Rosemary Focaccia after a hectic week!!!!

The past few weeks have been busy as sin at work!!! I know it's officially peak travel season which for us means more complaints, but good lord, I swear these days never end sometimes. Have I mentioned that I work in the complaints department for an airline? Oh yes... This is why the kitchen is my solace! On top of work itself being crazy, we've been super busy the last few weekends so weekends just haven't been weekends. Thankfully, I'm finally on vacation and am working on getting rid of my cold and resting up a bit. I've managed to make it up to my grandparents cottage and hope that a little bit of r & r will be just what the doctor ordered. In celebration of the long weekend that just passed (Happy Canada Day & Happy 4th of July to our neighbours down south) and all the fun that accompanied it, I thought I would share with you one of my latest joys!!

A few weeks back, after work on a Friday night, I booted it out of the office and rushed home to the kitchen. This is typical Friday night after work activity because truly it's my stress relieving place... my happy place... and the place where I'm in my own bubble and don't have to answer to anyone else. This week in particular rosemary focaccia was the only thing on my mind.

I had just started reading 'The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove' by Cathy Erway and was enjoying it!

Photo Credit: http://theartofeatingin.com/

Pretty much, the background info on this book is that Cathy decided to stop eating out in restaurants for 2 years (with a few exceptions) and this book documents her return to the kitchen and  making her own food. I don't think I've officially mentioned it here yet but I'm looking to move into my own place this coming December and as such will need to cut back on my dinners out and truly get back into the groove of cooking more!! While I got a little sidetracked with the book, the principles are so very important to me. I know that it is lovely to head out and not have to cook or clean up, but there is something so fantastic about knowing every little thing (including your effort) that went into your meal. Cathy went a little farther into foraging in Central Park than I would probably ever venture, the message is clear regardless. I've taken from this book my love of farmer's markets and visiting farms (I do believe that's as close to foraging as this city gal will make it). 

Back to my culinary adventure! I've made rosemary foccacia before and I love it! As corny as it is to say, there is NOTHING better than fresh bread. Nothing! Not chocolate, not shopping, nothing! Now why I endeavoured to start this mission at 7pm on a Friday night may be beyond you but it truly was worth staying up late for. I found the recipe on the Pastry Affair, which is one of my favourite blogs to read. Her pictures are GORGEOUS and her recipes delicious!  This recipe is interesting because you start off without adding the herbs so the dough has a bit of rising time first before it gets deflated and herb-ified (yup, that's a word)!

It starts to grow...

Then it grows some more...

 Delicious dimply thigh resembling dough meet herbs. Herbs meet dimply thigh resembling dough.

The joy of focaccia is that it is airy and is full of air pockets which makes it that much more delicious and soft. Once I started mixing the herbs in, you can see how stringy and full of air the dough really is! This is what excites me in my day to day life - airy dough pockets!

 This bread is worth all of the resting and the time it takes to make it - Even if you are awake until midnight waiting for the bread to come out of the oven so you can try a piece! 

Sprinkled with black pepper, salt and olive oil before baking!

Hello! I'm gorgeous!!!! Just take a little bit. I know you wanna...

Here's the recipe:

Rosemary Focaccia

adapted from the Pastry Affair

Ingredients:

4 1/2 to 5 cups all purpose flour
2 3/4 cups warm water

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling (I used pink Himalayan sea salt)
3 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary

1/3 cup and 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil  

1 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together bread flour, water, and active dry yeast. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm, dry place for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until dough has tripled in volume and is bubbly.
2. If using a stand mixer, attach dough hook and mix in salt and rosemary. Knead dough for an additional 5-7 minutes. Dough will be loose and sticky.
3. If you do not have a stand mixer, turn dough out on a heavily floured surface and, using your hands or even a wooden spoon, attempt to knead the dough. Mix in salt and rosemary at this time. Add flour as needed and fold dough in half in all directions if it will not cooperate enough to knead. Dough will be very difficult to handle, but try to incorporate as little flour as possible (it results in a softer bread).
4. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for another hour, or until doubled in volume.
5. In a 13 by 17-inch rimmed baking pan, evenly distribute 2 tablespoons of olive oil to coat pan. Turn out down onto pan and, with oiled hands, pull dough to the edges of the pan. The dough may resist at first, but with a little patience it will stay put. Cover dough with a clean dish towel and allow to rise for an additional 15-20 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C).
7. Using your fingertips, poke a couple dozen holes into the top of the bread. Pour remaining olive oil evenly over bread and sprinkle with a light dusting of coarse sea salt, rosemary, and freshly cracked pepper. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool slightly in pan before serving warm or at room temperature.

I hope you all have the chance to make this recipe!!!!! 

Happy Baking!

t

Worth every second!

Homemade Pretzel Bites

It was in fact a happy Saturday to meeeeee this past weekend! My darling Jen stayed over on Friday night and on Saturday morning I woke up and wanted nothing more than to make some homemade pretzel bites. Who knows why I get these strange cravings but once they hit, they don't disappear!

So I took a little browse through my bookmarked recipes (my goodness, there are A LOT of recipes. It may be time to start printing them off!) and I managed to find a few recipes. Originally, I was going to use one that looked good but it required the pretzel bites to be both boiled and then baked. Frankly, it seemed a little complicated for bites of pretzel dough. Then I came across a second recipe that I'd bookmarked and I knew I'd found the right one.

This recipe was from Mel's Kitchen Cafe and the recipe was so straightforward and easy that you can't help but want to make these delicious bites of the Gods on a daily basis! The pretzels come out with a crisp crust but are so supple in the middle that  you can't help but feel that you've died and gone to pretzel heaven.

The process is quite simple:

Toss all ingredients in the bowl of your mixer fitted with the dough hook. After about 5 minutes of mixing you will have a lovely smooth dough that needs to do a bit of relaxing. I put mine in a bowl greased with olive oil and let it rest for an hour. It rose quite a bit when the hour was up and I proceeded to turn the dough out on to my trusty granite slab that I greased slightly. 

I LOVE DOUGH!

The dough is then divided into 4 pieces and rolled into logs (I love my new dough cutter)

Each log is then cut into 6-8 pieces. Next time I make this, I will make each log cut 12-14 pieces because these were HUGE!

Little bites resting before going in the oven. They have been dipped in a water/baking soda mix & then sprinkled with salt

Lovely pink Himalayan sea salt. Do not be afraid of the 500F temperature that you'll have to set your oven to.

Look at what popped out of the oven!

A close-up!

I served them with a spicy tomato sauce! Look at all of the layers inside the dough!

All in all, I will be making these again and soon at that! I'm thinking they will be making an appearance at our family's Christmas party in a month's time. Like I said, I will probably make them smaller because they do grow even more when they're resting prior to baking.

I hope you all are having a great week thus far!

Keep smiling and happy baking!

Tamara

Easter Baking... a few weeks late

I swear these last few weeks have FLOWN by in a blur of work and work and a bit more work and family gatherings and a tiny bit of sleep in there as well. Plus, this coming week, I'm helping out with the musical at the school my Mum teaches at, so needless to say things have been busy! Thankfully, despite it all, I may have managed to pull off a bit of time to get some cooking done too!

I have been wanting to share these things with you for ages now and am only now getting around to them. For Easter, I had decided to finally make some challah bread. I've been wanting to do it for years especially since it is very similar to my Baba's Ukrainian Bapka (a sweet yeast bread, similar to panettone). I have actually gone through the process of making Baba's bapka with her before but I find that lately I've been trying to find similar alternatives that don't quite have the gaps that Baba's recipes do... For example, when I asked how much flour goes into her bread, she told me "it's about 6 to 10 cups of flour". Gotta love a good 4 cup variance! This recipe is truly delicious and I strongly suggest that everyone try it. 

I originally found the recipe on a Radishes and Rhubarb, a blog by one of my babysitting Moms, Allison (see Allison's post about Challah here). When I first decided to try the recipe last year, I ended up forgetting the eggs (one of the most important parts of a challah) but somehow the bread still turned out amazingly. Regardless, this time, I actually remembered the eggs and ended up making a very delicious batch of bread. So delicious that I feel it has rivaled Baba's bread! Not to mention, it's braided!!!! Come ON! How can you not love a good braided bread?!?!? 

In terms of the process, it is the simplest thing ever!!!  Simply toss all of your ingredients into the bowl of your stand mixer, mix for a few minutes and let it rise. Once risen, shape and let it rise again and then bake.  

 

 

 

 On top of having made this delightful bread, and as a little treat to give to my cousins and family on Easter. I made these little cupcakes with some piping, some shredded wheat and melted chocolate and of course, mini eggs!!!!!! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and that the Easter bunny remembered where you lived :) 

Happy Saturday!!!!

Tamara