Italienisches Brot

Lately, I've been making that chocolate chip cookie recipe like it was a second job. There were a couple of days where classes were cancelled because there was much snowfall. I never, ever though I would live to see a day, or even two consecutive days, when IUPUI shut down the campus. Truly amazing. However, that is not the subject for today.

After a disappointing experiment with rolls made of whole wheat flour that we shall never speak of again, I discovered a recipe on the back of a dried yeast package. It was called "Italian Bread", and was made with whole wheat flour. I was homeward bound that day due to the weather, so I decided to give it a go despite my despair over the failed rolls. That was the best decision I made that entire week. This stuff is fabulous! It rose phenomenally (think of "The Blob"), tasted wonderful, and made excellent toast. I prefer dipping chunks of it into olive oil with cracked black pepper, but I could live on that combination for the rest of my life. I know others have different tastes than I.


Here we have the finished product(s). Let me just say, this photo does not do their size(s) justice.

As for the recipe, here is what I can remember (my written copy is downstairs, and.....no, I will not go retrieve it).
I used two packets of Fleishmann's Active Dry yeast. You dissolve those suckers in two cups of warm water(110-120'F), in one large bowl. This will involve stirring. You must also add three tablespoon's of sugar to proof (which is, as best I can tell, a fancy way of saying 'make the yeast begin to grow at an alarming rate'), followed by two-thirds a cup of olive oil. That could be one-third, but I'm fairly certain the former is correct. Now, you add a little over three cups of whole wheat flour. Next, you let the stuff (referred to in the recipe as 'the sponge', straight out of a B-horror flick) rest for twenty minutes. You can take this time to add...a measurement I really can't remember. Downstairs I go. Ugh.

Ah yes, a ten minute search has yielded the recipe book which was in this room the entire time. Glorious. So anyway, while 'the sponge' slee- I mean, 'rests', in another small bowl you should add the following: two teaspoons salt, three fourths a cup of grated parmesan, two teaspoons of garlic powder, two teaspoons of dried basil, and one teaspoon of dried oregano. Mix 'em all up. Go do something else for fifteen minutes. Then, mash the sponge about a tad bit, and stir in the parmesan/herb mixture. Add around one cup of bread flour next, just enough to make the dough easy to handle. Now for the fun part! Knead the dough, always on a lightly floured surface, for about ten minutes. If you have not kneaded bread dough before, you should know that you will find it necessary to re-flour the surface every so often. Unless I'm doing this wrong. If you do not, it will stick to your countertop. That is not fun. After you are done kneading, divide the dough into two round loaves and let them rise on a couple of baking pans for forty-five minutes. I only used one, but it got a wee bit crowded.
Now that you have occupied yourself while the bread rose, it must now bake inside of at oven at the Fahrenheit temperature 350 for the duration of thirty/thirty-five minutes.

Be warned, this is very aromatic stuff. It is also really, really good.

Hail those of you who are about to bake. We salute you!

SMASH! BLAMMO! KER-POW!

I presume that we all have those days where you just, for lack of a better phrase, want to break things. Today was one of those days. This afternoon while I meandered online, I discovered something called cookie bark. You essentially just take a box of OREO's, smash them to bits, mix them into a bunch of melted chocolate, refridgerate, and BINGO. Cookie Bark. You could use any kind of cookie or chocolate, but in the pantry we had some Trader Joe Joe's (organic oreos), 14 oz of white candy chocolate and then a 10 oz package of nestle "holiday swirls". Again, these are just the ingredients that I chose for culinary Mayan sacrifice, you can name your own victims.
I had read the recipe a few hours ago, and I was a bit too...well, I wasn't in the mood to search through a few thousand recipes on allrecipe.com to find it. Besides, that meant going upstairs. Onward I forged, despite my extremely unreliable memory! I crushed the cookies with my bare hands for the first batch, and I used a spoon for the second. I prefer the first method, it is most satisfying for cookie destruction. Then I melted the white chocolate with my laser vision. You mere mortals could use a microwave, I suppose, or melt them on the stove top. Then...you mix them together. I didn't measure the oreo's out into the chocolate, I just kept adding handfuls and stirring until I didn't think there was enough chocolate left to coat anymore cookies. You just dump the goop out onto a cookie sheet (no greasing or wax paper necessary, it doesn't stick), sort of spread it out, and chill it for a while. It will cool faster than you think. It is probably done when you can't leave a mark, or indentation, after punch- er, pressing it. For the finale, hack the stuff to bits with a spoon or a spatula. Lots of vigorous stabbing motions, mind you. Then, you can eat it. The stabbing process results in lots of little chocolate/cookie bits that are similar to those delightful little bits of fried batter at Long John Silvers.

Cookie bark on the edge, man!



As you can see, they did not sustain the fall. I'm kidding, I used a spatula. note: cookie bits ala Long John Silver's in the foreground.


Red, green, and white make brown when you melt them. I never mastered the color wheel, and I was surprised when this happened.

Shortly after this photo was taken, the cookie bark was found dead. Some crazy broad stabbed him until he was virtually unrecognizable. The remains were deemed unfit for this blog.

I will admit, the white chocolate produced better bark than the holiday swirl things. Both were too sweet for my personal tastes, but I didn't really care. I'm not the one eating this stuff, I just wanted to crush some cookies.

This One, for the Theatre

I recently found out that these particular cookies were beloved by some of my co-workers. I have mostly been making peanut butter cookies lately, so I thought I would shake things up a bit and bring these into work on Friday. They are ridiculously easy, and they're drop cookies so that means I'm not up until 2am making cookie dough just so's I can get up at 7 to bake the suckers. Huzzah! Here, on your left, is one of these cookies.





I added extra orange zest this time, as per the advice of a friend. They all seem to like the orange factor, but they don't seem able to identify it. Everyone was asking me what "it" was. I haven't had one myself, so I can't give my opinion. Orange gives me a headache. Zesting 1 Tbsp worth was fun, let me tell you. At least it wasn't a clementine. I don't think I'll ever even try a recipe with clementine in it, unless someone really wants me too. Orange is the enemy.




This is only 2/3 of the batch. I ran out of the glaze, so the last sheet was plain. I just wanted to illustrate something with this photo; 7 people ate this many cookies before 6pm on Friday. As for the glaze, you may have noticed that there is a progession in texture from left to right in the photo. I will explain. The glaze is made on the stove top. You melt some butter, add vanilla bean paste (lots), and then you add 2 cups of powdered sugar. It is really hard to not make a mess, because the powedered sugar poofs all over the place. This is like making the thickest gravy ever, only it burns faster and is more difficult. I made the glaze in between batches, and when it is warmer (or fresher) it is spoonable and it drips everywhere. However, it had been sitting for a bit before I got to the next sheet of cookies. I had to spread it with a knife. Lesson learned? Bake first, glaze last.

Here is one last photo, because I liked the way it came out. This recipe comes from a Betty Crocker cookbook. I'm not sure how old, or which edition, the book is. I'd guess late seventies/early eighties, but I am just going on all of the suggestions for wheat flour and the way the photos look. There are about 8 different versons of this drop-cookie recipe in there, and I intend to try them all. Especially the brown sugar ones. That sounds very tasty. I will also try topping the pumpkin cookies with chocolate sauce sometime. I think I know a few people who would enjoy that.