photo from Annie’s Eats
Wanted to share two recipes I’ve tried recently and loved. Do you get in a rut in the kitchen? I do. Almost every week. I feel like last fall I totally lost my kitchen mojo. I was feeling very uninspired after the end of the summer tomatoes and the last basil leaf dropped.
I realized that the inspiration wasn’t just going to drop down on me in a flash of lightning with angels singing a heavenly chorus. I just needed to dust off the apron and get to it. My first adventure was overcoming my fear of baking with yeast. I’ve heard from a few seasoned yeast bakers that pizza dough was a good place to start. So, I went to one of my all time fave food blogs, Annie’s Eats. I love how Annie really shoots it straight with her instructions and opinions. She happened to have this wonderful pizza dough tutorial. And what do you know, if you just follow the directions, you end up with some slammin’ pizza dough. So slammin’ that we had it for dinner Tuesday (Annie’s Chicken Ranch Pizza), Friday (Calzones- Italian sausage, fresh spinach and kalamata olives) and Sunday (Leftover Calzone Toppings) that week. (then I was out of yeast- probably a good thing since pizza dough is so carb-o-licious!) I used a thermometer to check the temp on the warm water. It was warmer than the hottest water in my tap (I had to microwave it about 15 seconds) but not so hot that I couldn’t stick my finger in it and leave it there. And I did use bread flour. What was I so afraid of?
photo from Joy the Baker
My next culinary adventure was inspired by another awesome food blogger, Joy the Baker. I love her writing and her pictures. Her recipes are always a little off the beaten path. When I saw this Whole Wheat Molasses Bread, I immediately wanted to make it. Looked interesting. And healthy, kinda sorta (?)- and I had almost all the ingredients in my pantry. Except that the whole wheat flour I had in the tip-top-way-back of my pantry had expired two years ago. So my darling husband trotted off to the store to gather the necessities and we threw this together. And we just so happened to have a jar of Nutella to slather on top. It was awesome. The kids loved it. We finished the whole loaf in a day. It was great toasted with a little butter and honey for breakfast.
Click the links above for the recipes. Hope you like them as much as we did! What do you have cookin’ these days? What cooking fears did you have that you’ve conquered?
Man shall not live by bread alone,but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. ~Matthew 4:4
thebrokenbohemian.wordpress.com 
Yum! So glad the pizza dough was a hit – I always mean to store a stash in the freezer for food emergencies, but it never lasts more than a week before I think, “Ooh, I have pizza dough in the freezer, what kind should we make tonight?!” Current love is topped with the last of pesto that I made/froze this summer, artichokes, chicken, and mozzarella. I was the only one in the house who felt the love, however, which was just fine by me.
I put off trying quinoa for a while, but just tried it last week finally (I think I told you) and it was so good. I was put off by reading that I had to wash and love on it a little, but it was no big deal at all.
The bread does look good…might have to try that this weekend! I made Annie’s garlic knots this weekend and they were AWESOME. Crazy good. Dangerous.
Just found your blog – SOOOO excited that you made pizza dough and bread! I knew you could do it (you just should have believed me when I told you that a year ago!). Maybe now you can be the baker for ‘ladies pizza night’. Miss you all bunches – come up to DC sometime and visit!
Maia! You were my inspiration- you made it look so easy. We’ll wait to have pizza night til you can come back down to visit. Miss you, friend!
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