When I started this blog, my goal was to post at least once a month, and I've met that goal until recently. My spouse is in the armed forces and, of late, frequently away from home for long stretches, leaving adult energy stretched thin down here South of Sunnybrook.
I've always been a big fan of family dinners. I loved them when I was a kid, and I love them now. I find it harder to have regular family meals when the other adult is gone, but the ritual of dinner, the giving of thanks and sharing with each other, this is what keeps us sane.
I think the idea of family dinner can be intimidating sometimes. But a bucket of fried chicken around the table is "family dinner." Baked potatoes and broccoli is family dinner. I prefer homemade, but it certainly doesn't have to be fancy.
"It is what it is"
And on the night I took the picture above, I'd been working for a day or two at one end of the table, with beans drying at the other end, and the kids had colored there in the afternoon. As you can see, we just scooped out spaces for our plates and lit the candles (which "makes it special" according to my kids). By the time the fish was ready, I just didn't have the energy to lead a full-on table clearing, so I let it go.
Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. On this night, we laughed, and shared, and had a great time surrounded by the detritus of our busy, bountiful lives.
And just after I posted this, a friend shared this link on Facebook. Quote: "...life on this little blue planet is too precious and fragile to be spent lamenting crusted Raisin Bran in the sink. That what really matters is grace, forgiveness, and understanding. And love. Always, unequivocally and without fail, love."
There is nothing like still-warm-from-the-oven bread on the dinner table.
I absolutely love freshly-baked breads and muffins, but have always found kneading/rising and the intricacies of yeast to be daunting. It all just seemed like a lot of work when I can pick up a really nice loaf of bread at the bakery for a special dinner. Then I started hearing/reading about "no-knead artisan bread" and was intrigued. Finally, about two years ago, I stumbled across this "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, Seriously" post and decided to give it a try.
Basically, it goes like this: dump ingredients into bowl, mix, cover loosely/let rise, put in fridge. Later, cut off dough, let sit, put in oven, eat yummy bread. Have I mentioned how my family raves about this bread? So, here it is again, with pictures. A printable recipe is here.
My ingredients: Flour (my "everyday" flour is a mix of unbleached white and King Arthur's white wheat), flaxseed meal, yeast, kosher salt, and warm water.
Put 1 1/2 Tablespoons of kosher salt and 1 1/2 Tablespoons of active dry yeast in a large bowl. If you are using the packets of yeast (this is what I bought at first), use two. Now that I make bread often, I buy yeast in bulk. I keep a jar of yeast in the fridge for regular use and store the rest in the freezer.
Add 3 cups of warm water (from the tap is fine). It should feel warm to the touch, but not hot.
Add 6 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour, using the "scoop and sweep" method to measure. This is a great place to experiment! Whole wheat, spelt flour, sprouted grains flour, etc. Here, I used 6 cups of my unbleached white/white wheat mix and 1/2 cup of flax meal. I love the subtle, nutty flavor of flax meal, it gives a beautiful color/texture to the bread, and it's also a really great thing to put into our bodies.
Mix until there are no more dry spots of flour. You can use a mixer if you have one, but I don't and I wouldn't use it for this even if I did. Here I am about halfway mixed; it's coming together, but I still have spots of dry flour.
Here, it's well-combined and ready to rise! I scrapes down the bowl sides also. I have a lid for my bowl with holes punched in the lid (more about that later), but you can just loosely cover your bowl with plastic wrap.
Bread rising: pictures from l-r at 2:30, 3:30 and 4:30, respectively. You can cut off a bit now for your first loaf or just pop it right into the fridge, which is what I did this time. I think the flavor develops better if it has some time to sit. With this amount of dough, I'll typically make three loaves over the course of 5-8 days. You can leave the dough in your fridge up to two weeks; it will develop more of a "sourdough" flavor as it sits.
You need to bake in a preheated, 450-degree oven. You can bake it in whatever you usually use in the oven: pyrex pan, pizza stone, cookie sheet, cast-iron skillet. I did try baking on a pizza stone with a little dish of water, but decided it was too fussy for me. Then I went searching for other options and loved the idea of using an enameled dutch oven as shown here at Oregon Cottage. I don't find that I need the parchment paper she uses and my dutch oven is quite large, but I use a little enameled stoneware baking with a lid. The crust comes out beautifully with this method!
Whatever you use, I recommend preheating the dish in the oven.
Here is the dough the following afternoon when I took it out of the fridge. As you can see, it lost a bit of mass as it cooled. Sprinkle some flour on the top and dust your hands. Have a sharp knife or kitchen scissors ready.
Pull and cut the amount of dough you want. Then stretch the dough to create a gluten cloak.
I did not even attempt to photograph myself shaping the loaf because this short video will be much more helpful.
Do note that your bread may look different from the bread in the video because she used 100% white flour and bread flour at that! Here is what my finished loaf looks like before I let it rest. You should really let it rest for at least 30 minutes, though 45 is better if you have the time. I have popped it in the oven after only 15-20 minutes in a pinch and it comes out fine, though it doesn't rise up quite as much in the oven.
Before baking, dust the top of your loaf with flour and then slash the top (I sometimes do an X design as well). I pop mine in the hot pan, put on the lid and cook for 15 minutes. Then I remove the lid and cook an additional 15 minutes. When it's finished, the crust should be brown and it should sound hollow when tapped. Remove to a cooling rack.
To store uneaten bread, turn the cut side down on a plate or cutting board. Sometimes I wrap it in a clean tea towel. I did try storing it in a plastic bag but the crust became soft right away and I found it was prone to mildew in the summer as we are in the humid South.
If you start making this often, as I did, you'll probably want to invest in a bowl with lid that is a good size for your fridge. I'd initially meant for this picture to show the holes drilled in the lid, but then I saw the cool reflection of my kitchen window in the lid and went that way instead. Just make sure the dough is mostly covered but has a way for any gases to escape.
I cannot believe how easy it is to make fresh bread for dinner! Basically, I make a ball, let it rest for 15 minutes, preheat the oven and my pan, pop it in when the oven beeps that it's preheated and cook for a half hour. It's simple to do while making other food -- or to have fresh bread for a leftover night. I love being able to take freshly baked bread when I visit a friend or neighbor.
Updated 4/8 to add picture of bread interior. This was the last loaf from this baking and had been in the fridge for about 6-7 days. The crumb is denser if I use a higher proportion of wheat flour, I have found. The little nooks/crannies make excellent buttered toast!
I hope you will try your own hand at making this simple and delicious bread! I encourage you to explore further, either via web search or here at the original Artisan Bread in Five web site.
Here you see the remains of our Spring Smokeout: cole slaw, pasta salad and probably 10 lbs of pulled pork and some ribs. We make a ton and share it the first night with friends, eat leftovers the second night with family, then freeze the remainder in upcycled aluminum pie pans in smaller portions. Makes a great quick weeknight meal or easy to take to someone's gathering. You can see my husband's awesome homemade BBQ sauce balanced up on top of our water pitcher.
Speaking of water, the number and type of cold beverages in the fridge seems to grow as the mercury rises. In this picture, I can see the milk and water (which we always have) along with sun tea, green/mint coldbrew tea, homemade limeade, and margarita mix.
Viva la Lifestyle Change!!
We also have lots of fruit and salad greens right now. I recently stumbled across the Super Healthy Kids blog and loved their "50% of what you eat should be fruits and vegetables" approach to filling one's plate. How Simple! How Easy!
I really don't believe in "dieting" unless I have a medical condition and it's prescribed by my doctor. This is my way of saying that (unless my doctor tells me to) I absolutely and categorically refuse to count calories, weigh food, completely eschew any food group (like no carbs, no meat,), etc. But I also want to be healthy, so I need to find easy ways to guide and form my natural inclinations and choices so that I am enthusiastic about choosing healthy food.
In the last few years, I've taken the "Eat Real Food" banner and run with it, but I have found that this 50% guideline is great way to guide how I fill my plate. I cannot expect my children to do what I do not, so I have been trying to lead by example since I first read the Healthy Kids blog in January. Besides feeling better overall, I have dropped 5 lbs since without really "doing" anything else new. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but a general guideline that is helping my whole family choose and enjoy a lot more good things!
You eat with your eyes first. But adult eyes and child eyes often see things a little differently. Who cares? Does it really make that much difference if the priority is an appealing balance of colors or enough "white space" on the plate or just making sure the food is not touching more than necessary?
Tonight's dinner: Jasmine rice with peas/carrots, free-range pork chops and a medley of roasted yellow squash, pattypan squash, garlic chunks and kohlrabi. A little freshly-baked wheat bread rounds out the meal. For some reason, many children, including mine, seem to prefer their food as segregated as possible. Should we call it "deconstructed" instead? It's not terribly hard to manage generally, so I try to honor that preference without being ruled by it, as evidenced by my rather brazen addition of peas/carrots to the rice.
The biggest differences between kid/adult plates are onions and veggie portioning. I topped my rice with sauteed onions and orange-pineapple jus from the pork pan. The kids got one piece each of yellow squash, pattypan squash and kohlrabi, while my plate is piled high with all those plus some garlic chunks. The bright green, orange and yellow of the veggies are offset brilliantly by the white rice and white plates, so this was a colorful and appealing early summer meal.
Not counting the bread, this could easily be a 40-minute dinner. The bread baking takes about an hour (counting time necessary to preheat the oven), so technically it's an hour prep. Swapping fresh bread for heat-and-serve rolls or skipping bread altogether makes pork chops one of my favorite "go to" meals after a hectic day on the go. I'll include a rundown after the break.
Dinner doesn't need to be fancy. Heck, it doesn't even need to be homemade. Really, it doesn't even have to be dinner -- it could be breakfast. It just needs to be time together to share and nourish body and soul.
For the record, the children ate rice, peas, carrots, bread/butter and pork. It was not surprising that they didn't touch the squash, but they did ask what each one was called and (amazingly) no one disparaged this vegetable that still holds a strong "yuck factor" for them both.
Everyone loves pizza, right? Well, not my kids...not until we started making it ourselves. We all look forward to our Friday Pizza and Movie night now. The kids can help as much or as little as they like, whether by kneading dough, adding toppings, or just watching during the afternoon snack. The first few times we made pizza, the children loved helping but refused to eat anything. Once they finally ate some, they were hooked and now pizza is becoming a vehicle for them to try new and exotic toppings like pepperoni or red onion.
I used to be incredibly intimidated by baking, what with all the precise measurements or even weighing (how fussy!) and odd lingo like "knead until smooth" or "punch down." I have discovered, to my delight, that I can kind of blunder my way through many breads and doughs and they turn out just fine.
If my 4-year-old can knead, so can you!
With this recipe, some kneading is required (about 5 minutes). I just stretched and turned mine...basically was experimental and had fun with it. I prefer my approach, but if you want a tutorial, here is a nice one from epicurious.com. I'm warning you though, it is a lot more meticulous than my Fun-with-Flour Method and I also don't go to the trouble of dividing the dough into two balls...this is supposed to be fun, easy dinner! Note repeated use of the word "fun" here. I use a pizza peel and pizza stone, but you could bake this on a cookie sheet if you don't have one. Just check it a little sooner and adjust the cooking time as needed.
If you don't have the inclination to make your own pizza dough, you can buy raw pizza dough from your grocery's deli, which can be frozen -- just remember to pop it in the fridge in the morning and you can use it that night. You can also get a totally premade crust in the bread aisle if that floats your boat. If you find your family loves Pizza Night, then at some point do try to make your own crust. It is easier than you think!
Doughball, ready to rise. Looks fancy, doesn't it?
I plan on about 20 minutes to make the dough, then I give it about 1-2 hours to rise. In the winter, I turn my oven on "hold warm" while I make the dough, then turn it off before putting the dough in. I have cut the dough in half before rising and frozen part of it and this works just fine, so if you only need one pizza...or wanted to make a double batch and freeze half, it will work.
Our timing: make dough, tidy up/check email/play outside (who knows where this time goes?) for 30-45 minutes, decide on movie, get everyone settled, watch half-hour or so of movie, take break to make pizzas when you realize everyone is hungry, eat pizzas while watching remainder of movie. See how demanding and precise it has to be? ha!
Tasty Pizza Dough
adapted from an unattributed recipe on foodnetwork.com
Mix well in a large bowl:
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I use a mix of half unbleached white and half white whole wheat)
1 1/2 tsp salt
After mixing, make a little well in the center and add:
1 TBSP sugar
2 1/4 tsp yeast (one packet if you use packets)
1 1/3 cups warm water
Allow this to sit for about 5 minutes or so until the water portion becomes quite foamy. This is the yeast working! My kids love to watch the "burps" made by the yeast. When it's nice and foamy, mix in 3 TBSP olive oil and then you get to knead. Use a well-floured surface! Let the kids help! I knead for about five minutes or so until it seems smooth and firm but still slightly springy. Then it goes back into the bowl we can use our hands or a brush to lightly coat the finished ball with olive oil. Let it rise until "doubled in size" or 1-2 hours, depending.
Note: I seem inclined to forget to add the olive oil until halfway through the kneading and I've worked it in late with good results. This is what I like to call error proof! Making the pizza itself takes about as much time as you want to devote to chopping things. I use a few spoonfuls of regular jarred tomato sauce, followed by cheese, then other toppings.
To cook pizza:
Preheat the oven and pizza stone to 450 degrees. Lightly flour your pizza peel, cut the dough in half and put it on the peel to stretch. The other half will fall limply back into the bowl and look funny and that's okay; just ignore it. You can add a tiny bit of flour to keep your hands from sticking, but you shouldn't need a whole lot at this point. You can toss it if you want, but you're more likely to tear it that way, so I suggest just stretching.
Once it's the size you want, add a bit of sauce and toppings as you like! May I suggest that a little fresh mozzarella goes a long way? This is also a neat place to use up leftover vegetables or bits of this or that. The chicken pizza with corn cut from a leftover cob, green pepper and red onion was pretty tasty!
Put in the pizza and cook for about 12 minutes or until the crust begins to brown and feels crisp when you tap it. We make two back to back. Scheduled for tonight: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. When the kids are older, Pizza/Movie night will probably be followed by Family Game Night but for now there is only so much Go Fish, Chutes & Ladders and Uno that we can take.
Make it fun, make it work for you, but do make some dinner and eat together as a family! Our world will thank you.
