Tag Archives: cast iron

Life changing icebox dough

baking 16 Comments

A couple months ago I bought the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It’s nigh onto life changing.

Have you ever looked at the clock and realized it’s 5:00 and you were going to make a loaf of crusty bread for supper but now it’s too late? Never again.

Have you ever wished you could have really good homemade pizza at home but didn’t want to knead bread forever, and didn’t start no-knead pizza dough the night before? No problem.

Wish you could serve homemade yeast rolls to the family for supper tonight without calling on Sister Shubert? Done.

This is such an easy solution that it’s almost ridiculous: keep dough in the fridge. The end. It takes five minutes to mix it up, and keeps for two weeks. So what are you waiting for?

If you’re not sure you’ll use it all in two weeks, you can make a half portion of the recipe. I do this because only The Yankee and I will eat it (The Kiddo not so much), and I don’t want any to go to waste:

  • 3 1/4 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water*
  • 3/4 tbsp. yeast
  • 3/4 tbsp. salt

*If you’ve been straining yogurt and have some whey left you can use whey in place of water — a great way to add some protein and a little sourdough-like tang to the bread.

Mix all that together with a dough whisk, a wooden spoon, a mixer, or whatever. No kneading — you just want everything to be well combined. Put it in a container that’s not quite airtight: this 14 cup produce container with the insert removed is perfect for a half portion of the recipe, and is designed to let produce breathe a bit, so it’s become my designated dough container. After two hours at room temperature, move it to the fridge to chill.

Now go bread crazy! I use the dough for pizza, for crusty bread, for buttery dinner rolls, for hamburger buns, even monkey bread! Maybe some barbecue chicken pizza? Dust a little flour on a corner of your chilled dough and pull off a piece as big as you need. Shape it into a ball and let it rise for at least half an hour, but an hour is great if you have the time. Then bake and enjoy! No harder than cracking open a tube of bread with questionable ingredients, and worlds healthier.

Most configurations of the dough will do great at 400 degrees in the oven. Baking time will obviously depend on the size of the bread, but you want the internal temp to be about 190 degrees and the bread to be nicely browned.

I really do recommend picking up the book. It has many different variations of the recipe, and many uses for each recipe. It’s about $17 at Amazon right now, and well worth the price.

Enjoy it, and let me know what you make with it!

Krispy Kreme bread pudding

baking, dessert 18 Comments

With bathing suit season upon us, you may be thinking it’s time to lighten things up a bit. Try some grilled fish, some raw veggies, some fresh fruit.

Or you may be thinking that life is short, and you really should eat a big ol’ mess of Krispy Kreme bread pudding.

It’s always good to start with this:

If things go horribly wrong and you never even get a chance to cook, you still have two dozen donuts. And not just donuts — Krispy Kreme donuts. A gift from heaven.

The Kiddo’s Aunt Burgle was in town, and we have a tradition: our weekends together always include shopping (probably shoes), Cracker Barrel, Krispy Kremes and wine. Our days after our weekends together are spent wondering why our jeans are suddenly tight. But I digress.

So this weekend we thought we’d branch out and try something new with our KK donuts. We bought two dozen, leaving one to eat plain, just in case the pudding wasn’t great.

Our fears were unwarranted.

I looked at this recipe at Recipezaar, and this recipe from Paula Deen. The first one looked a little more involved, and we had to keep an eye on our assorted children, so we were hoping for super easy. The second recipe was easier, but Aunt Burgle’s sprouts weren’t fans of fruit cocktail or raisins, and we didn’t really think it appropriate to dish up rum butter sauce for a bunch of kids (we had grand delusions of sharing at the time). So in the end we winged it and went with:

  • 1 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, cut into chunks
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 7 oz (1/2 can) sweetened condensed milk
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon

To assemble:

  1. Preheat oven to 350
  2. Cut donuts into chunks and put in a large bowl
  3. Beat the eggs and add condensed milk, salt and cinnamon
  4. Pour egg mixture over donuts and let it sit about 30 minutes, stirring every so often
  5. Butter a small casserole dish and put donut mix in dish, uncovered
  6. Bake for 30 minutes or so until custard is mostly set

We wanted more donut than custard, and this was just that. Enough custard to hold the donuts together, but not so much that it overwhelmed the yummy KK flavor and texture.  This would be awesome served warm with vanilla ice cream!

We ate it warm that night. And then room temp later that night. And then cold for breakfast the next morning. Purely for research, of course, and I’m happy to report it was fabulous at all temperatures. I do hope you understand the sacrifices our hips we made for this research.

Cheeseburger pie

lunch, supper 6 Comments

We were drowning (drowning I say!) in frozen hamburger patties. And there are only so many burgers a girl can eat (no, really), so I decided to re-purpose some of the beef. And there was my big ol’ cast iron skillet, lying in neglect, not having been used since… um….  last night. For pizza. Um, anyway.

This is, obviously, an adaptation of the classic Bisquick recipe. 🙂

You will need:

  • 1 lb. ground beef
  • 1 onion — less or more, depending on the likelihood of smooching someone later; I used about 1/4 of an onion, maybe less
  • 1 cup shredded cheese (4 oz)
  • 1/2 cup AP flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp dry milk
  • 1 tbsp canola oil
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  1. Brown up the meat and onion, preferably in a cast iron skillet, and drain the grease out — I tilt the pan till any grease is on one side, then use a paper towel to blot it out
  2. Spread the meat and onion evenly in the bottom of your skillet (if you’re not using an oven-safe skillet, then spray a pie plate with non-stick spray and spread the meat in there)
  3. Sprinkle meat with cheese
  4. Using a fork, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, dry milk
  5. Drizzle in canola oil, then work it in with your fork till it looks crumbly
  6. To the flour mix, add milk and eggs and whisk together, then pour over meat/onion/cheese mix — since this was use-what-we’ve-got supper night, you’ll see some shredded mozzarella, some shredded colby jack and a few Kraft singles. It’s what we had! 🙂
  7. Bake pie at 400F for about 25 minutes or until knife inserted in the middle of the pie comes out clean

This was really yummy. Comfort food! If you don’t do it in a cast iron, this could easily be assembled and put in the fridge beforehand, too.

Pineapple cornbread

baking Leave a comment

Does this make me Sandra Lee?

My in-laws were in town and I wanted to make some cornbread to go with the tortilla soup. The Yankee likes his cornbread total Southern style, no foolin’ around with it.

The Yankee wasn’t here. 😉

So, in the names of convenience and experimentation, and inspired by a recipe a friend sent me.

I mixed up:

  • One box of Jiffy cornbread mix
  • Half a can of cream of corn
  • Half a can of diced pineapple (it’s what I had on hand) that I buzzed around in the food processor a bit till it was more like crushed pineapple.

Naturally, I baked it in a cast iron skillet, according to Jiffy package directions.

The end result:

It was great! The corn made it so, so, so moist (that’s right, I said moist), and the pineapple made it a little sweet. Yum! My in-laws declared it a two-thumbs-up dish, and The Yankee didn’t have to see his cornbread fooled around with. A win!