Buttermilk Bread

Anyone who grew up in Japan had to eat thick, fluffy sliced white bread at least once. It is great for simple toast, French toast, or anything thick toast is suitable. The best thing about this type of bread in Japan is that you don't have to go to a special bakery; it is available at supermarkets and convenience stores. Now I prefer crusty bread, but I do miss the soft sliced bread I used to eat as a child. Although it is not the same, homemade buttermilk loaves have been satisfying enough to fight the craving.

Buttermilk has become a staple in my kitchen. I love cooking and baking with buttermilk. It is also a good way to use leftover buttermilk. Click "Read more" for the recipe.

Sundried Tomato & Oregano Bread

 

I have a bad habit of taking food pictures and forgetting about them.  I think I baked this bread when I made garlic prawns.   Sundried tomatoes in olive oil was kneaded into the dough and the dough was topped off with feta cheese and fresh oregano.  If anyone wants to try this at home,  any pizza dough recipe would work.  I used about 1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes with oil.  Kalamata olives and wild mushrooms would make great toppings on this bread as well.  I usually bake this type of bread on a baking stone at 450F.

Speaking of baking stone, I've always wondered why many baking stones or pizza stones come in rounds.  Yes, that's the most common shape for pizza, but it simply isn't long enough to bake long loaves.  It's not as practical as a rectangle stone.  If anyone is interested in getting a rectangle baking stone in the US, the one from Williams-Sonoma is reasonably priced and works great.  I bought mine from there about 5 years ago. 

Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Bread

My husband took me to a restaurant for my birthday last year where each table gets a whole head of roasted garlic to spread on bread.  I've always liked garlic, but the experience at this restaurant got me hooked on roasted garlic...now I use roasted garlic for almost everything!

When we were having our friends over for dinner, I wanted to serve bread that compliments my homemade Italian-inspired food.  One of the breads everyone in my extended family loves is rosemary bread made with fresh rosemary from my yard.  Why not combine rosemary and roasted garlic?

It was a hit and everyone at the table devoured them---I only got one piece!  The combination of fresh bread and roasted garlic dipping oil was hard to beat. 

This bread is easy to make.  First, roast a head of garlic.  Mash about half of the roasted garlic cloves and mix with 1/4 cup of your favorite olive oil.  Add chopped fresh rosemary to your favorite pizza dough or plain Italian bread recipe when you mix in flour.  After rising, place a baking stone in lower 1/3 in oven and set the temperature at 450F.  When the oven is preheated and ready to go, divide the dough in halves and flatten each dough---thick disk if you like doughy bread, thinner if you prefer crispier bread.  Stab the dough with a fork about 20 times.  Place the dough on pizza peeler.  Spread roasted garlic-olive oil to the top and sprinkle with sea salt.  Bake until the bread turns golden brown. 

 

This bread is great for sandwiches, too!  The sandwich in a picture above is a spicy hummus and sunflower sprout sandwich.  

Itty Bitty Nutty Treats

About three hours before a hobby-related meeting both my husband and I had to attend, I found out that everyone was bringing a snack to share.  My husband forwarded me all emails except the one with important details about the meeting.  It figures.  I looked in my fridge and freezer and came up with an idea: little citrus-mixed nuts tarts.  The short dough I had in the freezer and stewed grapefruit zest saved my day!

The same short dough I used for apple-cranberry tarts were used again.  What I love about this sweet short dough is that it tells when it's ready---it's done when the edge turns golden brown.  For the stewed grapefruit zest, I scraped off the zest of 5 grapefruits using a julienne peeler (not a zester) and cooked the zest with sliced flesh from one grapefruit, water, sugar and honey until the zest is softened a little.  I confess, I didn't measure any ingredients.  The only reason I made this zest stew is to save the grapefruit zest for later use when I made grapefruit sorbet.  I hate wasting anything!

I blended about 1 1/2 cups mixed nuts (mostly almonds and some brazil nuts, cashews and pecans) with 1/4 cup sugar and approximately 1/3 cup sweetened zest in food processor at fine-chopping (mincing) setting.  I tasted zest-nut paste to make sure it doesn't need more sugar or zest.  After lining a mini-muffin pan with short dough, I added one scoop of the filling in each well using a small melon ball scoop.  The tarts were baked at 350F for 25 minutes. 

These little tarts are dangerous for someone like me who loves citrus and nuts.  I had to ask my husband to take the leftovers to work.  Otherwise, we'll end up on Biggest Loser!

Baking for Thanksgiving

Each holiday reminds me how nice it is to be close to be family.  For this year's Thanksgiving dinner, I offered to bake desserts and rolls so that my brother-in-law and his wife doesn't have to prepare everything.

 I baked two kinds of rolls: sweet potato rolls (my fave for any fall occasions) and fluffy dinner rolls (pictured below). 

 For desserts, I baked apple-cranberry tartlets with filling I stored in my freezer for about two weeks.  I also wanted to please chocoholics with a rich chocolate cake to die for.  It was not easy to find the chocolate cake recipe I wanted to make, so I made up a recipe like I always do.

 To add extra moisture to the cake, the cake layers were soaked with 1/4 cup Kahlua (yum!).  There's usually some kind of alcohol in my desserts.  A rich chocolate-hazelnut filling/icing and cookies made with leftover short dough from tartlets were used to finish up the cake.

 Arizona-themed cake.  When I have to finish garnishing my cake in someone else's kitchen, I try to make it as simple (but fun) as possible.  I could have done a better job decorating the cake, but, hey, my nieces and nephews liked it.

 Scraps from the cake layers and leftover icing were upcycled into mini-cakes.  The round cookies in the picture below were filled with apple-cranberry filling cooking juice that has been cooked down to a thick paste.  Nothing gets wasted in my kitchen!

Now I can start thinking about desserts for Christmas! 

Apple-Cranberry Filling

What would be the best way to use 3 pounds of Granny Smith apples?  Many people may think of an apple pie as their first choice.  I love a slice of warm apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream---minus the crust.  The shortening-rich pie crust is not my favorite pastry dough, especially gooey bottom portion of a pie crust.

Unlike typical American-style apple pie in a large baking dish or pan, my mother used to make individual apple pie 'squares' with precooked apples.  She cooked apples in a heavy pan, but that will require occasional stirring.  I like everything simple.  Cooking unattended is definitely my style.  I decided to try baking apples in the oven.

As I have mentioned in previous postings, I don't care for excessively sweet food.  Adding cranberries to apples makes the filling sour and required a lot more sugar than I expected.  The filling was still on slightly sour side (sweet and sour) and it may not be for sugar junkies.   Since I'm not into pie dough, I wanted to use the filling in mini-tarts.  The short dough recipe was straight out of Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef (3rd edition).  Other short dough recipe would work just fine.  For garnish, I sliced apples and coated with apricot preserves and topped mini-tarts along with cinnamon sprinkle right before baking.

Apple-Cranberry Filling

Click "Read more" for the recipe.

Savory and Sweet Stuffed Rolls

Whenever my mother had to be at PTA meeting or something, she used to make a big pot of curry for us to heat up for supper later.  In Japan, unless one specifies Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese style curry, people think of 'Japanese style' curry made with curry powder or store bought curry roux.  It is an easy one pot meal and we usually have plenty of leftover.  One way to use the leftover is to make Curry Stuffed Rolls, or Karē-pan.  These rolls are popular at Japanese bakeries and are usually deep-fried.  Well, deep-frying happens to be one cooking method I do not practice at home.  When I crave something deep-fried such as Vietnamese spring rolls, I head to a restaurant.  Although I insisted on sticking to one of my many rules to cut down on fat intake, I wanted to make curry rolls.  The buns used for Chinese BBQ pork buns seemed to be the best bet. 

The recipe for buns was adopted from Baked BBQ Pork Bun recipe I found at cooking.com. I put shredded chicken breast meat and insane amount of vegetables in my curry while most Japanese cooks prefer to brown chicken/pork/beef cubes in a pot and use less vegetables.  This is a pretty good way to hide veggies---make sure to chop veggies into small pieces.  If yous are a veggie lover like me, however, eating big chunks of veggies in curry sauce is the way to go.  Japanese curry roux can be found at most Asian markets.

There was enough curry to make 12 rolls.  I had some blueberries I cooked a few days ago, and blueberry-stuffed rolls sounded great for breakfast.  I divided the remaining dough into 8 small rounds and stuffed with blueberries.

The blueberries were cooked with small amount of sugar and was sweetened further with stevia when the berries were cooled to room temperature.  The only problem with making these small rolls was that some juice leaked out of every single roll.  Silicone baking mat saved my baking sheet from a huge mess!  I enjoyed the rolls with a big cup of coffee next morning.  This bread dough recipe works for both sweet and savory stuffing equally well.

Flax Seed Pita Bread

The reason I love pita bread is its versatility.  You can hold it in half to make a sandwich, stuff with tuna inside the pocket, make a panini, or cut into wedges for dipping.  Leftover pitas make great pita chips. 

The only special tool you will need to make pitas at home is a baking stone.  There are round and rectangular baking stones.  I prefer the rectangular stone for its larger surface area.

Flax Seed Pita Bread

Click "read more" for the recipe.