Country Bread

I have been looking at many recipes for bread and settled on the authors that suggest less work and more efficiency. It takes a long time to make but there is no work, it is very easy and delicious.

The flour is Gold Medal "Better for Bread".  I have also tried mixing it with whole wheat and it comes delicious.
Many books recommend using bread flour, so why not?




Ingredients:
3 cups of flour
2 cups of water
1 tea spoon of salt
1 tea spoon of active yeast

Preparation
Mix flour salt and yeast, then add the water.  Mix it for 20 seconds, no need to get fancy.  Then cover it and leave it for 18 hours.  I know... a long time.

After that, take it out, it will have probably double in size, and place it over a surface on which you sprinkled a little more flour, but do not add any to the mix and work it so that the flour is nice all over it, make it into a ball.  Then on a table cloth put some flour and seeds of your choice (I like flax and sunflower), and place the mix there, cover it and leave it for 2 more hours.

At about 1.5 hours turn the oven on at 475 degrees.  At two hours, when the oven is hopefully pre-heated, take the mix and put it in an over safe container.  Bake for 30 minutes, then take the cover off and bake for 15 to 20 more minutes.

Enjoy!

Crepes ... delicious for a winter afternoon

I love late afternoon dessert in the winter, and aparently so does BF who complimented it many, many times, and called it a "great restaurant-style crepe"  extra points for me!.

I noticed that many crepe recipes out there call for a lot of flour, but I learned the secrets from the an italian cook at a Soho coffee shop where I used to work in a previous life, so hear me out.



Ingredients:
2 large eggs
half a small cup of white all purpose flour
two table spoons of cannola oil
half a small cup of milk
For the filling you can add fruit jam (I chose peach) OR go all out and put Nutella

Preparation:
Beat the eggs until they are very well mixed, add the milk and the oil and then the flour little by little. You want a "liquid" rather than a batter. Think fluid, as if it was something to drink.

Then put the pan on the fire until it is VERY hot, add a little butter and then poor a little of the liquid. move the pan around and let it spill forming an outer circle, you want to think "very thin crepes"

leave the fire high, but not so high that it burns things, you will know when it is time to turn the crepe around because it will be easy to use the spatula to turn it over (see video above)

Once you turn it around leave it for about a minute or two, then turn it around again, and spread the jam or nutella

Then just fold it, and serve it with a little sugar powder and some fresh mint...Enjoy!