Quarantine. Social Distancing. Covid-19. All words I would be 100% happy to NEVER hear again. But here we are. And I personally don’t think this is going to be truly “over” anytime soon. As we are all facing great stress, both at home and at work, I have chosen to focus on welcome distractions. Like my Sourdough Starter. Turns out it has had some great lessons to teach.
My kids LOVE fresh bread. And they can eat loaves and loaves of it if I let them. But bread baking is so tedious, right? WRONG. Turns out this simple Dutch Oven Bread is so stinking simple you could make it every day.
So when I asked earlier this fall, you all told me you wanted soup. Soup, soup, and more soup. And I won’t lie, soup may be the most perfect fall comfort food ever (see a list of our favorites at the bottom of this post). But y’all know me, and you know how much I like my toppings, so of course we needed to come up with more toppings for soup! We brought you Cumin Sour Cream last week, this week we bring you Easy Brown Butter Parmesan Croutons.
…
Has anyone else had a bumper crop of zucchini this summer? My tiny backyard garden has been producing zucchini which are the size of clubs. I’ve shredded and frozen more zucchini this summer than I’ve seen in my life. And of course as I’ve been shredding my zucchini, I’ve had to make my Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread. Strangely, even though this quick bread really can’t be qualified as “healthy”, in my book it is because…well, ZUCCHINI!
…
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love monkey bread? I mean, there is just something so dang good about about it. It’s a gooey, sugary, buttery carbohydrate filled brunch classic that I love to make and love to eat. Growing up, my mom often made it in a simple bundt pan, coating each piece of biscuit dough with plenty of butter, sugar, and cinnamon so that when it came out of the oven, it was like mini-cinnamon roll heaven. A few years ago, I started making it in my cast iron skillet. I loved the cripsy edges it created and really loved the easy clean up and presentation of the skillet. Recently, I decided to change up the bread itself and this Lemon Cardamom Skillet Monkey Bread was born.
…
Quick Glazed Orange Bread is the treat you’ve been looking for! I made it again for my kids this weekend and then decided you might all want to make it as a treat for your kids. Or your significant other. Or make it for yourself. (what a gift!)
But if you’re making it for yourself, you may want to have someone else hide half of it where you can’t find it so you don’t eat all of it in one sitting. Or do eat all of it in one sitting. Trust me, we won’t judge.
After all, after you taste it, we know you’ll want to.
…
Like most people, every now and then I get a craving for something slightly outside of my regular food rotation and I need to have it now. When I was pregnant with my daughter, those cravings involved milk (not something I typically love) and veggie subs (so random). This past weekend, I was sitting in my kitchen and looked over on the counter to see a whole bag of fresh lemons that I had picked up at Costco on a whim. I was suddenly struck by the feeling that I needed to have some lemon bread as soon as possible. As I dug out my go to recipe for quick breads, I realized that there was one big hurdle to my lemon bread dreams: I was out of butter. Now, as a food blogger and home cook, that was a major oops. And since my husband was out running errands and I was home with the kids, my choices were to either take the kids to Target for butter or get creative and make something up. Since I’d rather suffer the consequences of an unfulfilled dessert craving than brave the craziness that is Target on a Sunday afternoon, I opened up my fridge and got to work. The result of that kitchen experimentation was this Easy Glazed Lemon Bread. …
I don’t think it’s any secret around here that I’m totally obsessed with soup. I would happily eat soup (or stew or chili) every day, no matter the season or weather. I make quick soups on weeknights, long simmering soups and stews on the weekend and chili whenever the temp dips below 30 degrees. Over the years, I’ve found many recipes that I make again and again. One of my favorites (and a winter staple in my house) is my Chipotle and Stout chili recipe (find it here!). During the fall and winter, it’s on the menu weekly. I love to serve soups and stews with a great bread. I have a great beer bread recipe as well as Lane’s fantastic Parker House Rolls for soup and stew, but what I really wanted was a go-to cornbread recipe. Having never really found a recipe that I was head over heels for, I decided to make my own. I spent some time in the kitchen this fall testing out a ton of variations. After much trial and error, I came up with this recipe for Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread. I hope you love it as much as I do!…
Parker House Rolls. What is better than fresh bread? Yet for years I was really intimidated by anything that needed to “rise”. I thought that it was easier to buy bread and that there was not much difference in the taste. Well, I was probably right on the first count, but I was oh so wrong on the second count. There is nothing like fresh bread!…
In my mind, there is very little better than a slice of homemade bread, just out of the oven. This focaccia, studded with bits of sweet yellow onion and topped with crunchy sea salt, is a carb lover’s dream. Sweet and salty with a hint of crispness in the crust, it’s the perfect accompaniment to a rich winter stew or soup.
I first came across this recipe in the back pages of my dear Williams-Sonoma Cookbook. My copy is well loved – dog eared and splattered pages, frequently with notes scribbled in margins – and has yet to disappointment me with a recipe failure. Given my prior success, despite the fact that I am still very much a novice in the bread baking world, I decided to give it a go. I am so glad that I did as it will certainly be a new staple in my house.
The recipe makes a large amount of bread and could easily be halved for a smaller crowd. If you wind up with extras, however, the leftovers make excellent croutons when cut into cubes and slowly baked in the oven. You can add cheese (asiago is an excellent choice), sun dried tomatoes, herbs, or olives but the original recipes combination of yellow onion and sea salt is hard to beat.
What are your favorite bread recipes?
