin. I like to let my dough have its second rise on the table, so if I don't use enough flour I will never get it off the table. Roll out your dough.

My dough was between 12 and 13 inches in diameter. I let it rise for 45 minutes.

After the second rise, I folded the dough in half so I could put it on my pizza peel to transport to the oven for it's prebake. If you're going for a crispy crust, you want to crank your oven up to at least 450 and let it completely preheat before adding your crust for about 4 minutes. This is going to give you a cracker like consistency. If you want a truly chewy crust, I'd recommend not prebaking at all. I prebaked this crust at 350 for 4 minutes and it was still crispier than I was craving. Bake it directly on the rack or if you're cooler than me, on your pizza stone.

After you prebake, or not, go ahead and assemble your pizza. I absolutely LOVE the store bought pizza sauce that comes in the glass jar. I heart it with a heart. We had a bacon and onion pizza this night. We were low on possible toppings. But how can you possibly go wrong with bacon? You can't.

Happy Friday dinner!

The misadventures of pork tacos

Let me preface this post by saying Oh. Dear. God.

About a week ago I went out for Mexican with my sister and had some great carnitas tacos. Those tacos have been haunting me ever since. They were so good. They came with this great dipping sauce. Last night I decided I had to have some, so I started a carnitas mixture in my crockpot. Ohh, this dish had so much potential. Crockpot = food cooking itself. Tacos... pork... how can you go wrong?

I started with a quart of homemade chicken stock. My stock doesn't have any salt added, so I went ahead and added some.

Then, a full bunch of cilantro was chopped and went into the pot.

I added a few tablespoons of lime juice, green salsa, and garlic.

You should mince 2-3 cloves of garlic. I'm still waiting for my store to get normal garlic in.

If you can't find green salsa, you could probably use whatever you had. We get the green kind because it's cheaper. Most of the recipes I looked at before I took on this endeavor called for green, so it all worked out.

Next, husband grated half of a yellow onion.

At this point I went and played FarmVille. I can barely chop an onion, let alone be in the room when someone else is grating one.

Next, I grabbed some fresh oregano from my sad oregano plant. He's sad because it's March and still snowing. He'll feel better when he can go outside. I probably should have used more, but I didn't want to hurt the plant by taking too much. This was chopped and added to the pot.

And some red pepper flakes went into the pot too.

This went into the fridge over night so that it would be ready before work on Monday morning.

Monday morning arrived, and I pulled out my pork roast.

(I defrost all of my meat in plastic grocery bags so that if they leak it doesn't get all over the fridge).

I should have cut all of that extra fat off, but I didn't. You can.

Pork went into the chicken broth mixture and cooked on low from 7 a.m. until noon.

At noon I flipped the roast over and let it cook on the other side. When I pulled the roast out at 4 p.m. It looked like this.

I stuck it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes so that it would be cool when I shredded it. I hate shredding meat and I usually end up using my fingers. I put the broth mixture on the stove and let it boil down for 30 minutes until it was reduced by half. I know that most pros wouldn't reuse cooking liquid that had at one time had raw meat in it, but in my opinion nothing can survive boiling for 30 minutes. This reduced liquid was going to be my wonderful dipping sauce like the sauce at the restaurant. And now it was full of delicious pork juices. (Please note, I'm not encouraging you to consume liquid that has had raw meat in it at one time. It was MY game plan, but does not have to be yours.)

I pulled the meat out of the fridge and started to shred it. Crapola, it was still pink inside. 10 hours in the crock pot and the less than 2 lb roast was still pink inside.

I called my mother-in-law, and she confirmed what I was thinking. The shredded meat went back into the reduced broth mixture and cooked for five more minutes. It then went into my colander when I did my best to squeeze the juice out. At this point all of the cilantro, oregano, green tomatoey bits, and red pepper flakes were stuck to the pork and all that was left in the juice was broth. I didn't really feel like dipping my tacos in broth, so I scrapped the whole dipping sauce plan.

I served my pork taco on a whole wheat tortilla, gotta eat your whole grains kids, with slices of monterey jack cheese, avocado, and tomato.

This was the nastiest taco I've ever had in my life. It tasted like eating socks. There was no flavor whatsoever. What happened to the slow cooking in the broth with the herbs and such? No idea. I was left with nasty.

I ate the thing with the hope that I'd be able to add some salt and cumin to the pork and everything would be fine. I don't know why I didn't add cumin before. It's my favorite seasoning. I then added more cheese, green salsa, and sour cream to my second taco. I couldn't finish it. It was just gross. I cleansed my pallet by eating some homemade caramel while I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I ate 2 cookies, drank some milk, and a large cup of cinnamon tea. I'm still slightly nauseous.

From now on, I promise to leave the carnitas to the professionals. Usually, when I fail a recipe, I like to go back after my taste buds have recovered and do it the right way. This was such an epic failure I'm not sure if I'll ever go back. But there's a lesson here for all of us. While I failed on a legendary level tonight, I still tried. Everyone, EVERYONE, fails in the kitchen sometimes. You cannot get better if you have no mistakes to learn from. I will never cook a roast in chicken broth again. That was my lesson tonight. And I have the experience in my pocket to contribute to every dish I make from here on out. But if I had said, no I don't know how to make pork tacos that sounds too hard, I wouldn't have had the cathartic experience in the kitchen and I wouldn't have had the learning experience either. And the more failures I make, the more lessons I learn so that my cooking gets better everyday.