Pizza!

A few weeks ago I decided to try making pizza dough. Despite all the baking I've been doing in my wonderful apartment kitchen over the last few months, breads haven't gotten much attention. I figured this might be a fun place to start. I used the recipe from my King Arthur Flour cookbook (it's marvelous)--used the white whole wheat flour again instead of plain white, and was very happy with the results. For toppings, I picked a sun dried tomato pesto, fresh fontina, asparagus, shallots, and prosciutto (di Parma!).

Pizza Dough
-1 3/4 c. warm water
-1 T. sugar
-1 package active dry yeast
-6 c. white whole wheat flour
-1/4 c. olive oil
-1 T. course salt

1. Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the warm water in a large mixing bowl. Wait several minutes for yeast to become active.
2. Add one cup of flour, olive oil, and salt. Combine. Add another 4 1/2 cups of flour and mix with a spoon until the dough comes together and pulls away from the side of the bowl.
3. Use the last 1/2 cup of flour to dust the kneading surface. Turn out dough, and knead until everything comes together. Allow the dough to rest while you grease the inside of a bowl, then continue kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic.
4. Put dough into greased bowl, cover, and allow it to rise until it has doubled in size (~1 hour).
5. Punch dough down, and knead out excess air. Cut dough as needed. [This recipe will make 2 thicker crust pizzas or 3 thinner crust pizzas.]
6. Roll out the dough to the desired size. If using a pan, oil it before arranging the pizza crust. Add toppings. Bake for 15-20 minutes (depending on the thickness of the crust) at 475* F.



(To keep the prosciutto from getting too crispy, add it to the pizza 2-3 minutes before the end of the baking time.)

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

This year for St. Patrick's day I made myself a "New England Boiled Dinner"--corned beef and cabbage, with some potatoes and carrots tossed in for good measure--and some Irish Soda Bread. So far I've only had baking posts, but I'm considering a foray into other foods, too (I like to pretend I can cook now and then). Chances are quite good that anything like that won't happen until summer, but I'm tossing in a not-baked photo at the end here, just to see how it looks!

Soda bread is probably the easiest bread in the universe to make. This is a recipe that I modified a little from a kids baking book that I was given when I was in middle school--it has withstood the (taste)test of time!

Irish Soda Bread
-1 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour (from King Arthur Flour)
-1/2 c. all-purpose flour
-2 t. baking soda
-2 t. baking powder
-1 t. salt
-3 T. sugar
-3 T. unsalted butter
-1 c. buttermilk

1. Combine all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Cut cold butter into the dry ingredients with knives or a pastry cutter.
2. Add buttermilk, mix until all ingredients are wet.
3. Turn mixture out onto floured surface and knead for about a minute, or until the dough holds together. Form it into a round loaf, and place on a parchment covered baking sheet.
4. Cut a cross into the top of the dough. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350* F.

The dough, pre-kneading. (Yes, those are my bags of King Arthur Flour in the background--a little free advertising for them; they're a VT company, and their products are wonderful!)


You can serve it in slices or wedges. Delicious either way!

Corned beef and cabbage, probably up to my grandmother's standards? And for anyone wondering, that's a Smithwick's in the background!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(A whole month late...)

Welcoming Spring! (...with Devil's Food Cupcakes)

I'm back again, after another long hiatus--same excuses as last time! This semester has been something else. Until June, the once-monthly post explosions are probably going to be the norm.

Last month, some friends hosted a cook-off. That night I became wildly impressed by the culinary abilities of the people in my department! Anyway, my contribution was a dessert (what else?)--it was early March then, so I may have been jumping the gun a bit, but I was eager to welcome spring. That inspired the butterfly cupcake project! I knew I wanted to try the Swiss Meringue Buttercream again, but I was feeling pretty indecisive about the cake, so I ended up with some Devil's food, some yellow, and a handful of marble cupcakes.

This was an interesting experiment for me--the Devil's food and yellow cake recipes were from two different sources, but were almost identical in terms of ingredients and process, so I assumed they'd be fairly similar with respect to texture. Wrong. They were about as different as possible. Both tasted good, but the Devil's food had a beautiful crumb, and the yellow... less so. I'll probably try it again (perhaps when I'm not making two batters in tandem?), but for now we'll stick with the chocolate.

Devil's Food Cupcakes
-1 1/2 c. cake flour
-1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
-1 t. baking soda
-1 t. baking powder
-1 t. salt
-3/4 c. Dutch-process cocoa powder
-3/4 c. hot water
-1 1/2 c. unsalted butter
-2 1/4 c. sugar
-4 eggs
-1 T. vanilla extract
-1 c. sour cream

1. Whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Combine hot water and cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.
2. Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan, stirring. Remove from heat, pour into a mixing bowl, and beat for 4-5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and cocoa mixture.
3. Alternate additions of flour mixture and sour cream; beat just until combined.
4. Divide into lined cups. Bake for 20 minutes at 350* F, rotating tins halfway through.

Hard to tell in this photo, but the Devil's food baked really beautifully--see how nicely they domed? And the yellow cakes were kind of flat.

Buttercream. A weakness of mine.

Some chocolate and candy butterflies (which took shockingly long to make--I wanted to document the process, but that would have required about 18 more hands). Also, I was going for more of a yellow frosting color; something weird happened there, but I think it still worked.

Happy spring!