January is National Oatmeal Month!

I have no idea how or when this came about, but, if you're going to have National Oatmeal Month, I think January is a good time for it. Oatmeal is hearty and healthy--good qualities for winter and January resolutions.

I've never baked oatmeal bread before, so I think this is a good way to observe NOM.

Right now I can smell the fruits of my first effort. The bread in the oven smells like oatmeal cookie goodness.

Now out of the oven, here's what the bread looks like:

I am trying to wait for it to cool a bit before tasting it.

This recipe is from a bread book that my friends Velma and Len Dippold gave me. The recipes in Uncle John's Original Bread Book were collected by John Braue's family for generations. His father was a master bread baker in Hamburg before coming to this country in the late nineteenth century. It's been a long time since I've had a recipe book this fun to read!

The recipe is called Grossmutter's Golden-Sunrise Wheat or Oatmeal Brot. Obviously, I'm going with the oatmeal option.

I love my new book holder!

I sliced the bread:

It's slightly coarse, chewy, and, with just a hint of oatmeal, more flavorful than white bread. Delicious!

I also baked a whole wheat version. It smelled just as oatmeal-heavenly while baking.

I sliced it:

It's also slightly coarse, chewy, and, with just a hint of oatmeal, has a more complex flavor than regular whole wheat bread. Delicious!

Here's the recipe with my tweaks, because I don't use shortening in bread, I use instant dry yeast, I have dry milk (and water!) but not fresh milk, I'm using loaf pans instead of making round loaves, I know my oven, and I'm just interested in the oatmeal option:

Grossmutter's Golden-Sunrise Oatmeal Brot

Mix together:
2 1/4 C warm water
1/4 C honey
2 T canola oil

Mix together and beat into above mixture until smooth:
2 C (8.5 oz.) all-purpose flour*
1 1/2 T instant dry yeast
1 T salt
2/3 C instant nonfat dry milk

Add:
2 C (6.25 oz.) quick-cooking rolled oats

Add and stir well:
2 C (8.5) C all-purpose flour* [According to the recipe, you shouldn't need the full amount, but that was not my experience.]

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead, adding flour as needed, until elastically smooth. Then return to oiled bowl, turning the dough to oil all surfaces; cover.

Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. Punch down and form into loaves. Let rise about 45 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for about 35-40 minutes.

*Or use whole wheat flour (from hard red wheat)

Fusion Pizza

I'm not trying to be trendy. This pizza developed from a love of buffalo chicken and a need for lower calorie pizza crust.

My daughter shared with me this great recipe for Buffalo Chicken:

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken

3 lbs frozen (or fresh) chicken breasts
1 bottle Franks buffalo sauce
1 packet of ranch seasoning (Hidden Valley)

Throw it all in the crockpot on low for 6-7 hours. Then shred the chicken, then cook for another hour in the crockpot to soak up juices. Then eat and enjoy!!

It is so good! I've used up to double the amount of chicken called for with excellent results. Also, I don't have a crockpot, so I put everything in a Dutch oven, put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and then turn down the heat to the lowest setting, cook it for 3 or so hours, shred the chicken, and then return it to the oven for another hour. So easy!

I'm sure you can imagine lots of ways to use it. Quesadillas come to mind. But my favorite way to use it is on pizza.

You can use regular pizza dough. If you want to lighten things up, try using flour tortillas. These days I use the flour of hard white wheat for tortillas.

I discovered I can bake my tortillas on my pizza stone!

Here I'm using my new pizza peel to set the tortilla onto my new pizza stone. (Go here and scroll down to see my old pizza stone.)

The baked tortilla is ready to come out. I find this an easier way to bake them than on top of the stove, pizza or not. Either way is pretty easy, though!

And, yes, I've already managed to stain my pizza stone. The tortilla is so thin that the toppings weigh it down too much to slide off of the peel. That's how I learned to use parchment paper under the tortillas. By the way, you can put toppings on tortillas unbaked or baked. Since I wasn't making pizza with all of the tortillas, I just found it easier to pre-bake the tortillas today. Then I put the leftover ones in a gallon-size ziploc bag and put them in the refrigerator for another day.

Now for the pizza topping:

Mix together 2 parts ranch dressing and 1 part Frank's Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce. I use light ranch dressing, or part fat-free. Some people use blue cheese dressing. Spread it thinly on the tortilla (or pizza dough).

Layer Crockpot Buffalo Chicken on top.

Sprinkle shredded mozzarella cheese, and perhaps a bit of shredded Parmesan cheese, on top.

Variations: Before adding the cheese, top with some cooked broccoli and/or sautéed onions and peppers.

 Baked to perfection!

 It's ready to be eaten!

The Quest: Whole-Grain Cracked Wheat Bread

Cracked Wheat Bread--the favorite bread of many.

It is good bread: soft and springy with the chewy nuttiness of the cracked wheat; salty, and sweet with molasses.

It contains whole grain: freshly-cracked wheat berries.

But the flour is white flour: high quality flour--King Arthur bread flour--unbleached and unbromated. But lacking the nutritious bran and wheat germ of whole-grain flour.

Could I use whole-grain flour and maintain the distinctive taste and texture?

Today I am using flour freshly-ground from hard white wheat. This flour is milder than "regular" red wheat flour.

It is good bread: soft and springy with the chewy nuttiness of the cracked wheat; salty, and sweet with molasses.

The whole-grain flour adds some welcome complexity to the flavor. And the nutrition of whole grain.

I prefer this version of cracked wheat bread.

What about you?

Aunt Betty's Cracked Wheat Bread

Pour 4 C boiling water over 2 C (8.5 oz.) cracked wheat and stir. Let stand until most of the water is soaked up, but not dry.

Add:

⅓ C molasses

½ C plus 2 Tbsp. canola oil

Stir together and add, mixing with the dough hook of an electric mixer if you have it:

1 lb. flour (about 3½-4 C)--white bread flour or hard white whole-wheat flour

½ C sugar

2 Tbsp. yeast

1 C instant powdered milk

2 Tbsp. salt

Add and mix:

2 eggs

1¼ lbs. flour (about 4-4½ C)--white bread flour or hard white whole-wheat flour

Pour the dough onto a floured counter and knead it, adding more flour as needed, 1-2 C, until dough is smooth and elastic.

Place dough in an oiled bowl; cover with waxed paper. Let rise once. Measure and shape into 4 or 5 loaves. Let rise and bake at 350°F for about 40 minutes.

Ginger Snaps

After making gingerbread houses and then gingerbread cake, it seemed only right to bake one of my favorite cookies: Ginger Snaps.

I found this recipe many years ago in my Joy of Cooking. My college roommate and friend, Lani King, gave that cookbook to me for my birthday in 1974. That cookbook has been one of a handful that I have kept at hand through the years. 15 years ago my family gave me the updated edition of Joy of Cooking. But I just never felt comfortable with it. For interest's sake, I pulled it out to see if it had my beloved ginger snap recipe in it. It was definitely based on the recipe from the earlier edition, but the differences were significant: the addition of baking powder, less baking soda, more ginger, more cinnamon, the addition of salt, double the amount of butter, less sugar, lemon juice in place of vinegar, and the addition of lemon or orange zest. What remained the same: flour, cloves, eggs, and molasses. I'll give it a try sometime, but for the moment, I'm going with my tried and true recipe.

I made the dough three days ago and baked some of the cookies then. So today I pulled the rest of the dough out of the refrigerator.

I used a spoon to dig out chunks of dough, which I rolled into balls. I set the balls onto a baking sheet. I used parchment paper to prevent sticking.

I baked them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Fresh out of the oven, they are a little puffy and very soft. You will see signs of the characteristic crinkling. Wait a couple of minutes for them to firm up before transferring them to cooling racks.

When they are cool, they are crinkly, and firm but chewy.

Several years ago, before I discovered white wheat, I tried making these using red whole wheat flour. I didn't like the flavor the flour added, so I continued to make them using all-purpose flour. Having recently used flour milled from soft white wheat successfully in other cookie, brownie, and cake recipes, I used some in making these cookies this time. Because I was giving away most of the cookies, I conservatively only replaced 1/4th of the all-purpose flour with the whole wheat flour. They are delicious, and, if anything, I think the texture is improved.

By the way, I don't pretend to think that a little whole wheat flour suddenly makes cookies nutritious. Cookies, by their nature, should always be eaten sparingly. However, any time I can replace refined grains with whole grains, I consider it a benefit.

Ginger Snaps

Cream together:

¾ C butter

2 C sugar

Stir in:

2 eggs

½ C molasses

2 tsp. vinegar

Stir together and add:

3¾ C all-purpose flour (or replace at least 1 C with soft white whole-wheat flour)

1½ tsp. baking soda

3 tsp. ginger

½ tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. cloves

Mix ingredients until well-blended. Form dough into small balls. Bake at 350°F on baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or greased), for about 10-15 minutes. Let cookies set for a couple of minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Yields about 7 dozen cookies.

Heritage Honey

Many years ago, we bought a 60 pound container of honey, to use and for food storage. Through the years we have bought and used lots of other honey, but we have used this honey, too, which came to be known as our "heritage honey." One Christmas, Will gave everyone a jar of heritage honey!

When I started baking a lot this fall, Joe and Will gave me the rest of the heritage honey!

It's hard to tell in this photo, but the date is 7-84. As in 28 years ago.

Tonight I cleaned out the last of the heritage honey.

Believe that I licked the spoon. Absolutely delicious!

Monkey Bread--Updated

Monkey Bread, or Pull-Apart Bread, is yet another way of baking my Aunt Betty's awesome roll dough, for which you can find the recipe here. You can use bread dough or even (breathe, Kathy) canned biscuit dough, but I prefer roll dough. This roll dough.

This is a lot of dough, so you might want to cut the recipe down. Today I used half of the dough to bake 2 dozen dinner rolls, and the other half to make 5 small loaves and one regular loaf of Monkey Bread. So, with half of the dough, you can make 8 small loaves or 3 regular loaves. (Don't get too hung up by the proportions here!) I don't have a bundt pan, so I don't know how much that would take.
 

Combine ¾ C sugar and 6 tsp. cinnamon in plastic container or bag. Cut or pinch Sweet Roll Dough into pieces; then shake 10-12 pieces at a time in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place the pieces in buttered loaf pans or Bundt pan.

When I made this before, I pinched off the dough into small pieces (about 3/4-1 inch in diameter). That would be fine for one or two loaves. But I was making even more that day than I made today. So it took forever. Today I decided to pat the dough out and cut it with a pizza cutter. That worked much better!

Update: Instead of flouring your counter, smear a little canola oil on the counter and pat the dough out onto it. The cinnamon-sugar sticks to the dough better this way.

 

   

Melt butter. Add brown sugar and cook and stir until it begins to boil. Pour mixture of butter and brown sugar over dough in pans. (1 C butter + ½ C brown sugar is enough for ½ batch of dough, yielding 8 small loaves or 3 regular loaves.)

That's a lot of butter! Remember to make this is an occasional treat!
 

Let rise. Bake at 350° for about 15-20 minutes for small pans and longer for regular pans, until browned. Invert onto plate.

If you can, eat this when it is a few minutes out of the oven and still warm.

The. Best.

It's still very good when cold. I have no experience with eating it the next day.

Fruit Crisp

At a recent family dinner, we were planning to have homemade magic shell, a new favorite topping, with ice cream and frozen fruit for dessert. If you use frozen fruit, it's best to let it thaw slightly. In preparation, I had put mixed frozen fruit--one of those bags of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries--in a serving bowl. Well, we ended up just serving ice cream with the magic shell. So I tried to think of something else to do with the fruit. I thought of cobbler, but I'm not really a cobbler fan. But I love crisps! I decided to modify my Apple Crisp Topping. I simply left out the spices, the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. But berries are a lot juicier than apples, so I decided to prepare the fruit as if I were making cobbler.

Here is the resulting recipe:

Fruit Crisp

In a large, heavy pot, combine:
1/4 C sugar
1 T corn starch

Add:
4 C mixed fruit (such as a bag of frozen strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries)

Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils.

Pour into an ungreased 2-quart casserole dish or 9"x13" baking pan.

Top with Apple Crisp Topping, minus the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until the fruit is boiling and the topping has browned.

Enjoy warm or cold, by itself or with ice cream. Delicious!