Spinach, leek and mushroom salad with homemade sandwich bread

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Zoli in bread, cheese, healthy, salad, sandwich loaf, Vegetarian

Tags

bread, homemade bread, leeks, mushrooms, spinach salad, stilton, sun dried tomato, warm winter salad

This is kind of a rich salad—a great side dish or meal on its own with some warm bread right out of the oven and a glass of white wine. I made it after reading a Food and Wine magazine tweet about warm spinach and bacon salad. To rival the super salty flavor of bacon I threw together several rich items such as leeks, stilton cheese and sun dried tomato and made a strong, tangy vinaigrette to complement it. Soft flavorful dark greens like spinach can take all this flavor and taste even better if they wilt a little under the warm mushrooms and leeks.

Ingredients for spinach salad
serves 2 as a side dish
1 small bunch of large spinach leaves, washed and rinsed thoroughly
1 small leek or half a large leek, sliced thickly and washed thoroughly
6-8 mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced thinly
1 sun dried tomato in olive oil
handful roasted marcona almonds, chopped
small chunk of stilton
olive oil

vinaigrette
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 tbs red wine vinegar
1 tsp whole grain mustard
1/2 tsp of dried thyme or fresh thyme, chopped
few grinds of sea salt and fresh pepper

1. Make the vinaigrette by adding all the ingredients to a jar and shaking. Set aside.
2. Chop the washed spinach and spread on a platter. Spinach and leeks can have a lot of mud and sand so make sure they are very clean.
3. Chop the sun dried tomato into small pieces and scatter over the spinach.
4. Heat up olive oil in a small frying pan and add the sliced garlic. Cook for a few seconds and then add the sliced mushrooms. Turn the heat to medium high and cook the mushrooms to a golden brown. Scatter over the salad.
5. Heat up the fying pan again and flash fry the leeks till they take on a golden or dark brown color. Don’t over cook. About 1 minute. Add the leeks to the salad.
6. Sprinkle about half the vinaigrette over the salad, or to taste. This is a rare case where I like a lot of dressing!
7. Crumble the stilton over the salad and then sprinkle the nuts. Serve straightaway.

This is a useful bread recipe to have in your arsenal. No need to think about a poolish or levain or days of rising. It’s not artisan bread, it’s just a great creamy, slightly sweet, soft sandwich bread. But NOTHING like a sliced loaf you’d buy in the supermarket. This is legions above those breads. All in all it takes about 3-4 hours. I make this a lot to have around the house for snacking, the kids’ lunchboxes and for sandwiches. Below are pics of a loaf I shaped and cooked on its own without a loaf tin, and another occasion when I baked it in a bread tin.

Baked without a loaf tin

Cooked in a loaf tin

This recipe is from The Fresh Loaf ‘Putting something more in your bread’

2 cups all-purpose enriched unbleached flour
1 cup bread flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 cup sugar
1 cup warm milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 – 1/2 cup lukewarm filtered water

1) Add all the dry ingredients together—in a KitchenAid if you have one. If you are going to bake bread often I recommend buying instant yeast, rather than the little jars or packets of dried active yeast. I love my saf instant yeast! Keep it in the fridge, or keep half of it in the fridge and half in the freezer for freshness.
2) Add all the wet ingredients and mix into the dry. If using a Kitchen Aid, use the dough hook and mix on the first setting until it is a shaggy lump of bread dough. Or use a wooden spoon to mix all together.
3) Scrape it onto the counter and knead for ten minutes, adding just a little flour if necessary. As the dough is kneaded it will become less sticky. Once it is a smooth dough, put into an oiled bowl and cover tighly to rise for 90 minutes in a warm place.
4) Shape the dough into a loaf by folding the top and bottom, then folding the sides over each other. Place in a buttered loaf tin or on a baking tray. Cover and leave to rise another hour.
5) Bake for 35 to 40 minutes at 350. The bread should be a dark brown because of the caramelized sugar and sound hollow when you tap the bottom.

Fougasse

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Zoli in bread, comfort food, fougasse, french, the basics, vegan, Vegetarian

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

fougasse, French bread, homemade bread, Kitchen Aid, rosemary

I. Was. So. Excited. To pull these babies out of the oven. I haven’t eaten this in YEARS. It’s a yummy flatbread, originating from the south of France. I’ve never made it before, but was thinking about it the other day and well, the memory calls to the heart which commands the fingers which get out the flour and the yeast and etc. When I ate this in a French restaurant it was with caramelized onion and gruyere. I’ve since seen loads of olive and sun-dried tomato versions. This is my humble fresh rosemary and garlic offering. Was it sad that the only people around to share my excitement were little people? I interrupted my son’s playdate and said something like, “Oh my god, do you guys want some of my bread?!”
My son said, “Their grandma said they can’t eat anything, but I can eat it instead.”
A composed six-year old said, “I think just a little bit is ok.”
“Great!” I said, tearing off pieces of fougasse, slathering it in butter for their little hands.
“Come on, hurry up,” said a four-year old with enormous blue eyes.
My son said, “Don’t tell your grandma,” through his mouthful of bread.
They disappeared around the corner.
“Wait!” I called, “What do you guys think? Is it good?!”
By dinner time, I wasn’t too hungry, as I’d kind of gorged on amazing bread and a glass of Côtes du Rhône. Who cares? This would be perfect as a ‘grazing’ supper with wine, some fruit, nice cheese and olives. Something simple to enjoy one of the great simple pleasures in life: fresh-baked bread. Especially bread that looks as beautiful as this. I told my daughter it looked like a leaf. She said it looked like a fossil.

Fougasse
makes two flatbreads
500g or 2 and 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp dried active yeast or 1 tsp instant yeast
12 fl oz hot water
olive oil
1 tsp salt
fresh rosemary, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
extra virgin olive oil and sea salt for garnish
kitchen aid*

*I used my Kitchen Aid to mimic something I saw the French Pastry School do. Many recipes for fougasse involve it rising in the fridge overnight, but the French Pastry School has a recipe for kneading the dough on a fast speed of the Kitchen Aid and they only have it rising for a few hours. If you don’t have one, hand-knead and put in a covered and oiled bowl in the fridge overnight before starting step 4.

1) If using fresh yeast (you lucky dog), rub it into the flour in a large bowl. Otherwise, add the flour, dried yeast and salt together in a bowl and mix.
2) Add hot water (hand-hot, not boiling) and use a wooden spoon to mix to a wet sticky dough. Add a little bit more water if the dough is dry. Let rest for a couple minutes while you get the rosemary and garlic ready.
3) Scrape into a kitchen aid and using a dough hook, knead the dough on the first setting for one minute. Then turn up to number 3 and knead for a few minutes.
4) Add in the chopped rosemary and garlic and knead on the first setting for another minute or two. (Or knead the rosemary and garlic in by hand)
5) Scrape into an oiled bowl and cover tightly with a cloth and something heavy resting on it. Let rise for at least an hour. 2 hours is better.
6) Cut the risen dough (still sticky) in half with a hand scraper or a thin wooden utensil. Set one half of it aside for now. Starting with the first half, gently fold it over itself to form a nice round shape. With a rolling pin, roll it out on a floured surface gently to form a rectangle shape. Take a pizza cutter or sharp edged scraper and slice down the middle of the bread. Gently pull it apart. Then make three diagonal slits on each side of that cut and gently pull apart. The dough will rise again so the holes need to be fairly big. Place on a tray covered with baking parchment. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

7) I’m not sure if my idea for ‘proofing’ in my oven helped much, but this is what I did and it worked: Warm the oven, then turn off the heat and set a small pan of boiling water in the oven for steaming. Put the two trays of formed dough in the oven to ‘proof’ for 30 minutes. They should come out a bit puffy with a slight skin, like this:

8) Take out of the oven and preheat the oven to the highest setting.
9) Gently brush the formed dough with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
10) When the oven is hot, put them in to bake for about 10 minutes, or till golden brown. If they are on different racks, switch them halfway through.
Enjoy!!