Basil Bread

Basil Bread

Ingredients:
1/2 cube fresh yeast
1 cup plus 2 1/2 Tblsp. warm water
3 1/2 Tblsp. olive oil
2 1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 cup tightly packed basil leaves (I like the purple ones best)
5 cups all-purpose flour

Method:

1. Rinse and carefully dry the basil leaves. Chop them into fine ribbons.
2. In a medium bowl, dissolve the yeast in all the water.
3. Add the sugar; stir to dissolve. Add the oil, salt, and chopped basil leaves. Stir it all up.
4. Add half-cups of flour, stirring well each time, till you have a loose dough. This should take 4 to 4 1/2 cups. Mix well.
5. Cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 6-8 hours. It will rise and be spongy by morning.
6. Next day, deflate the dough by stirring it. Sprinkle more flour in, first stirring, then kneading lightly, till the dough is stiff. Let it sit by itself for 15 minutes to absorb the flour.
7. Add the rest of the flour – up to 5 cups total. Knead again, lightly, and form a ball of the dough. Dribble a little olive oil over it, then turn it around in the bowl a few times. Drape a kitchen towel over the bowl, and leave the dough to rise for 45 minutes at room temperature.
8. Preheat the oven to 350 F, 180 C, about 20 minutes before you plan to bake. At the same time, shape your loaf and put it to rise once again on a sheet of baking paper. It will be very light and bubbly when it’s ready to bake.
9. Handle the loaf gently, so as not to deflate it. Bake it for 30 minutes. When the crust is golden and sturdy, turn the loaf upside down to finish baking, 10-15 minutes more.

Mediterranean Black Olive Bread

I love Olives and I love homemade bread. When you combine the two in this delicious Mediterranean recipe you have heaven.

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)

* 3 cups bread flour
* 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
* 2 tablespoons white sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup chopped black olives
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 1/4 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 1 tablespoon cornmeal

* add to recipe box Add to Recipe Box
My folders:
* add to shopping list Add to Shopping List
* Customize Recipe
* add a personal note Add a Personal Note

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, mix together flour, yeast, sugar, salt, black olives, olive oil, and water.
2. Turn out dough onto a floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic, 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside, and let rise about 45 minutes, until it doubles in size. Punch down. Knead well again, for about 5 to 10 minutes. Let rise for about 30 minutes, until it doubles in size.
3. Round the dough on kneading board. Place upside down in a bowl lined with a lint-free, well floured towel. Let rise until double in size.
4. While the bread is rising for the third time, put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).
5. Gently turn loaf out onto a sheet pan that has been lightly oiled and dusted with cornmeal.
6. Bake loaf at 500 degrees F (260 degrees C) for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Bake for 30 more minutes, or until done.

Click here to find out more!

Spicey Bread

Here is another one thats excellent when your sick. Hot ingredients do have a way of clearing your sinus's when there blocked. This one contains self rising flour because . . . Well, lets face it. Its not like your in the mood the kneed bread when your sick.

Spicy Bread Recipe: Makes 1 loaf
Ingredients

* 2 tablespoons butter
* 1 1/2 cups self rising flour
* 3/4 cup flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 2 teaspoons curry powder
* 2 teaspoons poppy seeds
* 2/3 cup milk
* 1 egg beaten

Prepare a cookie sheet by spreading a little butter. Sift the self rising flour and the all-purpose flour into a mixing bowl. Add in the baking powder, salt, cayenne pepper, curry and poppy seeds then stir all the ingredients together with a whisk. Cut the butter into the flour mixture till the butter becomes the size of a pea. Add in the milk and the beaten egg. Mix to form a dough. Lightly flour a flat surface and knead the dough for a few minutes. Shape the dough into a round loaf and place it on the cookie sheet. Using a knife slash a cross on the top of the bread. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Bread when your Sick: Hot Drop Cheese Biscuits

I woke up at 5am this morning with a sore throat and signs that I am getting sick. There seems to be only one meal I want when I'm sick and that's Ham Bone Soup and Hot Drop Cheese Biscuits. I got the recipe from a cookbook years ago and I have perfected it. I'm not usually a big fan of biscuits but these are very special. I'm told that there excellent with tomato soup as well. I'm just not a big fan of tomato soup.

Hot Drop Cheese Biscuits
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground red pepper (its what the recipe call for but I like a little less)
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup of shortening
1 cup skim milk

Combine first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl and cut in cheese and shortening with a pastry cutter. Add the milk and stir until ingredients are just moistened. Drop big heaping tbsp fulls onto a greased baking sheet. bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes.

The Secret to Making the Best Bread

"Proofing" can mean several things in bread baking: ensuring that the yeast is active, setting the dough to rise, and letting the shaped loaves rise before baking.

To proof the yeast and make sure it's active, add the yeast required for the recipe 1 cup of warm water (between 110 and 115 degrees F) and stir to dissolve. Since the yeast tends to clump you may have to rub the clumps with your fingers to get them separated.(The water should feel like a pleasantly warm shower, or about the temperature you'd use for a baby's bottle. If it feels uncomfortably hot, it will probably kill the yeast.) Add one teaspoon of sugar and let the yeast sit for five minutes. If the yeast is foamy and smells like bread, it's active.

Sprouted Wheat Bread

Differing from Essene bread while still following similar principles is Sprouted Grain bread. Sprouted Grain bread contains added yeast and gluten to create a more edible loaf. This is not harsh and concentrated as Essene bread is known to be. In fact, sprouted grain breads contain more than twice the dietary fiber of bread made from flour. Most of the bread consumed today is highly processed with fat, sugar, preservatives and other additives. In addition to this the milling process used to extract the flour from the grain removes most of the bran and germ. The heat applied during milling also destroys many of the natural vitamins and minerals. So a great deal of the real nutritional benefit is either thrown away or destroyed by heat.

A large amount of processing takes place before the bread is even made. This is unnecessary! By sprouting the whole grains we don’t need to use flour and can retain and enhance all of the nutrients while still being able to make a delicious loaf of bread.

It has been said that the nutritional benefits of sprouted grain bread are many with the secret of the sprout being its astounding nutritional content. Sprouting of the grain significantly increases the protein, vitamin and enzyme content of the breads whilst complex starches in the grain are converted to natural sugars, providing an easily digested rich energy source. When people with wheat intolerance's try sprouted grain bread they often find their digestive system accepts the sprouted grains without any problem. Many people who have not been able to eat bread for years find sprouted grain breads easy to digest.

Sprouted Wheat Bread Recipes are to follow.

The Nature of Yeast

Yeast is a single-celled fungus, and comes in many species. When baking a loaf of bread, enzymes in the flour break down the starch of the flour into the sugars glucose, fructose, and maltose. The yeast then grows on these sugars, converting them into alcholol and carbon dioxide.

When I explained this to my 8 year old daughter I put it in much simpler terms. I told her yeast is a living thing and like all living things it required food and water to survive. I explained that they ate material in sugar or flour and pooped out alcohol and carbon dioxide. Its the carbon dioxide that makes the little bubbles in the dough that cause it to rise. She was a little grossed out but got it. Of course she got over being grossed out when she smelled the fresh bread baking.

The important thing to remember is that yeast is a living thing and it requires food and water like any other living thing to function as nature intended.

Incredible Wonderful Bread

My mother makes the most magnificent rolls you will ever have. For every holiday event or gathering the only thing my mother has ever been asked to bring are rolls. When family members visit from out of town they always call ahead and ask that she make her homemade rolls. Anytime she makes them she has to fight all of us off because we will grab them as soon as they come out of the oven if at all possible.

I have fond memories of waking up on Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to the smell of bread rising all over the house. Our home had a large wood burning stove in the living room to provide extra heat and my mother would fill that room with pans and pans of rising rolls. The smell was heavenly.

I did not develop and interest in learning how to make bread until I moved out of my mothers house. Every year when the weather turned cold I found myself craving the comforting smell of rising bread. I would soon learn that making bread is not as easy as my mother made it look for all those years and that many people can't do t at all. It has taken me 10 years to learn how to make bread and still mine does not come out as good as hers does. The texture is different and the darker outer crust is not quiet the same. But according to my family the bread is still very good and they throw fits over getting a slice when ever I make it.

The turning point in my bread making came when I read a chapter in a book about building Earth Ovens about the nature of yeast and came to understand that Yeast is a living thing and should be treated as such. It was only when I came to understand this that I was truly able to make good bread.