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Made with Music and Lurve
Wheat Tortillas! – Getting a nice circle is an art I haven’t quite mastered.
So we went to Pittsburg back in June, and still haven’t properly thanked Lori and Mary for having us. When we went up I took them some flour tortillas. Since they liked the flour tortillas, I figured I’d make some wheat tortillas to send to them with a thank you note.
I’ve done these before with 100% wheat flour and they were good, but a little too. . .much for my liking. So this time, I used 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 all purpose unbleached flour (2 cups each). Then 2 tsp of salt, 2 tsp baking soda, 2 tbsp shortening, 3 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, and enough warm water to make a good dough. I think it was somewhere around a cup and half. I generally use manteca in place of the shortening but Lori and Mary are vegetarians, so Crisco. . .
And I gotta say, my double comal fucking rocks. (I got that while we were in Pittsburgh at a Mexican market on the Strip.) Gets them done in 1/2 the time it usually takes me with the single comal. I reckon that goes without saying, but its waay past my bedtime.
I had an awesome time making them thanks to DJ Serena who was spinning that old school hip hop that I love on Juiced Radio, along with some hilarious raunchy stuff. The time went by quickly as I made the tortillas and danced/sang my way around the kitchen. Thems gonna be yummy tortillas indeed. Nothing like mixing in a little booty shaking. o/~ butterfly, uh oh, that’s old! let me see ya tootsie roll! o/~
Time for Scaling!
There are a few more pics to this adventure on my Flickr page.
My First Sourdough
My starter is descended from three historic starters: one that crossed the American prairies in a covered wagon during the last century, one from Alaska, and one that originated in New England 250 years ago. I hope I can keep this one going for years to come.
Steam was still coming out of that puppy. We can never wait for things to cool completely before trying them out. That’s one of the joys of homemade bread.
Recipe:
1 cup (9 oz.) fed sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon active dry yeast or 2 tsp instant yeast
5 1/2 to 6 1/2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable (optional, for a texture more like sandwich bread) – I didn’t put this in.
cornmeal to sprinkle on baking pan
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients, using only 5 cups of the flour. Knead to form a smooth, soft dough, adding the additional flour as needed.
Place dough in greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Divide dough in half and shape into two loaves. Place on a light greased cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet. Cover, and let rise for an hour, until doubled. Slash the tops, and bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.
For extra flavor, make a sponge as follows: Combine the starter, the water, and 3 cups of the flour. Cover and let sit for 2 to 4 hours, until bubbly. Add the remaining ingredients, using only 1 tsp of yeast, and proceed with the recipe.
Was easier than I though it would be. . .
easy to make zucchini (or patty pan squash) bread
after having had a garden this past summer, i had to look up recipes to help me use up some of the produce that just kept on growing. that’s where i found this easy recipe.
now, when i was growing up i was never one for zucchini in any form other than covered in batter and deep fried. i just had to give this one a shot, and sure enough, it was so easy and delicious, too! i have used zucchini, just as the recipe calls, as well as patty pan squash, which is a soft-skinned summer squash. they’re pretty interchangeable; the patty pans i used were yellow, so there were bits of yellow in the bread when i used it.
The recipe reads:
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.
as with other recipes i’ve posted, i would love to hear what others think of it, and if any have tried to make it. trust me, you won’t regret it.
The Great Tortilla Experiment: Part 1.1
Because this would be an experiment with a recipe off the top of my head, I started small. Only one cup of flour. I wanted something a little more buttery, so instead of vegetable oil for the fat, I used. . .butter.
At one point during the process it occurred to me that maybe I should have started with half butter and half shortening or something to that effect, but it was too late. I was already making a crumbly mixture with the flour and butter – a two-to-one ratio, I might add. Oh! I also shook a little salt into the flour. I’ve seen some recipes call for baking powder, but decided to see what would happen when I left it out.
After the flour & butter mixture was good and crumb-like, I added in enough water to make a soft dough. Because I wasn’t sure exactly how much water it would require, I didn’t knead it too much at the end because it had already been pretty manipulated trying to get the water content right.
In the end, the product was definitely closer in flavor to what I was looking for, but the texture was a little too flaky. As MJ rightly pointed out, my flour to fat ratio was too high. The missing baking powder also factored in here somewhere. . .
That being said, they didn’t last long. I had two, MJ ate the rest.
Challah Back!
I’ve never made challah before, but I don’t usually have a lot of problems with bread.
I got this recipe from allrecipes.com. It appealed to me because it asked for 1/2 cup of honey, and I wanted it to have a hint of sweetness. But it did seem like such a shame to cover the soon to be deep brown crust with poppy seeds, so I left them off.
I have problems sometimes knowing exactly when to stop kneading, so I followed the advice of my baking instructor from school and did it in the mixer and only mixed until the dough started to climb the dough hook. I cooked it until it reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees and voila!
I’m pretty pleased with myself. It will be made again, and next time – more complex braids!
The Great Tortilla Experiment: Part I
Flour Tortillas
If you don’t already know, MJ & I recently moved from San Antonio, TX to Baltimore, MD. Store bought tortillas here are sub-substandard. They have a nasty aftertaste that I suspect is from excessive use of preservatives. Tortillas in San Antonio do not stay on the shelf long enough to have need for more than a smidge of preservation.
Tortillas sold here in MD are stored mostly in the refrigerated section. In San Antonio, they’re shelved next to the bread. The tortilla section is actually equal to if not larger than the bread section.
I am attempting to get my friends still in TX to send us tortillas, but in the long run this method is going to be time consuming and more expensive than making them myself. I’ve tried making them myself before, and they have always been edible (if misshapen or overthick), so getting them from the store made more sense. Now I have little choice but the perfect the art of the tortilla. . .
I decided that I would start with an “expert,” so I started with google. That’s where all the experts are, eh?
The second hit was from a Texas cooking site so I decided to give them a try. I was wary because they referred to their recipe as a “chewy” recipe and the recipe seemed to lacking in the amount of fat I’m used to seeing. Just a mere two tablespoons of vegetable oil. Where’s the crisco, or the butter, or the lard?
The recipe was easy enough, but the resulting tortillas weren’t quite what I was looking for. They were still better than anything store bought on this coast. . .
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