Category Archives: baking

Homemade Bagels

April 14, 2014 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

My favorite bagels in Alaska come from LuLu’s in Fairbanks. That’s a six-hour drive from Anchorage and sometimes I crave a good rosemary bagel! I’ve blogged about bagels in the past, but I have to post the recipe I made tonight because it was near perfect. Homemade bagel heaven. Crusty and salty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.

The recipe hails from an unassuming corner of the internet — HubPages.com. It contains few ingredients and the steps are simple. I tweaked the ingredients and process ever so slightly, which is why I’m posting it. I will forget how I made them if I don’t!

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbs. sugar

1.5 tsp. salt

1 Tbs. vegetable oil

2 tsp. yeast (not instant rise)

1.25-1.5 cups warm water

2 Tbs. chopped fresh rosemary (optional)

Coarse salt (optional)

Directions:

Place all the dry ingredients plus the oil in a Kitchen Aid mixer. With the hook attachment turn the machine onto a medium setting. Slowly pour in the water and wait for it to be fully incorporated into dough before adding all the water. If the dough is too dry, add the remaining quarter cup water. Knead the dough on a floured surface for about five minutes. Place back in the mixer bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled in size, about 1.5 hours.

Once risen, remove the dough and split into eight even-sized balls. This is where I incorporated the chopped rosemary. Roll each ball into a snake, about 8 inches long, folding in the rosemary as you go. Overlap the ends to make a bagel shape and carefully roll the the seam part of the bagel back and forth till it’s combined and sealed.

Form the rest of your bagels and set them on the Silpat-lined or greased baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. When the water is boiling, gently set a few bagels at a time into the pot, being sure not to overcrowd. Boil for one minute, then flip the bagels and boil another minute. Using tongs, remove the bagels and place them back on the baking sheet. Sprinkle liberally with coarse salt. Boil the remaining bagels. Place baking sheet in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, turning the sheet around halfway through. Let cool completely.

Slice, toast, butter and enjoy the bagely goodness.

baby, baking, Uncategorized

Baby Craft: Homemade Teething Biscuits

January 23, 2013 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

Jack is getting into gnawing. He’s got two tiny bottom teeth and pretty much anything he gets his mitts on will get gnawed: the coffee table, my W-2 sitting on the coffee table, day-old floor apple bits, etc. I recently visited an old friend whose daughter was sucking on a little brown slab. She seemed to be going to town on it. When I asked her what it was she told me it was a teething biscuit she had baked herself.

I was intrigued, so I decided to give it a whirl. Jack loved it. He dedicated 10 whole minutes of gnawing to one biscuit and he only chewed up half of it. One batch made about two dozen little rectangular cookies. They are hard as a rock, but that’s perfect because they won’t fall apart while your baby is slobbering all over it.

The recipe my friend sent me called for whole milk, but since I still haven’t fed my 9 month old cow’s milk, I decided to try it with breast milk. It was kind of funny baking with my own milk, but that ensures baby gets some homegrown nutrients in every gummy bite. It also calls for unsulphured molasses, which is a decent source of calcium, magnesium and iron.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup unsulphured molasses

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1.5 cups white flour

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

Note: you can use any combination of whole wheat and white flours. I used half and half. Experiment with different types of flours, if you dare.

Directions:

Mix together the wet ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add the flours to the bowl and combine till a tough dough forms. Knead the ball for about 5 minutes on a floured surface. If your dough is flaky and dry, add a little bit of water. Knead till the dough is smoothish. It should be pretty tough, but hold together well. Wrap in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll out your dough till it’s a rectangle about 1/4-inch thick (I didn’t measure at all). If the dough doesn’t stay together very easily, add a teaspoon of water and fold the dough back on itself and re-roll it out. It was tough to roll it, but luckily this dough has no elasticity, so it will stay in the shape you make it.

Cut the dough into 1 x 2.5-inch rectangles and place them on a baking sheet. Cover with foil and let sit for 15 minutes. Uncover and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before storing. I placed them in a Ziploc in my freezer so they’ll keep longer.

Good luck with teething!

baking, dessert, recipes

Lemon Almond Quick Bread

April 16, 2012 alaskaknitnat 3 Comments

I don’t bake much. That seems to require a little more precision than normal cooking, where you mix flavors together. With baking everything has to be just right or things come out too dense or too dry and crumbly.

But after my second successful attempt at making almond milk I was left with a quantity of byproduct — almond meal, which I dried in the oven and stored in a plastic container.

So I decided to venture into the baking world. I looked up various recipes using almond meal and came across one with so few ingredients I didn’t think I could screw it up. It was for a quick bread. I like the word quick. It makes me think “less effort.”

I actually wanted a little more zing in my bread, so I added some lemon zest. Also, I didn’t have enough almond meal so I subbed white flour for the remaining I needed. When I mixed everything together it was really thick and pasty, so I decided to add some of my own almond milk to make it more dough-like. For the yogurt I used my very own concoction of honey yogurt I made earlier in the week. I also wanted some sweetness, so I put in some honey.

Success! This dessert bread came out moist and flavorful. I think I’ll make it every time I make almond milk.

To make the almond meal yourself, just follow this recipe for almond milk and save the almond grounds. Spread the grounds on a cookie sheet and bake in a 275-degree oven for 45 minutes, or until the grounds are dried out.

Almond meal after straining out the almond milk

Place the dried meal in a food processor and process till it’s as fine as you can get it, sort of like corn meal.

Otherwise, just buy almond meal or flour!

Lemon Almond Quick Bread

Ingredients:
2 cups almond meal or flour
1.5 cups white flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
3 eggs
1 cup greek yogurt
1/4 cup melted butter
zest of one lemon
2/3 cups almond milk
1-2 Tbs. honey

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bread loaf pan. Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Combine the wet ingredients in a medium bowl then add to the dry ingredients. Pour batter into the bread pan and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Let cool on a drying rack then slice up and serve with butter and jam.