HBin5 Bread Challenge #6 - Olive Spelt Bread and Carrot Bread

Time for another HBin5 Challenge. I have to start with a confession: I broke my book. There I said it. The binding on my book has broken from using it too much. All that page turning was hard on the binding. Fortunately it broke on the page with the Whole Wheat with Olive Oil Bread because I make that recipe every week for pizza.

On to the challenge. The trickiest part was buying the olives. I bought these olives that were stuffed with pimentos. They seemed like they would work.

I had read what some other people were planning and thought it would work great for a pizza crust especially since my husband loves olives. I rolled it out thin.

On top I put left over shredded pork, sauteed onions, garlic, roasted grape tomatoes, some herbs and goat cheese. Baked at 475. I must say this was one of the most delicious pizzas we have made.

Just posting this pizza is making me drool. Two days later we made the rest of the dough into calzones and that was great too. Loved this dough.

The other part of the challenge was to make Carrot Bread. I am not a big carrot cake fan but I was sure this bread would not taste like carrot cake. I decided to make it onto cinnamon rolls for a after school treat. I omitted the coconut and used craisons for the dried fruit and added walnuts. I rolled it out threw on some extra cinnamon and brown sugar and baked. Topped it with the honey-cream cheese icing.

They turned out delicious and were gone in a blink. Two more great recipes added to our list.

Click here to go the other links for this challenge at Michelle's blog.

Happy Baking and Eating!

Blueberry "Bagels"

My son loves bagels. I think he has at least one every day. He also loves the bread I have been making. So my husband suggested I make blueberry bagels - his favorite. I had tried to make bagels when I first got the ABin5 book and I found them a little time consuming and the boiling a little tricky so I haven't tried them since then. My husband then found the Whole Wheat Mixed Berry Bread recipe in HBin5 (pg. 197) and we thought that would be a good compromise. I could make them in the new english muffin molds I got so they would at least be somewhat bagel shaped, just without the hole. We thought that would be great as the cream cheese always seems to fall through the hole anyway.

So I made the recipe. First mistake, I forgot to de-thaw the frozen blueberries before I put them in the mixture. Frozen berries have no juice so it left the dough dry and cold. So I added more water which made it a little soupy. But I let it sit on the counter anyway. After 2 hours not much rise. I thought I would need to throw it all out and start over. Since it was late I put it in the fridge and by morning it had actually risen quite nicely in the fridge.

So I made the Blueberry "bagels" and he loves them! I am going to bake and freeze some now to see how that works as we always freeze our regular bagels.

Happy Baking and Eating!

English Muffins

Here is what we did with the English Muffins I posted about previously. If you use a fork to split them open they really do have nooks and crannies. And they were delicious.

Happy Baking and Eating!

Pizza on the BBQ

I am anticipating the heat of summer and need to figure out how to bake bread on the BBQ. The oven just gets the house too hot in the summer. So last Sunday evening, I tried to bake our pizza on the BBQ. It actually turned out well. I only slightly burnt one of the crusts. I made the crusts as I went which added to the chaos. I think next time I will make all the crusts ahead and then put them on the grill at about the same time.

We had pepperoni pizza and a ham/onion/green pepper/roasted grape tomato/garlic and goat cheese pizza. Yummy!

My daughter even took the pictures. It was a family event.

Happy Baking and Eating!

English Muffins and more Calzones

I decided to start adding pics and stuff about the other bread I am making besides the bread for the HBin5 Challenge. So today after getting my coffee, I made the ritual Friday dough for pizza so we would have it ready for dinner.

Last week, I was looking on the HBin5 website and saw their delicious cinnamon bread, but also noticed their English Muffins. So I treated myself and bought some English Muffin molds, some Everything Bagel topping and a yeast spoon. They arrived two days ago. So right before leaving this afternoon to get my kids from school (and I mean the timer had gone off to tell me it was time to pick up my kids from school), I put together the dough for English Muffins. This dough goes together fast. I wasn't even late picking them up - I was maybe third from the end but that still counts as being on time.

So at dinner time I made the pepperoni pizza for the kids and calzones for my husband and me. I put left-over ham, sauteed onions, roasted grape tomatoes, garlic and goat cheese inside the calzones. Baked and ate every bite. I love these calzones. I roll it out much thinner than pizza so it gets really crisp.

I also formed the muffins, let them rise in the molds and baked. These look great and we look forward to eating them for breakfast. We were too full tonight to try one. I will try to add another photo of the muffins if I actually get any nooks and crannies. And they're whole wheat english muffins too!!

Happy Baking and Eating!

Bread Challenge #5 Avocado-Guacamole Bread and Pesto-Pine Nut Bread

I have to start off by saying I actually made the red beet buns from two challenges ago. I had this sad beet in my fridge just begging me to do something with it. So after taking the advice of other bakers, I used the food processor to shred the beet and that really kept the mess to a minimum. The dough was a cute pink color and I was really surprised after I baked them that the red color dissipated so much. They were really yummy and even my kids ate them. I didn't tell them the "secret" ingredient until after they had eaten them. So thanks for everyone's encouragement to try these buns.

On to the next HBin5 Challenge, Avocado-Guacamole Bread and Pesto-Pine Nut Bread. Living in the southwest, we love avocados and guacamole so I was anxious to try this bread. I wanted to cut the recipe in half but then I put the entire amount of water in by mistake. I knew something was wrong right away when I had a soupy mess. Well, I threw in the other half of flour, yeast and vital wheat gluten and kept mixing. I am writing this as the dough is rising on the counter hopeful that it will still work. I love that about this bread - it is really forgiving.

As you can see from the picture above it came out great except there is that one lone tomato in the middle. Very yummy bread. Had it with spaghetti. I think next time I would add even more tomato and avocado.

Now I need to go out and buy some pesto and pine nuts to make the next bread. Will report back when that is done. Unfortunately I don't think I will get it done for this challenge.

Click here to go back to the HBin5 BRead Challenge.

Happy Baking and Eating!