Homemade Rye Bread

/ pumpkinhoney / 5 Comments

I received some wonderful cookbooks for Christmas, one of which is called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois. And it has amazing recipes for AWESOME bread. The first one I made was the Rye Bread. Oh hell yes. It turned out so well I was stunned. And it looks perrty tooo. I also made the European Peasant Bread and changed the flour proportions slightly and it was incredible too. Seriously. Make this bread. It’s also really fun making your own bread (and extremely inexpensive). And relatively easy.

I split the recipe in half. The original recipe is supposed to make four 1lb loaves. I made one loaf with half of the recipe so I guess it was 2lbs. It wasn’t particularly large by any means and it was completely eaten in less than 24 hours. Yeah, it was really freaking good. The caraway seeds give the bread it’s flavor so don’t even thinking about leaving them out. You can also replace the flour top for a cornstarch wash with extra caraway seeds sprinkled on top but I love the look of the floured crust. I can’t even convey how good this bread is.

Deli Style Rye

Recipe adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois.

Makes four 1lb loaves or two 2lb loaves.

  • 3 Cups Warm Water
  • 1 Tsp Sugar
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp Yeast
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp Salt
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp Caraway Seeds
  • 1 1/2 Cup Rye Flour
  • 5 Cups AP Flour (plus extra for crust)
  • Coarse Cornmeal
  • 1 Cup Hot Water

Combine warm water, sugar, yeast, salt & caraway seeds in a very large bowl. I usually let it sit to let the yeast soften but Hertzberg & Francois insist it isn’t necessary. Add all of the flour and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. All the flour should be absorbed but the dough shouldn’t be sticky or too wet. It should hold it’s shape. Cover the dough and allow to rise for approximately 2 hours or until about double in size or until the dough has a completely flat & level top. Just give it two hours in a relatively warm spot in your house and you’re good to go.

When the dough has finished rising, preheat your oven to 450F degrees. Place a pizza stone in the oven on a center rack and allow it to reach oven’s temperature. Cover a pizza peel with cornmeal. If you don’t have a pizza peel, like me, a large wooden cutting board will do the trick. Divide the dough into the desired number of loaves and shape into oval by pulling the top of the dough towards the bottom of the loaf while turning it and elongated the loaf when you’ve accomplished a smooth top. Don’t worry about the bottom not being smooth, it will cook into a nice flat, crunchy crust. Let the loaves sit on the prepared pizza peel/cutting board for about 40 minutes before baking. Cover each loaf with about 1tbsp of flour and spread with your hand. Make 5 slashes across the top with a serrated knife.

Just before baking the loaves, fill a boiler pan with 1 cup of water and add to oven. I used a baking dish because I don’t have a boiler pan and merely put it on a lower rack in the oven. The steam from the water is what gives the bread it’s crunchy crust.

Shimmy the loaf of bread (or loaves, I’ve done two at a time) onto the pizza stone, making sure they are spaced far enough apart to have plenty of room to double in size. Bake for 30 minutes until the crust is a deep amber brown then remove from oven and let cool. I don’t have that kind of patience so naturally my bread was still pretty hot when I cut into it but I recommend letting it cool because the dough will still be cooking a bit with all that trapped heat.

The bread is even better after it has had time to rest. I recommend it toasted and dunked into winter soups. SO DELICIOUS.

Almond Lemon Drops

/ pumpkinhoney / 2 Comments

So HELLO again world. Sorry I’ve been MIA. I’ve been applying to graduate school programs and enjoying the holidays. My new year’s resolution was also to eat a completely vegan diet & it’s been way easier than I thought. Okay, I lied… I have not and probably never will stop eating honey. But eggs, cheese, milk, butter… all gone. Wish me luck.

I actually wrote this post prior to Christmas and never posted it!

Lately, I’ve been searching for vegan cookie recipes for Christmas. Christmas cookies have to vary, you can’t just have peanut butter, chocolate chip, and oatmeal raisin. You have to have fudge, meringues, chocolate chip (okay, yes), black walnut cookies, chocolate/peanutbutter/butterscotch chex mix (KILLER), eggnog flavored hoopla & peppermint bark shenanigans. Basically 1/2 random shit that you don’t have all the time… and some traditional things too. So trying to make them all vegan and still delicious is a chore. I did find some amazing looking recipes where the recipes were relatively simple, not requiring “flax eggs” or “Ener-G” egg replacer (of which I’m about to buy my first batch). Just plain old vegetable shortening instead of butter. If I have to make substitutes I like to make few. I hate recipes that call for a zillion substitutes at once… fake butter, fake eggs, some seaweed powder, some protein powder. Like… what? I’m just being snotty, I bet those recipes are delicious, but frankly I don’t have all those ingredients so I’m trying to stick with simple.

ANYWHO. Say hello to Lemon Drop cookies. I found some recipes for lemon drop cookies. And I found some recipes for Mexican/Italian Wedding cookies (seriously, they’re really freaking similar – who knew Mexicans & Italians shared wedding cookie recipes). I wanted a hyprid cookie. I made a list this morning of all the dry goods I’ve purchased this year (mostly from Echo Hill). I have a TON of dry goods. I’m ready for the apocalypse. Amongst the 2 column, page long, collegiate ruled notebook paper list I made were raw blanched almonds, powdered sugar, various flours, vanilla, vanilla beans, blah, blah, blah, blah, +50things.

I was determined to put almonds in my cookies. So this is the recipe. And they are pretty damn good. Next time, I would use that extra lemon juice…

Almond Lemon Drops

  • 1/2 Cup Earth Balance (or margarine, or butter)
  • 1/2 Cup Vegetable Shortening
  • 3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
  • 1 Tsp Vanilla
  • Juice of 1 Lemon
  • Zest of 2 Lemons (you gotta figure out what do with the 2nd lemon now 🙂 you can definitely use it in the cookies, in fact they could even use it, but I’d increase the flour by a couple of tbsps)
  • 1 Cup Almond Flour (a little more than a cup of raw almonds, food processor)
  • 2 Cups AP Flour (I actually used 1 cup Whole Wheat, 1 cup AP)
  • 1 Cup Powdered Sugar

Preheat Oven to 375 F degrees.

At room temperature, beat/whisk EB & shortening together until smooth and creaaaamy. Add sugar & beat some more. Add vanilla, lemon zest & lemon juice. Beat some more. Add almond flour and stir to combine. Add flour gradually until the batter is thick enough to shape into balls in your hand. Should not be very sticky.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Form dough into tablespoon/golf ball sized balls and place on parchment paper at least 1.5 inches apart.

Bake for about 12 minutes on a center rack. Keep an eye on them. They won’t really brown on the top, but they may be get dark on the bottom.

Let cool before coating in powdered sugar. SO yummy. SO easy.

Double Chocolate Cookies

/ pumpkinhoney / Leave a comment

I wrote this post about forever ago… okay the same time that I made the Lemon Drop cookies… when was that? Just before Christmas? I never posted it because I forgot to take pictures. Well I’m posting it without the pictures! The next time I make these I will be sure to take pictures & add them to the post!

December 14, 2011 (according to my handy wordpress editing log)

What could be more different from a Lemon Drop than a super rich & chocolatey cookie? I find opposites make great pairings. I think most people feel that way? Mom wanted me to make her some cookies to take to a work meeting and I wanted to take some to Kutztown. I had already made the Lemon Drops but that was a small batch and split in half, there weren’t nearly enough to take to mom’s function. So I decided to make a Double Chocolate Cookie which is actually a triple chocolate cookie but we won’t go there.

I made a douuuuble batch of these douuuuuble chocolate cookies (aka the recipe below is for a double batch) so there would be pleeeenty to take some to Kutztown and still leave plenty for the meeting.

I also decided to scrub the oven door today. I was tired of not being able to watch my cookies bake. So I took some white vinegar & some baking powder & an old rag & some elbow grease and things got really gross. But now I can see my goddamn cookies.

Double Chocolate Cookies

  • 1 1/3 Cups Vegetable/Canola Oil
  • 1 1/3 Cups Unsweetened Applesauce (which btw I don’t get, why would you need to sweeten applesauce… apples are already sweet)
  • 1 Cup Brown Sugar
  • 1 Cup Granulated Sugar
  • 1 Cup Cocoa Powder (or 1/2 Cups each, dark & dutch)
  • 2 Tsp Vanilla
  • 2 Tsp Salt
  • 2 Cups AP Flour
  • 1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
  • 2 Tsp Baking Soda
  • 1 Cup Dark Chocolate Chips
  • 1 Cup Ghirardelli Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips (oh dear lord, ecstasy) (also, did anyone else realize there’s a second “r” in GhiraRdelli? The more I look at it, the weirder it becomes.)

These cookies are simple. Like most cookies. Except french macarons. Which really aren’t that bad either.

Preheat oven to 325 Degrees Fahrenheit.

Combine oil, applesauce, sugar & vanilla. Add the rest of your ingredients and stir until combined. VOILÀ! Now chill the batter until it’s workable. Create balls, whatever size you like 😉 The cookies will spread so obviously don’t put them too close together. I know you’ve made cookies before, you know the drill. I DO recommend using parchment paper.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes. Definitely let cool a bit. They’re pretty soft.

Stephen loved these cookies, which probably isn’t saying much, since he eats most anything. But the ktown boys ate them up when we went camping so I took that as a good sign.