Over the last weekend my boyfriend was out of town, so I decided to experiment with light meals that might not be enough for him to eat for dinner, but would be fine for me. Namely, I had saved a few recipes of grain-based “salads” that would be quick, cheap and at least moderately healthy. One of them was a couscous recipe from Serious Eats (from their “Healthy & Delicious” series, natch). I substituted a lot of different things in this recipe, but the backbone is still there; in fact, you could argue that the recipe itself is like a template that can easily be adapted for various ingredients. To call this a salad is really kind of a misnomer; it’s a salad in the same way that any mix of vegetables and grains can be considered a salad. This dish can be served hot or cold, as a main course or a side, and it’s dead simple, with few, low cost ingredients.

First, sauté some garlic in oil until it is browned. This recipe doesn’t actually have any onion in it, which is surprising for me because I don’t know when the last time was that I made a stew-type recipe without onions. But it’s just garlic here!

In goes the diced tomatoes, chickpeas, basil (mine was fresh purple basil from my garden) and some paprika. For whatever reason I don’t have crushed red pepper in my spice cabinet, and in hindsight I should have probably added more paprika, or some cayenne too, if I wanted any kick from this. But it was tasty and full flavored without the spice anyway.

The original calls for couscous; I went with the harvest grains blend from Trader Joe’s, which includes Israeli couscous, red and green orzo, split dried garbanzo beans, and red quinoa. It’s a great blend, and it worked spectacularly in this dish. However, wanted to make sure it cooked through, so instead of taking the pan of the stove and letting the couscous cook from just the residual heat and moisture, I cooked this for the time listed on the bag (10 minutes) and then took it off the stove.

Once everything is cooked, chopped scallions and some crumbled feta or goat cheese get stirred in. The presentation looks pretty good here, and you could probably serve it just like this without mixing everything in (or maybe mix in the scallions but leave the goat cheese on top). Served like this, you would likely have larger hunks of goat cheese populating the dish, unless you stirred it up really well.

As it was, I stirred everything in at once. The goat cheese quickly melted and left me with a cheesy, creamy sauce. It was really two different dishes; with the goat cheese on the top, the flavors are all more separate, and you get the thinner tomato-y sauce covering the grains with larger, stronger chunks of goat cheese. With the goat cheese mixed in, the flavors mellow out more and everything melds together (in a good way). The goat cheese flavor is still present, but not concentrated and it mingles well with the tomatoes. As I said before, this dish is tasty and filling as a main course, but it also works well as a side; when my boyfriend got home, we used it as a side to a grilled steak along with some fresh sliced jicama in lime juice. The recipe makes a fairly large batch, so it will keep you going for a while.

Harvest Grains Salad (adapted from Serious Eats)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 1/4 cups water, divided
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 (16-ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup uncooked Harvest Grains blend
• 1 cup coarsely chopped green onions (about a bunch)
• 1 cup crumbled feta or goat cheese

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently until browned.
2. Stir in 1/2 cup water, basil, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Simmer over medium-low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Add 1 3/4 cups water and salt and bring to a boil. Stir in Harvest Grains blend and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until grains are cooked.
4. Stir in onions and cheese. Serve hot or cool.

Another week, another sandwich bread. This one, once again from King Arthur Flour, comes on a suggestion from my mother, who said this was a good loaf to try. I ended up having to substitute or leave out various things, due mostly to the fact that I was nearly out of all-purpose flour, and I didn’t have any grain mix or cereal to add. The loaf came out well anyway, and while the shape was not perfect for sandwiches, it worked well enough.

It starts with a starter, unsurprisingly. The starter called for mostly all-purpose flour with a bit of pumpernickel. I possessed neither, so I just used all 12-grain flour (which I am getting low on as well), figuring that yeast love an organic flour for the starter so they would do fine.

Into the bowl goes the rest of the ingredients. The starter was probably the wateriest starter I’ve ever made (it in fact included all the flour in the recipe), and all that had to go in later was the flour and salt. If I had thought ahead I would have substituted some of the water for a little oil, which helps keep the bread fresher longer, but I did not. Fortunately, it stayed good enough for sandwiches for the week, though the edges were getting a little stale toward the end.

It mixed up well with the dough whisk, and was neither too slack nor too dry.

After a good kneading, the dough is smooth (well, as smooth as whole-grain bread gets), and stickier, but not ridiculously sticky.

Probably the best shaping job I’ve ever done. I tucked all the ends in and had a nice smooth surface ready across the top. I probably should have slashed the top with a knife before I put it in, but to be honest I’m still a little skittish about doing that because I always fear my bread will deflate.

My bread came out with kind of a bizarre shape. I think it rose a little too much on the second rise, and it probably settled down after I pulled the plastic wrap off the top. How it cooked in the oven to form a perfectly sharp edge midway down, like the lip of a flying saucer, I do not know. A lot of times if you let a bread over rise you get huge holes in the crumb, but I didn’t have any of that happen. And honestly I’d rather have this happen than the holes, because sandwiches are easier to keep together when your bread isn’t very holey.

A Simple, Rustic Loaf (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

Starter

• 1 1/2 cups cool water
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 2 cups organic 12-grain flour blend

Dough

• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached All-Purpose flour
• 1/2 cup mixed grains and seeds of your choice (optional)

Directions

1. Mix the sponge ingredients together, and let rest at room temperature, covered, for 3 to 4 hours, or overnight.
2. Stir down the sponge, and add the salt and flour. Mix and knead the dough until it’s smooth and elastic. Knead in the grains, if using.
3. Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning to coat its surface with oil. Cover and let rise in a warm spot for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until doubled in size.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased surface, and form it into a ball or a loaf. Place on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, or into an ovenproof crock. Cover and let rise for about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 450°F.
5. Gently but firmly slash the dough across the top, then spritz it with water. Bake the bread for 30 to 35 minutes, until it’s deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven and place it on a rack to cool. Cool completely before slicing.

So rarely with my bread baking do I think far enough ahead of time to make a starter Saturday night, which is of course the night before bread baking day. But often I want to try out some of the more rustic or european bread recipes, which almost exclusively call for a starter. Last week I found one, however, that only had a starter that only needed to sit for a couple of minutes, not overnight. It was King Arthur’s Country Loaf, and while it doesn’t quite make up for the taste of a real starter, it definitely made a tasty bread.

The “starter” consists of water, yeast and a whole grain flour, mixed together and allowed to sit until bubbly. There is no fat in the original recipe, though King Arthur recommends substituting some of the water for oil if you would like the bread to stay fresher longer, which I always do. There wasn’t any instruction on when exactly to add the oil, so I included it in my starter.

I waited probably a half an hour for some change to occur, but my starter never got bubbly. I don’t know if it was the oil or what, but I gave up and went on with the recipe.

The majority of the flour is added slowly to incorporate it into the dough. It was pretty sticky at this point, and I switched to my dough hooks for kneading.

After about eight minutes of kneading with a short break in the middle, the dough was smooth, tacky but not super sticky, and was pulling away from the bowl on its own.

I let the first rise go pretty long, partly because I was eating dinner at the time. When I took it out of the bucket it welded itself to my hand, and I had a time getting it off in any kind of loaf shape, but I eventually succeeded. To say it was sticky would have been and understatement.

I let the second rise go a little long too, but luckily the loaf didn’t fall or develop any crazy big holes.

I didn’t really pay attention to the end of the recipe because once a recipe says “put in the oven…” I usually go on autopilot. So I didn’t see the note about hard vs. soft crusts, but when I read it later it made sense. When the loaf had baked its requisite time I tapped on it while still in the oven and heard a satisfying, hard crusted “knock”. Then I took it out of the oven, placed it on a cooling rack, and a couple hours later went to check on it, only to find my hard crust had become very soft. Apparently this has to do with the moisture escaping slowly through the crust while cooling, which happens when cooling at room temperature but not in a turned-off but warm oven. In the end it was fine, though, because this bread was for sandwiches, and sandwiches are always a little easier to eat with softer crusts. The bread itself has a good flavor, though not like a bread with a true starter, and a good tight crumb which makes it very easy to slice and helps it hold up great on sandwiches.

Country Loaf (adapted from King Arthur’s Country Loaf)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water, minus 2 tablespoons
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/2 cup Organic 12-grain Flour Blend, or whole wheat flour
• 2 1/2 cups European Style Artisan Bread Flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Pour the water into a mixing bowl. Add the yeast and 12 grain or whole wheat flour, and let sit for several minutes until the mixture begins to bubble.
2. Stir in 1 cup of bread flour and the salt and mix well. Gradually add the remaining cup and a half of flour until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
3. Knead – by hand, mixer or bread machine – for 4 to 5 minutes. Let the dough rest while you clean out and grease your bowl; then knead the dough a few more minutes. The dough should be on the slack side and a little tacky, but should not be sticky.
4. When the dough is well-kneaded, place it into the prepared bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
5. Shape the dough into a round ball and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise a second time for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Toward the end of the rising time preheat the oven to 425ºF.
6. Bake the bread for 20 to 25 minutes. For a crisper crust let the bread cool inside the turned off oven with the door cracked; for a soft crust remove from the oven and cool completely on a rack.

This is another iteration of my 12-grain bread for sandwiches. This week, I adapted King Arthur’s Rustic Olive Roll recipe, omitting the olives and substituting a cup of 12-grain flour for bread flour in the starter. This is the first recipe I’ve made with a more unusual rising method, namely rising in a floured towel. I’ve always been wary of doing this because I would fear that the dough would stick to the towel and make a mess, but this worked without a hitch.

The recipe begins with an overnight starter, which as you can see here has expanded and is nicely bubbly.

The starter goes in with the rest of the ingredients, and it’s all mixed together.

Last time my dough was really heavy; this week it was just really, really dry. I thought I might have to add more liquids, but before making the final judgment I thought I would knead it a bit to see if I could get it to come together.

And come together it did, though this dough was really thick. My poor hand mixer was straining trying to knead it. But it survived and the dough turned into a smooth, slightly tacky ball.

The dough is stretched into a roughly 9×8″ rectangle. The recipe calls for cutting it into six even pieces, but I wanted to get more sandwiches out of it, so I cut it into 9 rectangles.

The rolls do their second rise on a floured (cotton, not terry cloth) towel that has been folded such that their sides get floured as well. After the second rise the rolls get flipped over onto a parchment covered baking sheet, flour side up, and baked.

The top of the rolls comes out all floury and it contributes to a chewier, slightly more substantial crust.

My crust wasn’t very thick, but as I mentioned before it had a good chewiness to it, and it worked well with the sandwiches. The bread had a good flavor, similar to a ciabatta, but the interior wasn’t as chewy.

Rustic Sandwich Rolls (adapted from King Arthur’s Rustic Olive Rolls)

Ingredients

Starter

• 1/2 cup cool water
• 1/16 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 cup 12-grain flour blend

Dough

• All of the starter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ½ cup lukewarm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups unbleached bread flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast

Directions

1. Mix the water, yeast, and flour, stirring till the flour is incorporated. Cover and let rest at room temperature for about 14 hours or overnight. Tthe starter will be bubbly
2. Combine the starter with the remaining dough ingredients, and mix and knead—by hand, mixer, or bread machine set on the dough cycle—to make a soft, smooth dough.
3. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let it rise for 1 hour; it should have become puffy. Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface.
4. Pat the dough into a 9×8″ rectangle. The more careful you are to make the corners of the rectangle square, the nicer your rolls will look (my corner pieces were pretty triangular). Cut the dough into six or nine rectangles.
5. Take a cotton dish towel (not terry cloth), and sprinkle it heavily with flour, rubbing the flour into the cloth. Set the cloth on a baking sheet.
6. Space three pieces of dough onto the floured cloth, placing them tight against one long edge of the baking sheet. Push the cloth gently against their exposed edges, then space the remaining three pieces of dough in the same manner, again pushing the cloth against their edges.
7. Cover the rolls with lightly greased plastic wrap or a free-standing cover, and allow them to rise for 60 to 90 minutes until they’re very puffy. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F.
8. Very gently lift the rolls off the cloth, and place them, floured side up, on a parchment-lined or lightly greased baking sheet. Bake them for 20 to 25 minutes, until they’re golden brown. Remove them from the oven, and cool.

Hey everyone, I’m back, and I have a ton of posts to write up. First, the weekly bread! I try to mix it up when I’m making sandwich bread for the week, and last week I decided to go for a straight up classic sandwich loaf bread. I am constantly on the crusade for the perfect sandwich loaf, and one of the stipulations is that I be able to slice it fairly thinly without it falling apart. This usually requires a good tight crumb, so whole wheat breads actually help in this respect. I’ve made King Arthur’s Oatmeal Toasting and Sandwich Bread (which happens to be the recipe on the back of the bread flour bag) before, and it was definitely tasty. I thought I had made it with a substitution of whole wheat flour for part of the recipe, but while I was making it this time I decided that I had not. I was a little concerned about the heaviness of the dough, but it turned out great.

First, all the dry goods get mixed together. I substituted one cup of the bread flour for 100% whole wheat flour. Some oatmeal bread recipes have you give the oats a whirl in a food processor to break them up into smaller pieces, but this one doesn’t and they’ve never stuck out in the finished bread.

This dough was so heavy. Seriously, it weighed a ton, and my dough hooks wanted to slice right through it, it was so dense. I was so afraid this bread would be a brick. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The kneaded dough wasn’t super smooth, but it wasn’t that sticky either.

The yeast produced a lot of air, and it was considerably less dense after the first rise.

The dough is formed into a loaf and placed into a greased loaf pan for the second rise. I think in the past I’ve just dumped it into the pan without shaping and it came out fine, but shaping it probably results in a more even top.

It didn’t take too long for the loaf to crown the pan… I let it go a bit longer than an inch above the rim, as you see, but that worked out for the best because the bread settled a bit upon baking and it turned out to be a good sized loaf.

Perfect. It wasn’t that heavy at all in the end, and it made good sandwiches. I think the crumb was tighter than when I made it previously using all bread flour, which worked in its favor for slicing. Even when I got a little thin with my slices, the bread didn’t break apart completely apart, though I definitely was better off with thicker slices. Not perfect, but pretty good!

Oatmeal Wheat Sandwich Bread (adapted from King Arthur’s Oatmeal Toasting and Sandwich Bread)

Ingredients

• 2 cups unbleached bread flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon whole-grain bread improver
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 1/4 cups lukewarm milk

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl combine all of the dry ingredients ingredients.
2. Whisk together the wet ingredients in another bowl until they are combined. Add to dry ingredients and mix to form a shaggy dough.
3. Knead dough, by hand (10 minutes) or by machine (5 minutes) until it comes together and is fairly smooth.
4. Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover and allow it to rise for 1 hour.
5. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled surface, and shape it into a log.
6. Place the log in a lightly greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, cover the pan and allow the dough to rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour, till it’s crested at least 2 inches over the rim of the pan.
7. Toward the end of this rise preheat the oven to 350ºF.
8. Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers 190°F.

I’ve been meaning to make a ciabatta for a while now, but I never think about it early enough to make the starter that is required of it. This weekend I finally did think of it, so I was able to try out King Arthur’s whole grain ciabatta recipe, with some modifications of course.

The starter is made the night before of flour, water and a pinch of yeast. In this case I substituted my Organic 12-Grain Flour Blend for the wheat flour in the recipe.

After probably 12 hours the starter had puffed up and was kind of bubbly. It was ready for adding to the rest of the dough.

Mixing the dry ingredients, the wet ingredients and the starter formed a very wet, shaggy dough. Though in the original recipe the balance of the flour is made up of all-purpose, I substituted King Arthur’s European Style Artisan Bread Flour, since I thought it would be a good compliment to the ciabatta.

After kneading (which must be done with a mixer or a bread machine for this recipe), the dough had smoothed out but was still incredibly sticky.

Scraped into the greased rising bucket with my handy dough scraper. I don’t know what I would do without that thing. The dough took about 90 minutes to double even in my warm kitchen.

Doughs like this make me wish I had a silpat. This dough did not want to let go of anything, and I’m glad I decided to work with it directly on the parchment paper on which it would be baked, because I didn’t have to move it later.

I divided it I as best I could, and roughly formed it into two loaves, which meant heaping and pushing the dough until it was generally log shaped. The second rise wasn’t particularly vigorous; I got concerned about the plastic wrap which seemed to almost be holding the bread down and keeping it from rising, so I took it off for the last 30 minutes. I don’t think it made much of a difference.

I had thought that this recipe would yield loaves I could slice vertically to make slices of bread for sandwiches, but the low, flat rise it achieved was not going to let that happen. Sliced horizontally, however, it provided two halves that were the perfect thickness for sandwiches. It wasn’t particularly crusty, though that may be more a fault of the fact that I don’t throw any water/ice cubes in my oven during the baking. It was nice and holey like a good ciabatta, and it was chewy and had a great flavor. Definitely a winner, though I might throw in some whole-grain bread improver next time and see if that helps the rise.

12-Grain Ciabatta (adapted from King Arthur’s Harvest Grains Ciabatta)

Ingredients

Overnight starter

• 1 cup whole wheat or whole grain flour, organic preferred
• ½ cup cool water
• pinch of instant yeast

Dough

• all of the starter (above)
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 ¼ teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon nonfat dry milk
• 3/4 cup lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

1. Combine the starter ingredients and stir till cohesive. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight, or for up to about 15 hours. The mixture will be bubbly.
2. Combine the starter with all of the dough ingredients and mix and knead to make a very smooth, soft, very sticky dough. Using a stand mixer equipped with the flat beater paddle, knead for 7 minutes; the dough may or may not clear the sides of the bowl.
3. Place the dough in a lightly greased rising container and allow it to rise for 90 minutes or until it’s doubled in size.
4. Gently deflate the dough, and divide it in half. Shape each half into a 10″ log. Place the logs on a large, lightly greased (or parchment-lined) baking sheet, leaving about 5″ between them.
5. Cover and let rise for 60 to 90 minutes, till very puffy. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F.
6. Spray the loaves with lukewarm water, and place them in the oven. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until they’re golden brown.

This is the second iteration of this bread, made for our lunch sandwiches for the week. I’ve adapted it from King Arthur’s Pan Cubano recipe, multiplying the recipe by 1.5 and converting it to a whole grain bread.

Instead of All-Purpose Flour, I have substituted half Bread Flour and half King Arthur’s special 12-Grain Flour. Along with these, I added an extra quarter cup of water (for the Bread Flour) and King Arthur’s Whole Grain Bread Improver, which I find makes things rise well and prevents excessive density.

First all the dry ingredients get mixed together. King Arthur recommends adding the bread improver by putting a teaspoon in the bottom of each cup of whole wheat flour, then filling the cup the rest of the way up with flour.

I used my King Arthur dough whisk (I swear I’m not getting paid for product placement, I just really like their stuff) to mix everything together without the dough getting stuck in a normal whisk or on a wooden spoon. At this point the dough was really shaggy. At this point I let it sit for about 20 minutes, as per the tip on the back of the Whole Grain Bread Improver bag.

After kneading, it comes together to form a fairly smooth, slightly sticky dough. Confession: I don’t really like kneading bread by hand. Actually, I don’t mind the process of kneading itself, but the stickiness of most doughs before they get kneaded, plus the amount of extraneous flour that usually ends up getting incorporated (bad for the bread) makes me more inclined to go mechanical. Since I don’t have a stand mixer (or a bread machine), I use my hand mixer with the dough hook attachments. Works great.

Into my lightly greased, handy 6L dough rising bucket it goes. Should have taken a picture of it at the end of the rise, but believe me when I say it was vigorous.

I ended up cutting it into 11 pieces, which really means that I cut it into 8 pieces and then cut small pieces off and joined them together until I had the size buns that I wanted.

I loosely shaped them into buns and let them sit for a bit to let the gluten relax.

I shaped them for real, kinda (I really suck at shaping), and let them do their final rise under some plastic wrap.

They came out nicely golden brown, and I think a good size for sandwiches. They have a really good flavor as well, which I think is imparted mostly by the 12-grain flour. They’re not crusty (the crust is thin and quite soft, actually), but they make for a good sandwich that is easy to eat and tasty.

12-Grain Pan Cubano Sandwich Bread (adapted from King Arthur’s Pan Cubano)

Ingredients

• 3 cups Unbleached Bread Flour
• 3 cups King Arthur Organic 12-Grain Flour Blend
• 3 teaspoons King Arthur Whole Grain Bread Improver
• 6 teaspoons sugar
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 3 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast (SAF Red recommended)
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 1/2 cups water, lukewarm

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk together to combine.
2. Mix together the butter and water, and pour into the dry ingredients. Stir to combine.
3. Let sit 20–30 minutes to allow whole grain flour to absorb the liquids.
4. Knead by hand 10 minutes or with a mixer for 5–8 minutes until dough is smooth and supple
5. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise till puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 hour
6. Gently fold the dough in upon itself and turn it upside-down after 30 minutes
7. Divide the dough into 11 pieces, and shape each piece into a rough bun.
8. Let the buns rest for 15 minutes, covered, then shape each piece into a smooth, small loaf. Place the buns on a parchment-lined or lightly greased baking sheet.
9. Let the loaves rise, covered, for 1 hour. Right before putting in the oven, lightly brush or spray them with water.
10. Preheat the oven to 375ºF while the loaves are rising. Bake the bread for about 30 minutes, or until it’s golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool it on a rack.