Hassle-Free Pull-Apart Garlic Loaf

It's the little things that get lost in the shuffle.
In the midst of holiday crazy, short-cuts are often where it's at.

We know. We've been there. 

And we confess, we've fallen prey to less-than-domestic-goddess options on numerous occasions. 

We order carryout for dinner instead of cooking. We opt for goods we picked up at the bakery instead of the dessert we planned to make for company. We buy those frozen dinner rolls at the supermarket...

YES!  We've done it too.
But, thanks to quick, easy recipes like this, I'm not sure we'll have to -- at least not around the holidays.

First - the ingredients are basic. Flour, yeast, butter, milk, cheese. You keep all of those on hand, don't you?

Second - it take about 15 minutes to prep the ingredients (which make two loaves/enough for a crowd). Totally do-able.

Third - it can be baked right alongside your main course, or even during the time it takes for your prime rib roast, turkey, or ham rests.

Fourth -- it's seriously delicious.

So, before you pull out that bag of rolls from the supermarket, try your hand at this easy and delicious pull-apart bread recipe.

Pull-Apart Garlic Loaf
This cheesy, buttery pull-apart loaf is the perfect complement to weekend dinners or holiday meals. The garlicky butter mixture gives the bread a distinctly savory bite, and the Romano cheese adds a slightly salty umami flavor. We like it best served warm from the oven.

©BURP!

Savory Bacon & Cheese Breakfast Bread

Patisseries in France have been making savory egg breads for ages, offering them up to eager patrons to take with them on weekend picnics on the countryside.

I don't know about you -- and maybe it's my winter doldrums talking -- but I love the idea of packing up a chunk of savory quick bread, some fruit, a book, and a bottle of wine and heading off to the park for an afternoon of lazing about.

But, since a field trip to the park isn't exactly practical for Wisconsin in February, the next best thing is to make this bread and serve it up as a no-fuss breakfast.

You might have to give up the green grass and the warm sun for a cup of hot coffee and a seat on the couch, but you'll enjoy the flavors in this bread just as much.

Eggs give this bread a rich yellow color, while sweet red peppers , smoky bacon, and Cheddar cheese give it all the flavors of a delicious breakfast omelet.

It’s perfect for breakfast, brunch, or as a hearty afternoon snack. Bake it up in muffin tins for individual breads that make the perfect take-along breakfast for busy mornings.

Savory Bacon & Cheese Breakfast Bread
Note: This recipe can be easily doubled.

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Give Yourself Time to Sprout: Cybros Bread #Giveaway

  Patience is a virtue. Especially if you're a new food blogger.

The moment you hit PUBLISH on that first post, the waiting game begins.  You wonder if anyone is reading. You check the stats on your blog obsessively. You pump your content out on Facebook and Twitter and Stumbleupon. And you wait.... and... silence.

Like a seed sprouting in a garden, building an audience takes time. Most bloggers don't become overnight sensations. In fact, many bloggers (ourselves included) have been blogging for years without hitting pay dirt.

And that's OK. Because good things take time. And great things are worth waiting for.

It's a little bit like baking bread.  And even moreso like baking bread with sprouted grains.

These days, sprouted grains are all the rage. Known for their superior nutritional content and advanced digestibility, you'll see them in products on shelves, not only at health food stores, but also large corporate retailers. If you didn't know better, you'd think sprouted grains were something new.

But, a Milwaukee-area wholesale bakery called Cybros - The Sprouted Bakehouse has been specializing in breads made with good-for-you sprouted grain since 1969. In fact, it's the only sprouted grain bakery in the Midwest. 

We had the opportunity to visit Cybros this year and chat with the owners, Jenny and James Marino.  They walked us through the sprouted grain process and, in the meantime, taught us a lot about the role of patience.

Flour, by nature, is a dry, flavorless substance. Most healthy breads made from regular flour require significant amounts of fat, sugar and salt in order to make them palatable. But, not sprouted grain products.

During the sprouting process, the complex carbohydrates in grains break down into simple sugars, and the proteins break down into amino acids; both are easier for the body to process. Sprouting neutralizes phytic acid – a substance present in grains – that inhibits absorption of nutrients. In addition, the sprouted grains have the advantage of being higher in protein and fiber, and lower in both carbohydrates and calories.

Cybros uses house-sprouted red wheat berries as a processed flour substitute. Because they're made from whole-wheat kernels, sprouted grain breads are an excellent source of whole grains. The process, along with the fact that Cybros bread contains no unrefined sugars, fats or preservatives, gives the product a natural advantage over breads made with traditionally milled flour.

An even bigger difference is apparent when it comes to flavor. Unlike their traditional whole grain counterparts, Cybros sprouted grain breads are surprisingly soft, with a flavor that is both earthy and nutty. And, unlike their West Coast competitors, Cybros packages and sells its products fresh, rather than frozen.

"The biggest challenge in using freshly ground sprouted grains to make our products comes in forecasting orders," Marino says. "We don't have the luxury of opening bags of flour when orders are surprisingly high. The die is cast days in advance when we determine how much grain to set."

In other words, patience is a virtue.
__________________________________________
You've been pretty patient yourself, reading all the way to the end of this post.  But, we're happy to say that there's a pretty nice pay-off. It just so happens that this is the fifth of five... make that seven 5th Burp!-Day giveaways taking place on the blog during the month of June. So come back often, and come hungry!

This time, ONE lucky reader will win an assortment of Cybros bread products, along with 2 Cybros t-shirts and matching water bottles.

To enter, just leave us a comment telling us whether you've ever tried Cybros breads before.  For bonus entries, give @healthybakery a follow on Twitter or a LIKE on their Facebook page.  Be sure to leave us a comment letting us know you did just that.

You'll have until NOON on June 30, 2012 to enter.  Winners will be chosen at random and notified by email, so please leave your email addy with your comment if it's not included with your Blogger profile. Entries from the U.S. only, please.

As an added bonus, since June is Dairy Month, all entrants will ALSO be entered to win a grand prize assortment of hand-selected Wisconsin cheeses.

Full Disclosure: This giveaway is sponsored by Cybros - The Sprouted Bakehouse. They provided us with the product for our giveaway. However, all opinions expressed in this post are our own.

©BURP! Where Food Happens

Sourdough Focaccia with Olives & Rosemary

I killed them both in one fell swoop.
Both were tragic deaths. Unfair. And sudden. And utterly inelegant. And I mourned them both privately and on Facebook.

I now maintain that it was a matter of simple cross-contamination -- yeast meets beast --but I spent weeks wondering about the untimely fate of both my sourdough starter (of 7+ years) and my kombucha scoby (which I'd maintained without fail since early last spring).  I also acted quickly to find replacements.

The scoby was easy enough to replace, since I've given out quite a number of baby scobies to friends & neighbors all over town (and I seem to have developed a waiting list of others who are still awaiting the chance to own a 'booch baby of their own).  But the sourdough...

Fortunately for me, R from Cakewalk was passionately working on one of her latest obsessions -- sourdough culture derived from the fermentation of grapes (a la Nancy Silverton). And she was kind enough to offer me a bit of her brand new starter.

It was gorgeous stuff -- smelling of yeast and ferment and the ever-so-slight perfume of grapes (or was that my consistently overactive imagination?). In any case, it was a wonder of a living food. And I couldn't wait to take it for a test drive.

Interestingly enough, Peef was craving foccacia.  So, we planned a lovely casual weekend dinner of cheese, wine, fruit... and a lovely sourdough experiment.

The dough mixed together beautifully.  I used a mixture of bread flour and a half and half blend of all purpose and white whole wheat flour.  And I gave the loaf a nice long rise (nearly 8 hours total) -- to ensure that the wild yeast had an opportunity to thoroughly develop.

When the dough was finished rising, I hand shaped it on a piece of parchment paper, allowed it to rest, and then put together the toppings. Olives... rosemary...thinly sliced garlic... I hoped that this would be the focaccia of my (sometimes easy to please of late) dreams.

I watched the loaf in the oven as it slowly lifted -- as if levitating -- air flowing through every bubbly crevice. And, as a crust formed along the outer edges of the dough, I saw the bread take form and color beautifully.

The final product was crisp & airy, with a beautifully tender exterior pleasantly dappled with air tunnels.  Although it would have been perfect for sandwiches, we sliced it simply and ate it in big, manly chunks -- spread with tomato basil jam and followed with sheep's milk cheese and a swig of wine.

It was love at first bite - which is exactly why I feel the need to share.  If you can manage to get your hands on a bit of sourdough starter, you must try this recipe.


Sourdough focaccia with olives & rosemary

Oh!  And before I forget -- stay tuned later this week as we write about our adventures with locally made spice blends... I don't think I'd be giving too much away if I suggested there might be a giveaway involved...

Want more? Read Lo's latest ruminations at FOODCrush, her Milwaukee Magazine blog.


©BURP! Where Food Happens

Learning to Lurve Liver: Three Spice Liver Pate

And it's time again for the Daring Cooks Challenge. Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

My first inclination when I read about this challenge was to suggest we create something completely decadent -- a country duck pate with port wine, maybe? or something with beef and wild mushrooms?

But, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that we really needed to be a little bit more daring.  We knew some DC cooks, like Audax Artifex would shock us with delicacies like head cheese and chicken feet pate -- and both of those things would be awesome to tackle.  But, we knew we didn't have time for that.   What we did have time to do, however, was to confront one of Peef's most long-standing aversions:  liver.

I won't lie.  Liver has never been a particular favorite of mine either. But, I never had quite the aversion to it that Peef does. His lack of affection for beef liver goes way back -- to one evening when his mother decided to make up a batch of something that she called "little meats" (i.e. pieces of fried beef liver sliced up into tiny little steaks). According to the story Peef has told, everyone was tentatively eating their little meats ... when all of a sudden his sister stopped dead, dropped her fork, and said: "Ew. This is liver, isn't it?"  The meal was ruined from that point forward.  Needless to say, Paul has been hesitant about eating liver ever since.

So, after discussing the matter for a bit, we decided that liver pate might be an interesting way to reintroduce the concept.  We also decided to make the King Arthur French bread recipe that was included as part of the challenge, since I've been looking for a tried and true batard recipe.

The process for the bread went swimmingly -- from the poolish (starter), through two full risings, to the baking.

The bread didn't brown up quite as well as we'd hoped, but the loaves were pleasantly hollow sounding when tapped, and the crust was exquisite.

It wasn't until we bit into our first bite of freshly baked bread that we realized I forgot to add the salt!  The bread had a pleasantly wheaty and yeasty flavor... but bread without salt is a bit of a disappointment. 

Considering the bread didn't turn out quite as expected, we had high hopes for the liver pate. We decided to try the three spiced liver pate, a tried and true recipe Evelyn and Valerie had suggested. For the recipe, we were required us to purchase beef liver, pork belly, and ground pork.  The meats were chopped and pureed with cinnamon, cumin, coriander, garlic, and shallots. 

The puree was then mixed with egg and cognac and layered in a baking dish with bay leaves and bacon. Then, the pate was baked in a water bath for an hour and a half.

The pate smelled amazing when it came out of the oven -- spicy and smoky and somewhat complex. But, we managed to wait until it was cooled to enjoy it spread atop of some of our freshly baked (albeit salt-less) French bread.

Sadly, for as great as it smelled, the pate was a bit disappointing.  I thought the recipe was a bit heavy on the side of the cinnamon, and I felt I'd probably like the pate a bit better if it was made with a different combination of spices. Peef thought the flavors were interesting together, but not something that he'd necessarily seek out again.

On the bright side of things, the pate did make Peef think twice about his initial impressions of liver.  In fact,  he declared after eating his fill of the pate that I could make him liver and onions any time I wanted to!

So, the verdict?

We'll definitely be making French bread again (and adding salt next time).  And we'd love to try a different variation on the liver pate concept.  So, if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them our way!

RECIPES - June Daring Cooks Challenge
And don't forget to check out the submissions from other Daring Cooks!



©BURP! Where Food Happens

Mardi Gras: Christmas Past Bread Pudding

When Mardi Gras is upon us, I usually reach for my trusty jambalaya recipe. After all, it's February and we can use some nice spicy fare to warm us up. But, this year, I decided to opt for something on the sweeter side of things.

I happened to have a loaf of homemade stollen in the freezer. It was a loaf that we didn't have time to eat around the holidays, so it sat around on the counter getting stale. Before we realized it, the bread was dry and relatively unpleasant. But, we don't like to waste food. So, we wrapped it tightly in aluminum foil and tossed it into the freezer. Yes, there was a good chance it would get lost in there and never been seen again; but, there was also a pretty good chance that I'd find a use for it later.

Looks like later came earlier than expected.

I took the bread and diced it up (frosting and all), and threw it in the biggest bowl I could find.
I was feeling like a little bit of extra effort might be nice, so I threw a few cups of milk together with a scraped vanilla bean, and let that steep for a few minutes over medium heat.
I also poured some warmed whiskey over a 1/2 cup or so of raisins -- to plump them up and make them into little boozy flavor vehicles.
I whipped up a few eggs with some sugar and put them into the bowl with the bread, stirring so that the bread was evenly coated. I tossed the raisens in as well, with the residual whisky for good measure. When the milk & vanilla was steeped, I poured that over the top of everything and let it sit to soak for a few minutes before I poured it all into a greased baking dish. At that point, it looked something like this.
I like making my bread pudding bain marie style -- so I plopped the baking dish into one of my deeper baking pans, and poured in a few cups of boiling water.
Then, I closed the door and let the pudding bake for about an hour or so until the pudding was set and the top was nice and browned.
If I'm honest, I'll admit that I look forward to bread pudding more for the bourbon sauce than for the pudding itself. But, this particular batch of pudding didn't need it; it was moist and tender, and the frosting from the stollen offered bursts of sweetness in many of the nooks and crannies. We opted instead to sprinkle the warm pudding with a bit of whiskey and call it good.
If you have time for a bit of dessert after your Fat Tuesday feasting, maybe think about whipping up a batch of bread pudding. Here's my usual recipe.

Bread Pudding

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!


©BURP! Where Food Happens