Granini's French Bread

Granini's French Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

Trust me. Make two Loaves.

2 cups + 4 Tablespoons warm water

4 ½ teaspoons yeast (or 2 packages)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

4 teaspoons salt

6 cups flour, divided

Hi there.

Sorry for the terrible lack of posting. It's been a bit rough over here. But I have a tiny reprieve, and I had a minute, so I thought I'd post my newest favorite recipe. Plus I'm going to make the bread tonight, so it seemed like the right time to post the recipe!

I snagged the recipe off of Pinterest, but when I went back to grab the reference, the post had been stolen! Snagged off of Pinterest; commandeered and stolen and reposted by someone else claiming the recipe was their's. It's not. I was aghast. Shame on them.

The original recipe came from TheMamasGirls, but their website is officially down, and I can't give you a link to their website, but let me just say, thank you to these lovely folks for such an AMAZING recipe with incredibly easy directions. May they have a wonderful day today, and each and every time I use this recipe (and anyone else uses it) as my way of saying thank you to them. 

And may all their lights be green on their way home.

The first time I made this recipe, we were all stunned at how well it turned out. French bread is something that requires negotiation and preferences. This is not a recipe for baguettes, which are thinner and longer, and have a nice crispy crust on the outside and a chewy crust on the inside with a lovely soft middle. I have a recipe for those on this website somewhere...

This French bread is the kind you use to make garlic bread. Or to slather with salted butter and eat while hot. Or cold. Or to make a small sandwich with. Or a grilled sammie. Or with which to make french toast in the morning should you have leftovers. hahahaha. As if you'll have leftovers.

Some people like a hard crust. Some people like a soft crust. I was looking for a loaf that would cut beautifully, that could be easily sliced, that would have a lovely, white middle; a bread that could be used for garlic bread to accompany my fav lasagna, as well as something I could serve alongside of soup. Sometimes cheesy biscuits and homemade rolls just aren't quite what you're looking for when it comes to a nice bread accompaniment. This loaf was so unbelievably amazing that we snarfed down the entire thing, and I completely forgot to take a picture.

When it was time to make the loaves a second time, the recipe had been snagged off of Pinterest, commandeered and stolen and I was aghast. See above.

So here's my scribbled notes from what I remember of this amazing recipe. I will come back and add in a picture and my fine-tuned notes as soon as I make it again tonight. Trust me, this one's worth it!!

(Here's the recipe for one loaf:)

French Bread (single loaf)

(Again, why are you making only one loaf? You should make two. Trust me.)

1 cup + 2 Tablespoons warm water

2 ¼ teaspoons yeast (or 1 package)

1 teaspoon brown sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

3 cups flour, divided
and for the top before baking:
1 egg + 1 Tablespoon milk

French Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Trust me. Make two Loaves.

2 cups + 4 Tablespoons warm water

4 ½ teaspoons yeast (or 2 packages)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

4 teaspoons salt

6 cups flour, divided
and for the top before baking:
1 egg + 1 Tablespoon milk

Pour the warm water into a large bowl and sprinkle the yeast over the water. Add the brown sugar and the oil. Allow the mixture to set until it turns bubbly and foamy (about 5 minutes).

Add all the salt (AND STIR REALLY WELL), and half of the flour and stir. Wait 10 minutes.

Add ½ a cup of flour and stir. Wait ten minutes.

Continue this process of adding ½ cup of flour and waiting 10 minutes until all the flour has been incorporated.

Knead the dough for 5 full minutes, until it is lovely and not sticky and feels just about perfect.

Shape the dough into two loaves (or one -- you fool! why did you only make one?!?). Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet and put each of the two loaves onto the parchment paper.

Slice the top of the bread in three generous slashes to allow the bread to grow without ripping the dough.

Place the loaves in a slightly warm oven (or proof the bread) for ½ an hour.

Bring the bread out of the oven and heat the oven to 375℉.

Whisk an egg with 1 tablespoon of milk. With a pastry brush, brush the top of the loaves of bread until they're fully covered. This will allow your bread to have a soft, but firm, crust. Chewy, not crunchy. Perfect for garlic bread. Or eating. With butter. Vats and vats of salted butter. Mmmmmm.

After the oven is hot, place the bread in the middle of the rack 

and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy!!

(Garlic Bread helpful hints:)

If you're going to make garlic bread, as soon as the bread has cooled enough to handle it, or even the next day -- if you have bread left, hahahaha, which you won't, warm up a stick of unsalted butter in the microwave until it's nice and soft but not completely melted. Crush 2 or 3 cloves of garlic. Sprinkle in some parmesan cheese and some basil or oregano. Stir. Slice your bread into even slices. Give the two heels to your favorite kids. Evenly divide the garlic butter between your slices. Put the butter smothered bread onto some tin foil and cover completely. Pop the bread in the oven at 350℉ for 30 minutes or so. I usually pop the bread into the oven around the same time that I pop my lasagna in the oven. If my lasagna is going to cook for longer, I wait until the 30 minute mark so that they come out at the same time. If my lasagna is going to be baking for less time, then I pop them both in at the same time. You get the idea.

If you're in a big hurry, you can slice your bread in half length wise, rather than in traditional slices, smother the bread with garlic butter, and broil it in the oven. That works too. :)

Should have let it bake about 5 more minutes. It was ever so slightly underdone. Well, alas, something to fix for the next time I make it. Which, to be honest, will probably be later this week. Because... YUM.

* * * * *

I not only bake and cook, I write murder mysteries too!

Both books are available in paperback and kindle versions

Diamonds for Diamond 
(Book 1 in the Jack Diamond Mystery series)
and
No One Noticed

(Book 2 in the Jack Diamond Mystery Series)

* * * * *

Granini's Ratatouille

Granini's Ratatouille

A beautiful main dish for your vegetarian guests on Thanksgiving!

Ingredients:

Vegetarian spaghetti sauce*
Alfredo sauce*
1 zucchini
1 onion
1 eggplant
1 yellow squash
1 red pepper
2 or 3 large potatoes
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

Make a vegetarian spaghetti sauce. If you need a recipe, you can find my homemade tomato sauce recipe (using tomatoes from the garden) here, or you can see below, where I cheat. And no, I don't use jarred spaghetti sauce.

Make an Alfredo sauce. Yeah yeah, I know you're supposed to make a Bechamel sauce. However, I thought that tasted really bland, and I like my Alfredo sauce, so I made that instead, and it was a hit. I put a quick version of my recipe below.

Using a mandoline (because oh my it makes everything SO much easier than thinly slicing everything by hand), slice up the vegetables into similar widths.

I parboiled the potatoes in boiling hot salted water for about 4 minutes or so, just to take the edge off. It helps.

Then, assemble!

Spray your baking dish with olive oil. Line the bottom with a heavy layer of spaghetti sauce. Then pour over a nice thick layer of Alfredo sauce. Then, in a circular pattern, place your vegetables around the rim of the bowl, alternating vegetables as you go. Continue all the way around until you make it to the center. Drizzle olive oil over the entire thing. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle parmesan cheese across the top.

Bake at 350º for about 35 minutes or so. I usually pop it in the oven the same time I pop in my cornbread dressing.

 Bake until bubbly and slightly brown on top.

Enjoy!

It is truly a beautiful, and delicious dish for your vegetarian guests.

The only challenging part is making sure your vegetarian guests have a chance to serve themselves before everyone else tries digs in and gobbles the rest of it up.

For those of you who like pictures, here you go!

Enjoy!

Granini's Spaghetti Sauce
If you want to make the tomato sauce from scratch, see my recipe here

1 can (28 oz) Hunt's tomato sauce

1 can (10 oz) Hunt's tomato purée

1 can (10 oz) Hunt's tomato paste

1 onion, large, diced

1 zucchini, medium, diced

1/2 an eggplant, skinned (I just slice the purple part off), diced (optional)

6 mushrooms, diced

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and squished in garlic press

2 Tablespoons olive oil

bay leaf

2 Tablespoons oregano

2 Tablespoons basil

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

In a large pot, pour in olive oil and garlic and simmer over medium heat for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add in each of the veggies and stir frequently.  Sauté until veggies are soft and fragrant.  Pour in tomato sauce and stir.  Allow the sauce to simmer for 1/2 an hour.  Add in spices and turn heat down to simmer for another 10 minutes.

(optional:)  Ladle the sauce into a blender in small batches, and pour the smooth sauce into a large bowl.  Continue to blend and pour until all the sauce has been blended completely.

Taste sauce and add salt & pepper as needed.  Enjoy!

I make my sauce ahead of time and either freeze it, or can it in wee single serving sized jars so that my kiddo can make wee little English Muffin pizzas for snack time. Or I can have a single serving dish of spaghetti for a quick and easy dinner when I'm on my own. If you're making Ratatouille for Thanksgiving, feel free to make your spaghetti sauce on Monday or Tuesday, put it in a sealed container, and let it just sit in the fridge until Thursday. Then when it comes time to make your ratatouille, all you need to do is prep your veggies, make a quick Alfredo, and pop that sucker in the oven.

If you're in a huge hurry, I suppose you could buy jarred spaghetti sauce (gasp!!), but don't you dare buy jarred Alfredo. That's just not okay.

Granini's Alfredo Sauce

3 Tablespoons salted butter

3 Tablespoons flour

1 clove minced garlic

2 to 3 Tablespoons (no more than 1/4 cup) white wine (optional)*

1 to 2 cups of milk or 1/2 and 1/2

salt and pepper

1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/3 cup grated sharp (or extra sharp) white cheddar cheese

In a large surface pan, melt the butter on low heat. Add in the garlic, and allow it to cook for just a minute or so. Add in the flour, and cook for 3 or 4 minutes. Do not allow to turn brown. At this point, you may add in the white wine, if you care for that sort of thing. It is absolutely optional. Slowly add in one to two cups of milk or 1/2 and 1/2. You want the sauce to be on the thinner side, but not too thin. I prefer to err on the side of too thick, but that's just me. Turn the heat up to medium, and allow the sauce to simmer and thicken. Add in salt and pepper, the parmesan, and the grated white sharp cheddar cheese. Stir. Taste. Add a wee bit more salt if necessary. Lick the spoon. Wash the spoon. Dip it back in there and taste it again, just for good measure. Lick the spoon again. mmmm.

* * * * *

Find other tasty Thanksgiving Dinner dishes here:

And tasty pie recipes here:

* * * * *

I not only bake and cook, I write murder mysteries too!

Both books are available in paperback and kindle versions

Diamonds for Diamond 
(Book 1 in the Jack Diamond Mystery series)
and
No One Noticed

(Book 2 in the Jack Diamond Mystery Series)

GranNini's Spaghetti Sauce Extraordinaire

GranNini's Spaghetti Sauce Extraordinaire

The only good thing that has come from this excessive heat wave this summer, is a bumper crop of amazing, gorgeous tomatoes in my wee garden.

This year, after making several dozen batches of fresh salsa and guacamole, and STILL having way too many tomatoes left over, I decided to try my hand at making tomato sauce & paste from scratch.  I typically make my sauce using a combination of the following:

But this year, I transformed this                                                      to this

 

So that I could transform my tomato sauce to this:

GranNini's Spaghetti Sauce Extraordinaire

So here's how I did it:

First things first:  I washed all of my lovely tomatoes.

I cut 2/3 of the tomatoes into quarters and placed onto two large jellyroll pans.  I cut an onion into large chunks and placed that with each of the jellyroll pans full of tomatoes and baked at 375 for about 25 minutes.

I removed the onions and put them into a bowl.  (I'll add these back in to the simmering tomato sauce later on.)

Then I took my baked tomatoes and put them into my food mill.  I stirred until the only things left were the seeds and the skins.  (In the picture below on the right, there is still a lot of juice left)

This is my new toy.  The Oxo Good Grips Food Mill.  I love it.

The foodmill sits right on top of my other large pot, and I stirred the juiced directly into it.

Keep stirring until nothing is left but the seeds and skins.  And do NOT forget to scrape all the tomato goodness from the bottom of the foodmill.  Yum!

Then I poured all of this lovely sauce back into the jellyroll pan, and baked it at the oven (375 F) for 2 hours, stirring every 1/2 hour or so.

The sauce will thicken up considerably and reduce in volume.  Mmmm!

 Meanwhile, with the remaining 1/3 of the tomatoes, I cut them into quarters and placed them into a large sauce pan, and put them on to simmer for about 12 minutes.

Again, I poured the sauce into my foodmill to remove all seeds and skins, and strained the sauce into my large saucepan.

 I poured all the leftover onions from the jelly roll pans into the sauce.  Then I allowed the sauce to simmer for the remaining 1 1/2 hours or so that the purée in the oven was baking.   For the finishing touches, I added 1/3 of a cup of red wine vinegar, 1/4 cup sugar, and 2 teaspoons of salt to the tomatoes to bring out the flavors.

When the purée was finished in the oven, I scraped out it of the jellyroll pan and poured it directly into the saucepan of simmering tomato sauce.

Now, here's how I transformed my tomato sauce to spaghetti sauce:

In my second large saucepan, I sautéed onions, zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms and garlic until they were all soft and smelled yummy.  About 5 minutes or so.  In the past I have also added green beans, carrots, and celery to my sautéed veggies.  But alas, food allergies have kept my sauces and recipes clean and simple (but never boring!).

  

Then I added the sautéed veggies to my sauce, I added spices (oregano, basil, a bay leaf, salt & pepper to taste) and allowed the flavors to meld for about 1/2 an hour.

Then I used my jedi mind trick to transform the sauce into a smooth texture.  Turns out my kiddos hate spaghetti sauce with texture.  They also hate zucchini and eggplant.  BUT, when I blend it all together, they have NO idea there is zucchini or eggplant in it, and they love the smooth and flavorful sauce.

So off to the blender went the sauce, and voilà! my lovely homemade spaghetti sauce was finished!!

 I poured my sauce into containers and froze them.

Now, is my tomato sauce as tasty as Hunt's?  Yes!  It was quite the yum.  AND, it made my spaghetti sauce taste all that much better, since my sauce was made from fresh tomatoes and contains no weird ingredients you can't pronounce.   Was it worth all the time & effort?  Maybe, maybe not.  BUT, my spaghetti sauce has nothing in it I'm allergic to, and no artificial ingredients.  And, I have the added bonus of being able to make homemade lasagna and spaghetti throughout the year quick as a wink, without having to slave over the stove for an hour making the sauce from scratch.

Recipes:

Tomato Sauce

A whole mess o'tomatoes, washed and quartered.
(I used roughly 75 small homegrown tomatoes.  See photo for reference.)
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1/3 cup red wine vineagar
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt (more if desired)

Directions:

* Wash, cut, and quarter all the tomatoes.  Place 1/3 of the tomatoes onto a large jelly roll pan, and repeat with another 1/3 of the tomatoes.  Add one onion to each pan.  Bake in the oven for 25 minutes at 375 F.

* Place 1/3 of the tomatoes in a large pot and simmer for 13 minutes, or until the tomatoes have mostly turned to liquid.

* Place a food mill over a large pot or bowl.

* Pour one batch of the tomatoes (skins, seeds and all) into the food mill and grind completely until nothing is left but the skins and seeds.  Don't forget to scrape the bottom of the food mill.

*Repeat the previous step until all of the tomatoes have been run through the food mill.

* Pour 1/3 of the tomato sauce into one of the jelly roll pans and return to the oven.  Pour 1/3 of the tomato sauce into the other jelly roll pan and return to the oven.  Bake for 2 hours, stirring every 1/2 hour or so, at 320 F.

* Pour 1/3 of the tomato sauce back into the large pot and cook on simmer for two hours, stirring every 1/2 hour or so.

*Combine all of the sauces together into one large pot.  Add in vinegar, sugar, and salt to taste.

At this point, the sauce may be used, canned or frozen.  I, however, like to transform it directly into spaghetti sauce and store it that way.  I don't tend to use tomato sauce for anything except spaghetti sauce, but some people like to use tomato sauce for other recipes.

Helpful hint:  If you have much less time, or wish to use up much less effort and energy, simply cut & quarter all the tomatoes, pop them in a giant pot on the stove, simmer for 14 minutes.  Then run them through the food mill, return to the stove to simmer and bubble for 2 hours.  Then add your vinegar, sugar, and salt, and you're done.  MUCH easier.  MUCH less mess. MUCH less time consuming.  I take the road less traveled because I like the added subtle flavor of the roasted tomatoes.  I'm not sure it's REALLY worth the extra effort for such a large vat of sauce, but I only do this twice a year, so I go the extra mile.  Or two.

Spaghetti Sauce

1/2 batch of tomato sauce

-or-

If you're not making your own tomato sauce, then use 

1 can (28 oz) Hunt's tomato sauce

1 can (10 oz) Hunt's tomato purée

1 can (10 oz) Hunt's tomato paste

1 onion, large, diced

1 zucchini, medium, diced

1/2 an eggplant, skinned (I just slice the purple part off), diced

6 mushrooms, diced

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and squished in garlic press

2 Tablespoons olive oil

bay leaf

2 Tablespoons oregano

2 Tablespoons basil

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

In a large pot, pour in olive oil and garlic and simmer over medium heat for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add in each of the veggies and stir frequently.  Sautée until veggies are soft and fragrant.  Pour in tomato sauce and stir.  Allow the sauce to simmer for 1/2 an hour.  Add in spices and turn heat down to simmer for another 10 minutes.

(optional:)  Ladle the sauce into a blender in small batches, and pour the smooth sauce into a large bowl.  Continue to blend and pour until all the sauce has been blended completely.

Taste sauce and add salt & pepper as needed.  Enjoy!




* * * * *