Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

Make up a few loafs of this delicious bread, and your kitchen will smell like heavenly fall!  A nice treat during a cool fall or cold winter day.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 Cup of plain greek yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon orange zest

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 2 9x5 loaf pans

Sift together, into a medium bowl, flour, baking powder, salt, spices and baking soda. *If you don't have a sifter, you can use your wire whisk to stir these ingredients works the same.

In a large bowl beat the eggs until light and fluffy.  Add sugar and continue beating until well blended.  Stir in oil, vanilla extract, zucchini, chocolate chips and orange zest.  Stir into sifted ingredients.  Mix well. Pour into loaf pans, about half to three quarters of the way full.  Bake 50 min or until top is springy to touch, and toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.  

Homemade English Muffin Bread

You, my friend, are just five common ingredients away from delicious, homemade english muffin bread.  Honestly it was the 5 ingredient hook that...well, hooked me!  I came across this simple recipe via facebook.  I follow a great blog called One Good Thing by Jillee.  She has hundreds of good things on there!!  This wonderful  bread recipe was featured, I had the ingredients on hand and it's been pouring for days.  It all equaled up to baking AND it is easy AND it is DELICIOUS!!

Now I realize it's a tad wonky looking....but trust me when I say: This. Bread. Is. Delicious.  This recipe makes four loafs of bread. I fully intended to take two of the loaves down to my lovely neighbors house....really I did...but the kids inhaled a loaf after I picked them up from school forcing me to slice another loaf and then Auntie Kim came over and brought us banana bread so I sent her home with a loaf...and that left us a loaf and a half.  Plus it was incredibly easy to make.

English Muffin Bread from One Good Thing By Jillee (check her out you'll love her)
5 1/2 Cups warm water
11 Cups of All Purpose Flour
3 packages Rapid Rise Yeast

** I don't have Rapid Rise Yeast, I have Dry Active Yeast so I measured out 6 3/4 teaspoons and because it's not rapid rise, you let it rise once in your bowl (about an hour) and then another hour in the bread pans so it rises TWICE.**

3 Tablespoons Sugar
2 Tablespoons Salt

In a large bowl (you can use your KitchenAid, but it will fill the 5 QT bowl very full) Mix all ingredients together and stir it all up until it's mixed, it really doesn't take long.  Again, because I used active yeast I set my bowl in a warm dry place (my oven) and let it rise for an hour.  Meanwhile, grease 4 loaf pans very well. Spoon the dough (its super sticky so I used a big metal serving spoon coated in canola oil) into the pans, about 1/3 of the way full, I just made sure I was about even in all pans.  Let them rise for about an hour.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake about 35-40 minutes.  10 minutes before done, take the bread out and brush the tops with melted butter and pop back into the oven for the remaining time.  The bread is moist at first, let it cool completely before cutting. 

**I think you could make traditional round english muffins if you used a scoop and placed them on a Silpat mat like cookies and baked them...but I haven't tried it so I am not positive about this.

My bread turned out great. It had lots of nooks and crannies, wonderful flavor and so far I've fed it to three adults, all loved it, and four kids and they loved it too :) It's a keeper at our house!!

Sourdough Bread

Homemade bread....bought at the store right??? That's what I would have said this time last year! Its cheap, convenient and available at your local grocery store...why ever would you want to take on this task?? My mom has made bread for years.  I remember sitting in the kitchen at the farmhouse and watching grammy "beat her bread" But it wasn't anything I cared to try myself.  Mum has been telling me for years that I could do it and should try it...well she finally wore me down and sent me home with some sourdough starter and the confidence to try it on my own.  Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be....but I didn't like getting my hands covered in sticky dough....enter the pretty Kitchen Aid that has been taking up real estate on my counter for almost five years!  Now I use it to make bread all the time and it is easy!!!  Here is a basic sourdough recipe..I encourage you to grab some flour and get some starter started!

Sourdough Bread
1 Cup sourdough starter* warmed to room temp
1 1/2 Cups of warm water (105-115 degrees F)
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
pinch of sugar
4 1/2-5 cups of flour

In a large bowl (I use my Kitchen Aid with the paddle attachment) combine starter, water, yeast, salt and sugar.  Add 1 Cup of flour and mix until the texture is smooth and creamy.  Add additional flour in 1/2 Cup increments mixing well after each addition, making sure to scrape the sides of the mixing bowl with a rubber spatula.  I usually switch to my bread hook around cup 2 1/2 of flour...once it gets doughy I switch.  You may not use all  the flour, you are watching your dough and waiting to see it start pulling away from the sides of the bowl.  Then let the mixer do the kneading, on about med speed, for about 4 minutes.  Dough should be smooth, firm and just slightly sticky to touch.  Put 1 teaspoon of olive oil in the bottom of a large bowl.  Turn dough into the bowl and roll to coat in oil.  Let rise in a warm, draft free spot for 1 hr. (my house tends to be cool so I turn the oven on to 175 degrees, let it heat and then turn the oven OFF and put my bread right in the oven to rise, works great.  Once dough has risen, divide in half, shape into loafs (sort of torpedo shaped) and place into a greased loaf pans.  Let rise 45 minutes.  Then heat oven to 425 (make sure you have taken your bread out if you let it rise in the oven)  Just before baking slash the top of the bread with a sharp, serrated knife.  Bake 25-30 minutes until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped on the top.

When your starter gets down to 1/2 Cup you'll want to do something called setting the sponge.  To set the sponge place 1/2 Cup of starter in a med bowl and add 2 cups warm water and 2 cups of flour.  Whisk together and place in a warm place overnight (microwave works great) In the morning the sponge will have risen and will be covered in little bubbles and will smell yeasty.  Now it's ready to use.  It can be stored in glass container in the refrigerator a long time without going bad.  It may get a brownish or gray water on the top but it can be stirred and brought back to normal.  However if it turns pink and has a displeasing smell to it, you should throw it out and start a new batch as it has probably contracted a bacteria.


*Starter Recipe
2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast
2 Cups warm water
2 Cups flour

whisk ingredients together in a large bowl.  Loosely cover and let set out over night.

Sometimes I will put Freshly ground pepper and a little sea salt on the top of my bread after I've shaped it and put it in the loaf pans, I also done rosemary, rosemary and black pepper and garlic powder and minced onion.  Be creative!!

Carb-tastic Comfort food!

Pepperoni and Cheese
Pizza Bites

aaaaanddd!

Hawaiian BBQ Pizza,

It's what's for dinner!


Once a week I make dinner for the bigger part of my family, my three "nanny" kids whom I've had since the boys were 14 months old. They turned 9 yesterday! Yikes!! A and M are very good eaters, always have been. N, not so much. This afternoon I was happily perusing some food blogs, and happened upon pizza bites at annies-eats.com. Try her recipe here. Also included within is a link to her pizza crust which is the same recipe I use :) She has lots of great food to check out!!! For an adult addition to supper I also made Hawaiian BBQ Chicken pizza. This is a recipe I made up based on one I had a few years ago. Its delicious, despite my poor photography:) I hope you try it!

Hawaiian BBQ Chicken Pizza

1/2 a batch of homemade pizza dough (recipe for dough here)
1 1/2 C boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed
1/2 sweet onion, halved and sliced
1/2 Cup BBQ (I used Sweet Baby Rays because that's what I had)
1 Tablespoon Franks Original hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 1/2 Cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 Cup chunked pineapple in juice, sliced (about three slices per chunk)

Pre heat oven to 425 degrees, with pizza stone in oven (if you don't have a stone you can use an over turned cookie sheet.)

Place cubed chicken in a pan, to brown on med heat. Pour in bbq sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, and black pepper. Cook until chicken is completely cooked, and sauce has cooked down a little.

On parchment paper, spread dough out into a circle, I make mine to fit my pizza stone. Carefully take hot stone out of the oven and place it on hot pads. Flip dough (very carefully) onto hot stone. This starts the crust cooking, and makes it crusty!

Keep in mind stone is hot, carefully spread shredded mozzarella on top of dough, covering it all. Then spoon the chicken mixture over the top, it should cover the whole pizza. Sprinkle a little more cheese on the top.

Cook at 425 degrees about 12 minutes, or until the bottom of the dough is golden and top is bubbly.

I hope you enjoy!!