Monday, June 02, 2008

New Discovery

In my travels on the net I have found a cool new blog called The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. Mmmmm, such gorgeous pics, the recipes look awesome and I think I'll be finding lots of recipes to try out from her blog, the one that appeals most to me right now is the Thai Forbidden Rice salad.

It's made with black rice and I have some but haven't had a clue as to what to do with it. Sometimes I pick things up in the Asian grocery store and then come home to look for something to do with it...yes, yes, I do mean as in look for a recipe to use whatever food product I've bought. It isn't like I string raw black rice around the house for the hell of it, though it might make a pretty cool mixed media painting.

Hrmmmmm, decorating with rice...will have to give that some thought.

I has a flaver....


..... and it's called bread. I finally got my new Tefal bread maker and boy oh boy does is work like a charm!

The hardest part is getting a good recipe though, so I thought I'd share. This recipe will work in at least 3 ways - with herbs, with milk, with water - so you can try it and see what you think.

I'm going to call this Kimmie's Bread because I've made some changes to suit me and it works all 3 ways, it's a superb loaf of bread, though smaller than most at 600 grams. My bread maker has settings for 750g or 1000g.

Anywho, here's the recipe

Kimmie's Bread:

235 ml milk or water (I think milk makes a better crust)
45 ml extra virgin Olive oil
6 g sugar
9g salt
.4 g Italian seasoning
.5 g black pepper (preferably freshly ground)
3 g dried rosemary
340 g bread flour
6 g dried yeast

place on white bread cycle and I put mine on medium crust as the light seems to be slightly underdone. Place all ingredients into bread maker in that order, making sure that the salt and sugar do NOT touch the yeast as it won't rise properly.

To make a plain loaf of white bread, just leave out the herbs but still keep the salt and sugar. If you use milk, use whole or full cream milk as skim or light will make the bread too dense.

This is the most awesome bread I've ever made! It tastes a bit like Carrabba's bread with the herbs already in it and all you need to do is spread a little butter on it or dip into olive oil to enjoy.

Tonight I made a meatball sub with it by toasting the bread (cut slightly thicker than a normal size slice - about 1/2 inch thick), then heated my meatballs in the nuker, spread leftover spaghetti sauce onto the bread (also had been heated in nuker), topped with meatballs cut in half - IKEA meatballs are a freezer staple in our house - roll up the sides and munch away!!!!!


Talk about yummay! Twas awesome in the most awesome way. Some days I rock.



PS: The picture is one I gleaned from the net just cuz it looked so yummy, that is not my bread...just so ya know, ya know?