Posted By Julie on February 6, 2012

One of the first recipes I tried when last summer’s testing revealed Nolan to be somewhat anemic was beef jerky. We got a beautifully marbled piece of grassfed steak at the farmer’s market, and I sliced thin before marinating and dehydrating in my brand-new Excalibur dehydrator. For some reason I didn’t photograph it or make a note of the recipe I used, and Nolan seemed kind of indifferent to it: sometimes he would eat it up immediately, sometimes we had to break it down into tiny bite-sized pieces to entice him, and sometimes it just went on the floor. But over the course of a few months, the jerky bag slowly began to empty, and I made sure to document my second batch more accurately!

This time I bought a half-pound of grassfed London broil from Whole Foods, and the butcher was kind enough to slice it thinly for me, so all I had to do at home was cut it into strips with kitchen shears. I used Alton Brown’s jerky marinade recipe, reducing it by 2/3d since I had such a small amount of meat; I also omitted the cayenne and black pepper since this is mostly for my son, and added a teaspoon or so each of garlic powder and smoked salt. The meat marinated for about 4 hours in the refrigerator, then went in the Excalibur at 155F for 4-5 hours. It is pretty strongly flavored and hovering between chewy and crisp, but that suits me and Nolan just fine! (Actually, I have already eaten much more of it than I intended to, since it is supposed to be snack fodder for preschool… but it also makes a good post-workout snack!) I will probably shorten the marinade time slightly on the next batch.

Next up, I’m going to try a ground beef jerky variant just for fun, maybe including some Great Lakes gelatin and beef liver (don’t tell my family!) for additional health benefits. I’ve already done salmon jerky with mixed results, and would also like to try chicken and even coconut jerky (yes, you read that right!). My dad has suggested we try venison, elk, or buffalo jerky, and I have even been contemplating pemmican recipes. Might be interesting to try a marinade that incorporates orange juice or marmalade, since vitamin C aids iron absorption!

If we polish off our already dwindling supply of beef jerky before I have a chance to make more, it’s nice to know that Nolan has developed an appreciation for a similar beef product: believe it or not, this is uncured beef bacon from Wellshire Farms. It doesn’t get crispy like old fashioned pork bacon, but Nolan seems not to mind the chewy texture, so it is a nice alternative to the usual when we’re trying to get a little extra red meat on his menu.

Category: Meat, Snacks | No Comments »
Tags: bacon, beef, dehydrate, jerky

Posted By Julie on February 2, 2012

I had it all planned out: a decadent, creamy turtle cheesecake and a pair of hand-knit socks for my mom’s 61st birthday this year. Then I missed it entirely, due to an unforeseen trip back to Oregon to help my husband clean up our flooded basement. It was wonderful to spend some alone time with him, regardless of the pretense, and I left him with a towering three-layer German chocolate cake (and about 6 pounds of Hawaiian braised pork and carnitas) by way of a slightly early birthday celebration. When I came back to Colorado, that cheesecake was the first thing on my to-do list, but by extraordinary coincidence, my mom had just made one from an old family recipe (once a big favorite of mine, but I have thoroughly outgrown it).

Once that was eaten up, I sprang into action, whipping together a turtle cheesecake from the basic Junior’s recipe. The crust is a basic graham cracker one made with pulverized bananagrahams, butter and sugar, enlivened with a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and some chopped pecans. I pressed it into a 9″ springform while the oven heated to 350F, made the essential vanilla cheesecake batter, and divided it into thirds. The bottom third went straight over the unbaked crust; I topped it with a thin layer of chopped toasted pecans mixed with dulce de leche, and poured on another third of the batter; the last third got an addition of melted bittersweet chocolate and dolloped haphazardly over top. An hour and a half later, this 4″ glory emerged from the oven. It sank a little at the top—I think my chocolate proportion was a bit off—but, once slathered with silky ganache and toasted pecans, I hardly think that matters!  :)

The cheesecake had two hours to cool on the counter while I attended an aromatherapy class, but my mom didn’t want to wait any longer to dig in, so our first slices were a bit warm and sloppy. I dressed the plates with a smear of dulce de leche for the full “turtle” effect, and we all dug in joyfully. Even my dad, who normally doesn’t care for cheesecake, seemed to really like his slice; I thought it seemed far and away richer while still warm, and couldn’t quite finish my last few bites. But I guess if you have to say goodbye to casein for a while, a cheesecake like this one is certainly the way to do so!

And just for fun, to counteract all that talk of decadent desserts, I thought I would show off this photo of me finishing my first 5K race, which took place last Saturday near Morrison, CO. I set a PR for pace, finishing in 35 minutes despite having been back at altitude for less than 24 hours. Not a bad way to officially kick off my training for the Platte River Half Marathon in April and the Colfax Marathon in May! And not a bad way to work off all that German chocolate cake and turtle cheesecake, if I do say so myself.

Category: Baking, Dairy, Dessert | 2 Comments »
Tags: bake, caramel, cheesecake, chocolate, cream cheese, crumb crust, ganache, graham cracker, pecan

Posted By Julie on February 1, 2012

Ever since I came to Colorado with Nolan, I have been searching for a sandwich bread recipe that makes everyone happy. I, of course, concentrate on the nourishment and nutritional value of the bread, followed by the amount of prep time needed to squeeze into my schedule; my mom and dad just want something supersoft like grocery store bread; and Nolan will eat pretty much any of it. Bonuses would include large-batch or delayed-bake options, because we are so busy with therapy that I just don’t have as much time to dedicate to cooking these days.

A double-batch of challah bread overflowing the bowl

I have done so many trials now that I have totally lost count, sampling everything from fresh yeasted breads to soaked-flour bread to sourdough, and nothing has quite hit all of our requirements. My parents clearly prefer enriched yeasted breads for their texture; if I had a grain mill, I would start making sprouted flours and not worry so much about phytates, but currently we can only afford for sprouted flour to make up a small percentage of our baked goods.

Sourdough sandwich loaf

All the whole grain sourdough loaves I have tried came out too dense for my mom’s standards, and now every single time I bake something that looks “wheaty,” they ask me if it is sourdough while trying to muster up false enthusiasm. (The loaf highlighted in this post got this treatment also.) Sourdough also seems to take forever to get a decent rise, which is probably why my loaves have come out so dense—I just don’t have enough time to wait on them, even with a really active starter and a nice warm dehydrator for proofing. After about 6 months of experiments with my mom continuing to buy bread from the grocery store for sandwiches rather than subject herself to my homemade bread at lunch, I finally gave in and let the starter go. One day I will live in my own house again and be mistress of my domain.

Soaked oatmeal bread, a four-loaf batch

That left the soaked option, which I have not experimented with quite as often as the rest. In my initial attempts, the problem seemed to be getting dry yeast evenly incorporated into a doughy soaker without a bread machine. Most of my results have been almost as dense as sourdough, so they fail my mom’s texture test.

Yeasted whole wheat sandwich loaf with wheat germ, buttermilk and buckwheat

Finally, we come to the subject of the present post: this enriched, partly whole-wheat sandwich bread, fortified with yogurt, wheat germ and buckwheat. Each batch makes 3 loaves but can be doubled or halved, bakes up soft and fluffy in just a few hours if pressed for time but can also be converted into an overnight soaked dough. The recipe originated in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which offers large batch sizes so that extra dough can be held in the refrigerator for up to a week and baked on demand; although I have done this successfully with prior recipes from the book, I haven’t had much luck doing so with this particular dough. However, it is still a tender, hearty sandwich bread with a forgiving timeline!

At left, dough after soaking overnight and incorporating yeast mixture; at right, dough at the end of the first rise.

Ironically, now that I have finally found a bread recipe that hits most of our requirements, we just met with a new nutritional therapist for Nolan who has recommended that we trial a casein-free, gluten-free diet for at least a few months. Turns out the digestive enzyme we have been giving Nolan with meals is more for accidental exposures than continuous supplementation, as we had been told; it does make a clear difference in his digestion, but there is no way of knowing if the dosage is sufficient for any given meal, so he is likely still producing polypeptides. All that is to say that we have just a few more days with casein and two weeks with gluten before I start making some significant changes around here. I am already stocking up on coconut milk, clarifying butter, sprouting and dehydrating brown rice, and, well… biting my fingernails! So I’m going to go enjoy a slice of this bread with some good pastured butter while I can, and get back to researching rice-based sourdough starters.

Kimball Bread

The original recipe calls for a 50-minute bake time for loaves, but mine ended up on the dark side with this time, so keep an eye on it near the end of the baking time.

2 C lukewarm water
1 C buttermilk (or 1/2 C milk, 1/2 C yogurt; or 3/4 C milk, 1/4 C whey)
1 1/2 T yeast
1 T + 1 tsp salt
1/4 C honey
1/4 C unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
1/4 C buckwheat flour
1/2 C wheat germ (or additional flour, preferably sprouted wheat)
3 C whole wheat flour
3 C unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix together yeast, salt, honey, butter, water and buttermilk in a large bowl. Mix in the remaining dry ingredients without kneading, using a spoon, a heavy duty stand mixer or your hands. Dough will be a little softer and stickier than you may be used to.

Note: To convert to soaked bread, mix together water, buttermilk, salt, butter, buckwheat, wheat germ, and flours (use 2 C of each); allow to stand at room temp overnight. In the morning, stir together the yeast, honey, and 1/4 C each of water and sprouted wheat flour; knead into the soaked flour mixture and add additional sprouted wheat flour as necessary to form a slightly sticky mass of dough (I added about 3/4 C and ended by mixing with my hands). Proceed as directed below.

Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temp until the dough rises and collapses or flattens on top, approximately two hours. It can be used immediately after this initial rise, or stored in the refrigerator until needed, over the next five days (at your own risk!); it will be easier to handle when cold, especially if you intend to make freeform loaves or rolls.

When ready to bake, grease a 9×4 loaf pan. Dust your hands with flour and pull off a cantaloupe-sized chunk of dough (1.5 lb weight); shape into a loaf and place in the prepared pan. Allow to rest for 40 minutes (add an hour if using refrigerated dough). 20 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 400F. Bake for about 40-50 minutes, until deeply browned and firm. Allow to cool before slicing.

This bread also makes excellent rolls, sandwich buns, and flatbread (if, say, the stored dough won’t rise for you), but since the dough is rather soft and sticky, do any shaping while it is cold or dust your hands with flour.

Source: Slightly adapted from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Category: Baking, Nuts, Grains & Legumes | No Comments »
Tags: bake, bread, buckwheat, loaf, sprouted wheat, wheat germ, whole wheat

Posted By Julie on January 28, 2012

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens! I realize I am not only late with this post but have been neglecting the entire blog lately. January has been very full of adjustments to Nolan’s therapy schedule, preparing for some new nutritional interventions, training to prepare for my first 5K race (which happened this morning), not to mention an unplanned flight to Oregon this past week when the flooding in Salem spilled over into our basement. Sigh…

I’m a big advocate of scratch-made biscuits, from cheesy drop biscuits to sticky buttermilk biscuits to classic baking soda biscuits/scones. Audax is an incredible technical baker with quite the eye for detail, so I was excited to use his refined master recipe to make all sorts of fabulous biscuits for the challenge this month, but in the end I was lucky just to squeeze in the two varieties shown above before the time flew by. They were both designed to accompany bowls of silky butternut squash soup with a maple-glazed bacon garnish.

The first option was not-quite-basic biscuits, made the shortcut way in my food processor with cold (but not frozen) butter, all-purpose flour, and a handful of blanched and very well wrung-out Swiss chard; I intentionally added the latter after the butter but before the milk, so it ended up quite finely chopped. These were rolled out and shaped with a 2″ cutter into 6 biscuits that baked up extremely light and fluffy.

The second batch of biscuits, made after shaping the chard biscuits and washing out the food processor, are slightly sweeter maple-pecan biscuits with part whole wheat flour. I replaced a couple tablespoons of the milk with maple syrup and added toasted pecans to the dry ingredients, reserving a bit to knead in at the last moment. As you can see, I rolled these out a little flatter and got 8 2″ biscuits from the same base recipe.

Both versions were delicious with the soup. The chard ones didn’t taste vegetal at all, but had such lovely red and green coloring that I will have to remember them next Christmas. The maple-pecan ones were a touch denser thanks to the whole wheat flour addition (and possibly also due to a shorter rest time between processor and oven), but were tasty enough for dessert when slathered with maple butter or jam.

I will definitely be making more biscuits in the coming month—we are gearing up for an extended gluten-free/casein free trial for my son, so I will not only be getting the last few cravings for wheat biscuits out of my system, but experimenting with GFCF versions. Thank goodness clarified butter is casein-free and biscuits are a baked item that don’t rely on gluten development for texture!

Basic Scones (a.k.a. Basic Biscuits)
Servings: about eight 2-inch (5 cm) scones or five 3-inch (7½ cm) scones
Recipe can (and probably should!) be doubled

1 C plain (all-purpose) flour
2 tsp fresh baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 T frozen grated butter (or a combination of lard and butter)
approximately 1/2 C cold milk
optional 1 T milk, for glazing the tops of the scones

Preheat oven to very hot 475°F. Triple sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. (If your room temperature is very hot, refrigerate the sifted ingredients until cold.)

Rub the frozen grated butter (or combination of fats) into the dry ingredients until it resembles very coarse bread crumbs with some pea-sized pieces if you want flaky scones or until it resembles coarse beach sand if you want tender scones.

Add nearly all of the liquid at once into the rubbed-in flour/fat mixture and mix until it just forms a sticky dough (add the remaining liquid if needed). The wetter the dough the lighter the scones (biscuits) will be!

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board, lightly flour the top of the dough. To achieve an even homogeneous crumb to your scones knead very gently about 4 or 5 times (do not press too firmly) the dough until it is smooth. To achieve a layered effect in your scones knead very gently once (do not press too firmly) then fold and turn the kneaded dough about 3 or 4 times until the dough has formed a smooth texture. (Use a floured plastic scraper to help you knead and/or fold and turn the dough if you wish.)

Pat or roll out the dough into a 6 inch by 4 inch rectangle by about ¾ inch thick. Using a well-floured 2-inch scone cutter (biscuit cutter), stamp out without twisting six 2-inch (5 cm) rounds, gently reform the scraps into another ¾ inch (2 cm) layer and cut two more scones (these two scones will not raise as well as the others since the extra handling will slightly toughen the dough). Or use a well-floured sharp knife to form squares or wedges as you desire.

Place the rounds just touching on a baking dish if you wish to have soft-sided scones or place the rounds spaced widely apart on the baking dish if you wish to have crisp-sided scones. Glaze the tops with milk if you want a golden colour on your scones or lightly flour if you want a more traditional look to your scones.

Bake in the preheated very hot oven for about 10 minutes (check at 8 minutes since home ovens at these high temperatures are very unreliable) until the scones are well risen and are lightly coloured on the tops. The scones are ready when the sides are set.

Immediately place onto cooling rack to stop the cooking process, and serve while still warm.

Variations on the Basic Recipe:
Buttermilk – follow the Basic recipe above but replace the milk with buttermilk, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, increase the fat to 4 tablespoons, in Step 3 aim of pea-sized pieces of fat coated in flour, in Step 5 fold and turn the dough, rounds are just touching in the baking dish, glaze with buttermilk.

Australian Scone Ring (Damper Ring) – follow the Basic recipe above but decrease the fat to 1 tablespoon, in Step 3 aim of fine beach sand sized pieces of fat coated in flour, in Step 5 knead the dough, in Step 7 form seven rounds into a ring shape with the eighth round as the centre, glaze with milk.

Cream – follow the Basic recipe above but replace the milk with cream, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, in Step 3 aim of beach sand sized pieces of fat coated in flour, in Step 5 knead the dough, rounds are just touching in the baking dish, glaze with cream.

Cheese and Chive – follow the Basic recipe above but add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, after Step 2 add 1/2 teaspoon sifted mustard powder, 1/4 teaspoon sifted cayenne pepper (optional), 1/2 cup (60 gm/2 oz) grated cheese and 2 tablespoons finely chopped chives into the sifted ingredients, in Step 3 aim of beach sand sized pieces of fat coated in flour, in Step 5 knead the dough, rounds are widely spaced in the baking dish, sprinkle the rounds with cracked pepper.

Fresh Herb – follow the Basic recipe above but after Step 3 add 3 tablespoons finely chopped herbs (such as parsley, dill, chives etc).

Sweet Fruit – follow the Basic recipe above but after Step 3 add 1/4 cup (45 gm) dried fruit (e.g. sultanas, raisins, currents, cranberries, cherries etc) and 1 tablespoon (15 gm) sugar.

Whole Wheat – follow the Basic recipe above but replace half of the plain flour with whole wheat flour.

Whole Wheat and Date – follow the Basic recipe above but replace half of the plain flour with whole wheat flour and after Step 3 add 1/4 cup (45 gm) chopped dates and 1 tablespoon (15 gm) sugar.

Category: Baking, Foodblog Events | No Comments »
Tags: bacon, bake, biscuit, butternut squash, chard, Daring Bakers, maple syrup, pecan, soup

Posted By Julie on January 11, 2012

I’ve been pretty happy with protein smoothies in the morning lately. I currently use a vanilla whey powder that was recommended by our naturopath, and if I add some soaked oats and chia seeds to our raw milk, it makes a particularly quick, filling breakfast. But every so often, say when we are having a therapy-free morning with snow falling outside, a warm, leisurely breakfast sounds really good. Since seeing Leanne’s apple cobbler pancakes at Healthful Pursuit a few days ago, they have been at the top of my to-do list, but we didn’t have any apples, so in homage to the lazy day that inspired the original recipe, I just scrounged around in the refrigerator and came out with a half-eaten jar of home-canned applesauce and some strawberry jam.

I only had two ramekins and about half a cup of applesauce to work with, so I divided it up between them and stirred in cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger (the applesauce itself is unsweetened, but tinged a pretty pink color from the skins). I topped the applesauce with batter until the ramekins were about two-thirds full, and they went in the oven at 425F for 20 minutes, followed by about 5-10 more minutes at 375F. At that point, they appeared set and were starting to brown on top, so I pulled them to cool for a few minutes. These little cakes retain heat remarkably well! They were worth the wait, however, and my dad and I really enjoyed the combination of spicy applesauce and souffle-like cake.

Th