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Lunacy We all gotta eat, right? (Food Porn)

Staying at home means lots of cooking in. I've been mostly craving 'comfort food' since it's still cold out and.... well because lol.

The other night was a standard chicken breast dinner...nothing fancy to see here lol.

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Then I decided to make beef stew...

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Check out the size of these bay leafs!!! You know how you usually have to root around looking for them? Not with these lol..

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Final product... but the day after. The colors of the carrots aren't as vibrant since it sat in the 'gravy' all night. But still tastes damn good. If I may say so myself.:razz2:

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My wife made the same with a air fryer !
Tender is the way I witnessed it.
 
Pizza!
Left veg, right meat.
Been a doughy kinda day all:hungry:
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4 1/2 cups of AP unbleached flour

In a seperate cup
1pk. Yeast
1C warm water 100-110f/38c.
1tsp. Sugar

In another separate cup place
1 1/4 c cold water
2tbsp olive oil
1 tsp. Salt

Put 4 cups of flour, yeast mixture, water, olive oil, and salt in a kitchen Aid (dough hook)
Mix on low 8 minutes, rest 2 minutes, then again in low for 6 minutes.

Turn dough out on floured surface knead until smooth l, about 2 minutes, adding additional 1/4 cup flour as u go to prevent sticking.

Put in a greased bowl and let proof for 1 & 1/2 hours or
Seperate into 2 balls, put in ziploc bags and refrigerate overnight. (can freeze dough as well)
:wave:
 
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Well I think pizza may be the meal of today.... or tomorrow for sure.

But yesterday I ended up making some kabobs... with roasted beets and some rice pilaf.

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I was also inspired by the banana bread @Helios made the other day and since I had 4 over ripe bananas... I hadn't made one with a streusel topping before and I've got to say that this is the best damn banana bread I've ever had. The recipe was labor intensive (considering it's just banana bread) but it made 4 mini loaves so it was worth the effort.

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I made pizza yesterday... and followed suit with one vegetable and one meat.

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However...... I don't know if it was my error... or the recipe... :cool:(you one of THOSE @Helios that gives out recipes with slightly 'altered' ingredients lol?)

At the point after mixing, that you are supposed to knead, the dough was the consistency of cake batter. I know the water wasn't too hot (insta read thermometer) and the yeast was good (it bloomed). So.. wtf happened? I ended up having to add quite a bit more flour before I could even get it semi kneadable. And it still looked like an episode of I Love Lucy in my kitchen.

The dough, after cooking, was a bit dense. I think it was all the extra flour I had to add.
 
Well, I haven't contributed for a while, so I thought I would give it a shot. First, I thought I would share two bread making tips that I am beyond embarrassed that I learned only recently. Having cooked for many years, the fact that these two tips escaped me all these years is mortifying. Having said that, maybe there is at least one other person out there as dumb as me...

1. We keep our house relatively chilly in the winter. It's definitely too chilly for raising bread dough. Turn the oven light on an hour before you're going to mix the dough. Put the dough in the oven and leave that light on during the entire first rise. It makes for a nice, warm, draft-free place for the yeast to do its thing.

2. We use proofing baskets for the second proof. I was so focused on getting that nice shape imprinted on my loaf that I was making my life way more difficult than it needs to be. Flour the basket and dump the dough in to proof. When it's time to drop the dough into the piping hot dutch oven, it sticks and then falls out at a weird angle and you get a misshapen loaf. Now, I put parchment paper in the basket first and then plop the dough on top of it and cover it with a towel. When it's time to drop the dough, just grab the parchment paper and quickly and easily drop a nicely shaped ball of dough into the pot, still nestled in the parchment paper. Some say to remove the parchment paper when you take the lid off the dutch oven. I've removed it and left it in without noticing a difference.

Lately, we've been making our own bread every other day. We've ditched the standard no-knead bread in favor of two other recipes. The first recipe makes a nice, perhaps slightly bland loaf but it's easy to make it in a few hours. The second is Ken Forkish's recipe that uses a poolish that is made the day before. This produces a more flavorful bread (maybe a slightly better crumb), but it's definitely more work.

1. Turbo No-Knead Bread (sorry, it's not by weight):
  • 3.5 cups of flour
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1.25 tsp yeast
  • 13 ounces of very warm water
Mix the ingredients and allow the dough to rise for at least 90 minutes.

Remove the dough from the oven, if that's where it's raising. Set the oven to 450-500 degrees F and put the dutch oven inside. Drop the dough onto a floured surface and work it a bit. We do the Lahey pull and fold method, pulling out from each side of a square and folding over. We do this 3-4 times (12-16 total folds) and then shape the dough into a ball, dropping it into a proofing basket protected with parchment paper and covering it with a towel. Let this second proofing take 45-60 minutes.

When ready, pull the dutch oven from the oven, take off the lid, and drop the dough and parchment paper into the pot and cover. Bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the lid off and bake another 10-20 minutes.


2. The poolish method.

For this, I'll just link to a site that covers it nicely. As I said, this loaf has deeper flavors and might have a slightly nicer crumb. If you can plan a day in advance, you might think it's worth the extra effort (others will say, "meh" and just go for the turbo). The dough produced here isn't as wet as the Lahey/Forkish no-knead, so it's a bit easier to work with.



COMFORT FOOD!
Finally, here is a recipe that makes a wonderful comfort food. It has to be one of the more highly praised meals I've made in a while. I do three things differently from this recipe. First, I substitute boneless chicken thighs for the breasts. Second, I also add 4 sticks of chopped celery. Third, I use a melon baller to make the dumplings, rather than a large spoon. We prefer smaller, less doughy dumplings.

INGREDIENTS
Soup
2 tablespoons oil
2 pounds chicken breasts
1 large onion, diced
4 carrots, sliced to ¼ in half rings
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
6 cups chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
½ teaspoons dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 ½ cups frozen peas
4 tablespoons fresh minced parsley

Dumplings
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ⅓ cups heavy cream

PREPARATION
In a 6-quart dutch oven, cook chicken over medium-high heat until brown on both sides.

Once chicken pieces are browned, remove and set aside.

Add carrot and onion and cook until just tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and stir for another minute.

Reduce heat to medium-low and add butter and flour, stirring constantly for 3 minutes to avoid lumps.

Add chicken and any accumulated juices back to dutch oven and stir to to coat in roux/vegetable mix.

Add chicken broth, cream, thyme, and bay leaves and bring to a simmer. Once soup is at a simmer, add frozen peas and cover.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, and cream. Stir until mixture comes together into single mass of dough. Using a large spoon or ice cream scoop, form dough into small round balls about 1 inch in diameter (this dough mixture should yield 14-16 dumplings). Place dough balls into simmering soup (making sure they don’t touch), and cover. Let soup simmer for 15 minutes or until dumplings are cooked (they should pass the toothpick test). Ladle into bowl, giving 1-2 dumplings per serving.

For reference, here is the source of the recipe (I never bothered to watch the video):
 

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