Peeta's Stuffed Cheese Buns

 Last month I got an email from my brother Dave with the subject: "I want somma these!"  Similar emails in the past have led me to such concoctions as doughnut-upside down cake, marshmallow lime meringue pie, reverse whoopie pies, and eggnog sandwich cookies.  Dave doesn't mess around.  And he only sends me a recipe when he's really serious about it. 

So I clicked through to Yammie's Noshery and drooled over her pictures of gooey cheese-stuffed buns, while mumbly-stumbling through her dizzying explanation that Peeta (Hunger Games, people) is her future grandson.  Or something. 

Regardless, the buns looked awesome.  And easy.  And a nice change from the usual.  So I bought a lot of cheese, and invited Dave's family over for dinner.  We served the buns with Roasted Red Pepper and Herb Pasta with Shrimp, green beans, and an experimental pie for dessert that I'm still trying to decide whether to post. 

Here's Dave's happy, happy face at getting "somma these" buns (too bad it's just a headshot.  They'd just come from the Renaissance Festival and he was wearing his kilt):

Cousins:

And can you ever get away with taking pictures of kids without doing a silly shot?  I think they are pirates:

But back to the buns.  So.  Good.  

Peeta's Stuffed Cheese Buns (print recipe)
Makes about 20

1 cup warm water (hot from the tap, between 105º and 115º)
2 T yeast
2 T sugar
2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
8 oz. cheese, the more the merrier (I used chunks of mozzarella for the inside and a mixture of shredded cheddar and Parmesan for the top.  You can use any cheeses you like, preferably ones that melt well)
A few tablespoons of melted butter mixed with a sprinkle of garlic powder and some fresh herbs if you want

1.  Mix together the yeast and water and let it sit for a few minutes.  Add the sugar, garlic powder, melted butter, and oil.  Add the flour a little at a time, mixing in your stand mixer with a dough hook.  Add the salt.  Knead for 10 minutes in the stand mixer or by hand.  Let dough rise in a greased bowl, covered with a damp cloth for 30 minutes.

2.  Preheat oven to 375º.

3.  Divide the dough into about 20 pieces.  Put about a 3/4-inch chunk of cheese in each one and make sure you pinch all the edges back up tightly.

 Put the pinched side down on a greased baking sheet.  Sprinkle the buns with more shredded cheese and some Parmesan cheese.  Bake for about 11 to 15 minutes until the bread is golden brown and the cheese is bubbly.  Brush with melted butter and serve warm.

 Recipe adapted from Yammie's Noshery 

1 year ago:  Raspberry Tea Cake with Mascarpone Cream Filling
2 years ago:  Peanut Butter Banana Bread
3 years ago:   Chocolate Honey Zucchini Muffins

Garlic-Slathered Stretch Bread (a.k.a. "Pizza Dippers")

Hello. This looks good, right? And it smells and tastes even better.

I've got this cookbook, A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman. Amazing book. The pictures are mouthwatering. The recipes are creative, well written and a balance between classic and unusual ideas. The whole thing should be a home run. But instead it seems to be luck-of-the-draw. I have made nineteen recipes to date from it - 6 were AMAZING, 5 were DISAPPOINTING and 8 were only SO-SO (usually tasting fine but not really being worth the effort or work required, which is often A LOT.) Despite the stats, I keep going back to it because it just calls to me. You've got to see this book. It's really one of my favorites.

So. I recently re-went-through it and made a note of the thirty-something (love that show!) recipes I want to try, and I started with this one. I knew it would be hard to be disappointed by bread slathered with garlic. I thought I'd make it as a dinner side to go with spaghetti and salad. But when it filled the house with Italian garlicky aromas, I thought, forget the spaghetti. We sliced it, served it with bowls of marinara, and called it "Pizza Dippers." Voila, dinner is done!

Did I mention these were so so so so so good? So good! And don't be put off by the mayonnaise. I hate the stuff, but it's just an agent for the so-much garlic, and you can't taste it. Just saying.

Garlic-Slathered Stretch Bread

(whole recipe takes about 4 1/2 to 5 hours)

Dough:
2 cups warm water (100-110 degrees F)
1 3/4 tsp rapid-rise yeast

1 3/4 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar

4 cups bread flour

Garlic Slather:

6 cloves garlic, finely minced

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup mayonnaise

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp dried Italian seasoning (I at least doubled this)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and drizzle with olive oil.

2. In a mixer bowl, hand-whisk water and yeast together and let stand 2 to 3 minutes to dissolve yeast. Briskly whisk in salt, sugar, and most of the flour to make a soft dough. Knead with dough hook on lowest speed 5 to 8 minutes, adding more flour as necessary until dough is resilient but not tough. *Remove dough hook and spray dough with nonstick cooking spray. Cover entire mixing bowl with a large clear plastic bag.* (I don't like this technique but Goldman swears by it. Instead, I put dough in a sprayed bowl, cover loosely with lid and dish towel, and place in cold oven to avoid drafts.)

3. Let dough rise until doubled in size, 1 1/2 to 3 hours (I cut the time in half and did 2 1/4 hours.)

4. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface; gently deflate. Cover dough loosely with plastic wrap and let rise. Meanwhile make Garlic Slather. Using a mortar and pestle (which I don't have but I used my muddler and it worked great), mash garlic and salt to a fine paste. Remove to a bowl. Fold in mayonnaise, Parmesan cheese, seasoning and oil.

5. Divide dough in half. Stretch each to a long oval, about 18 x 6 inches. Place on prepared baking sheet, evenly spacing apart. Using back of a spoon, spread filling all over top of each bread. Top each with mozzarella cheese. Cover pan loosely with plastic wrap and let dough rise 1 to 1 1/2 hours until puffy.

6. Preheat oven to 400. Bake until nicely golden on top and topping is sizzling, about 20 to 25 minutes. Allow to cool at least slightly, then cut into strips with a pizza cutter. Serve with warm marinara sauce, if desired.

Recipe from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

Bread Machine Calzone

As some of you may know, Ed went elk hunting last October. They were successful. They had the meat processed into recognizable cuts - top sirloin, chuch roast, ground, etc. And they had a lot made into sausage, cut with pork. Sausage doesn't quite have the culinary range of, say, ground meat, so we still have a lot of it in our freezer. And we're trying to work our way through it.

I decided one night in February to make calzones for dinner, and fill them with sausage, cheese, green peppers, a little pepperoni. I was going to use my old standby pizza dough recipe or whatever but just to see, I did a quick internet search and came upon this. You know I love to use my bread machine. So I just put the ingredients in, processed the dough, rolled it out and filled it up. Per the instructions it makes one big calzone that you slice, but you could just as easily divide the dough into 4 rounds and have everyone make their own classic turnover-type calzone. Either way, it's easy, it's dinner, and in our case it used up another 1/2 pound of elk sausage!

Bread Machine Calzone

Dough:
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 cups bread flour

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 T white sugar
1 tsp salt

1 tsp powdered milk

Fillings:
(or just do your own - whatever you like)

3/4 cup sliced Italian sausage
3/4 cup pizza sauce
1 1/4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
2 T butter, melted

1. To make the dough, place water, flour, yeast, sugar, salt and powdered milk in the pan of the bread machine, in the order suggested by manufacturer. Select Dough cycle. After cycle is completed (mine takes 1 1/2 hours), roll out dough on lightly floured surface.

2. Meanwhile, brown sausage in large skillet over medium heat until cooked through. Drain excess fat.

3. Preheat oven to 350F.

4. Shape dough into a 16 by 10-inch rectangle. Transfer to a lightly greased cookie sheet, and spoon pizza sauce lengthwise down the center of the dough, followed by the browned sausage and the cheese. Make diagonal cuts 1 1/2 inches apart down each long side of the dough rectangle, cutting to within 1/2 inch of the filling. Criss-cross cut strips of dough over the filling and seal tears/edges with water. Pinch and tuck ends tightly. Brush top of calzone with melted butter.
5. Bake at 350 for 35 to 45 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool for at least 5 minutes before slicing and serving.Recipe from Kevin K. on Allrecipes.com

Pepperoni Pizza Rolls

I know. Seriously. And they taste as good as they look. Come to dinner.

Even though these rolls are a huge mess and massively time consuming to make, they are in my regular rotation for Friday night dinners. The dough is airy and moist, and these freeze like a dream for lunches the next day and all the next week.

But they are definitely only as good as your ingredients. I use turkey pepperoni and Trader Joe's Traditional Marinara sauce, for example. Just make sure you really like each ingredient, and then, as with pizza toppings, the sky's the limit!

On a more general note, I'm learning more about working with yeast. First, always proof it, no matter what the recipe says. Proofing involves putting the yeast in some warm water (100-110 degrees) and a pinch or more of sugar, then letting stand for a few minutes. Second, rising calls for a warm, draft-free location. Marcy Goldman says to cover the mixer and bowl with a big clear trash bag to make a proofing room but I haven't found it as effective as the following two techniques: 1) I warm my oven a little while making the dough (like the lowest setting or the Warm/Hold setting), then turn it off and put the dough in to rise, or 2) if I need the oven for something else (if I'm baking one thing I'm usually baking more than one thing), I run the dryer for a few minutes to warm it up and then stick my covered dough in the dryer and close the door.

Dough
1 1/2 cups warm water (100-110 degrees)
5 tsp rapid-rise yeast
1/3 cup olive oil
2 T sugar
2 1/2 tsp salt
4 to 5 cups bread flour

Filling
2 cups spaghetti sauce
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 T olive oil
Salt and pepper for dusting
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
1 1/2 pounds shredded mozzarella cheese
8 to 12 ounces pepperoni, sliced (I cut round slices into 1/2 or 1/4ths)

Finishing Touches
Olive oil
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a mixer bowl, proof the yeast. Whisk water, yeast, and part of the sugar and let stand 2 to 3 minutes. Whisk in oil, the rest of the sugar, salt and most of the flour. Mix ingredients and then knead dough with dough hook on lowest speed 8 to 10 minutes, adding more flour as necessary to make a soft, bouncy dough.

3. Remove dough hook. Spray dough with cooking spray. Cover the entire mixer and bowl with a clear trash bag or cover with plastic or a dish towel and place in a warm draft-free location. Rise 45 minutes. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and gently deflate. Let stand another 20 minutes. Roll or press dough out into a 14x12 inch rectangle.

*Note: I've made this recipe three times and done it this way twice. The third time, at this point, I divided the dough in half and did the pressing, filling, rolling step in two parts, creating two shorter rolls rather than one longer one. It was just easier to transport them to the baking sheet and back that way. I recommend it.

4. Smear on spaghetti sauce, garlic, and olive oil; dust with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. Scatter on cheese and pepperoni. Roll dough jellyroll style and place it on lined baking sheet. Refrigerate or freeze (I freeze) 20 minutes and then cut into 1 1/2 inch slices (chilling makes it easier to slice without it compressing dough.)

5. Place slices with some space between them onto prepared baking sheet(s.) Brush tops with olive oil and dust with Parmesan cheese.

6. Cover baking sheet loosely with plastic wrap and let dough rise 20 to 35 minutes. Preheat oven to 375. Bake until cheese is melted adn bubbly and buns are golden, 20 to 25 minutes.