Time to cook!

It's been a while since we've posted a recipe or a critique about food. I woke up today with a hankering for bread and doing something with the apples we have in the kitchen. It didn't take me long to locate a couple of recipes for white and french bread.

Combining all the wet ingredients for the white bread was easy. So was adding the flour. What was tough was mixing them all together by hand. We do have a mixer but I thought I'd get my hands dirty. I didn't do so well as the dough was in clumps and I really hesitated adding the last cup full of all purpose flour. Also, the the active dry yeast didn't proof as well as I thought. Truenorthgal mentioned that the water must have been lukewarm. We ended up throwing the entire thing into the mixer and adding enough water so it the dough looked like a proper dough.

The french bread dough was a little easier. All it required was all purpose flour, salt, active dry yeast and water! I used the mixer this time but truenorthgal ended up adding a little more water in the end. So by the time both batches were ready, I was already 2 hours into the new day. Here are a couple of pictures of the dough.

Rising dough

Almost done!


Final minutes...

Though the crust was golden, the insides were somewhat undercooked in some areas. One of the white loafs was properly done but the crust is hard. I ended up cutting up the french breads and spreading olive oil and dry herbs on them so I could salvage them. Here they are:

French Bread with olive oil and herbs

White Bread somewhat ok

I'll try them again after we finish this batch of bread. On a brighter note, I really liked how the apple cobbler came out. Here is the recipe I used:

4 - 5 small McIntosh apples
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar (depends on your sweet tooth)
1 stick of butter (or about 8 tablespoons), cold and cut into bits
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
pinch of salt

1. Peel and slice your apples as thinly as you can. Mix some sugar with the slices and then layer them onto a greased baking pan.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Using a food processor, mix the remaining ingredients until they come out somewhat crumbly.
3. Using a spoon, drop the mix on top of the apples.
4. Place the pan into the oven and cook until top is golden brown (may take between 20 to 30 minutes).

Serve with vanilla ice cream on the side. This recipe is good for about five to six people. Here are a couple of pictures of the results.

Close up of the thin apple slices

Dig in while it's warm!