Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Since we have wheat that we've been grinding to make homemade bread (and pancakes), I decided to find a recipe for whole wheat pizza crust. I found a good one here. It was definitely different than the other recipe that we always used for pizza crust, but it was good. :)


Ingredients:
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:
In a large bowl, dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast over the top, and let stand for about 10 minutes, until foamy.
Stir the olive oil and salt into the yeast mixture, then mix in the whole wheat flour and 1 cup of the all-purpose flour until dough starts to come together. Tip dough out onto a surface floured with the remaining all-purpose flour, and knead until all of the flour has been absorbed, and the ball of dough becomes smooth, about 10 minutes. Place dough in an oiled bowl, and turn to coat the surface. Cover loosely with a towel, and let stand in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
When the dough is doubled, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into 2 pieces for 2 thin crust, or leave whole to make one thick crust. Form into a tight ball. Let rise for about 45 minutes, until doubled.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Roll a ball of dough with a rolling pin until it will not stretch any further. Then, drape it over both of your fists, and gently pull the edges outward, while rotating the crust. When the circle has reached the desired size, place on a well oiled pizza pan. Top pizza with your favorite toppings, such as sauce, cheese, meats, or vegetables.
Bake for 16 to 20 minutes (depending on thickness) in the preheated oven, until the crust is crisp and golden at the edges, and cheese is melted on the top.


We did not let it rise the second time because we were too hungry and wanted to eat it! So after letting it rise for an hour, we went ahead and rolled it out and made our pizza. It turned out great!


More for seconds! This single recipe made one pizza for us (the crust wasn't too thick). I told Ryan that we should go into a pizza making business because our homemade pizzas are always so good! We'll definitely be using this recipe again. :)

Whole Wheat Bread

Ryan and I recently got a hand grinder and some wheat so that we can grind our own wheat flour and make homemade bread with it (hand grinders are cheaper than electric, so we thought we'd get a hand grinder now and save up to get an electric grinder later). Then my parents decided to let us borrow an extra electric grinder that they weren't using. They've had the grinder for a long time, but it still works which is the only thing that matters. :) I tried one recipe for bread, but never could get it to work out. I don't know what went wrong. Then I decided to ask a friend, Katie, for the recipe she uses for her homemade bread. She sent me two recipes which are posted below. The first is her grandma's recipe and the 2nd is her dad's recipe. I've tried them both and they are both good! I really like the taste of the 2nd recipe though--with the butter and powdered milk and the mixture of honey and brown sugar. It's delicious! Thanks Katie!


Ingredients:
3 c. hot water
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. yeast
2 c. flour
2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. oil
1 Tbsp. gluten (optional)
1 Tbsp. lecithin (optional)
5-8 c. flour

Directions:
Mix water, sugar, and yeast. Add the 2 c. flour, salt, oil, gluten, and lecithin. Then add remaining flour until dough pulls away from sides of bowl (it should still be slightly sticky). Knead until smooth. Let rise about an hour. Form into 2 loaves and put in buttered pans. Let rise until loaves fill pans. Bake at 375 for 30 min.


For the recipe above, I added all ingredients except the lecithin because I didn't have any. I used a hand mixer and did it all by hand since I don't have a bread machine or any other type of mixer. You can use all whole wheat, half whole wheat and half white, or mostly whole wheat with a little white. Whatever you prefer. :)


Ingredients:
2 c. + 1/4 c. hot water
2 Tbsp. honey
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
4 tsp. yeast
4 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. dry milk
3 tsp. salt
3 c. bread flour
3 c. whole wheat flour

Directions:
Mix water, honey, sugar, and yeast. Add butter, dry milk, salt, and bread flour. Add whole wheat flour until dough pulls away from bowl (should still be slightly sticky). Knead until smooth. Let rise an hour. Form into 2 loaves and place in buttered pan. Let rise. Bake at 350 for 30 min.


Again, I only let it rise once in the pans. It seems to turn out better when I do that. Also, I don't have bread flour, but I found this website that explains how to make bread flour with all-purpose flour. Just add 1 Tbsp. wheat gluten for every cup of flour.


If you have a bread recipe you'd like to share, please do! I've been experimenting with making bread by hand. Eventually I'll be a pro at it. :)

If you are new to making your own bread and you want to experiment with homemade white bread first, go HERE for a good and easy recipe.

Zucchini Bread

Have you had enough zucchini recipes yet? No? Ok... then here's another one! :)

This has been one of my favorites for a long time! My family made zucchini bread a lot in the past. It is always so good! I thought I'd grate zucchini for zucchini bread while I grated some for zucchini pie. Take care of two recipes at once!


Combine:
3 well-beaten eggs
3/4 cup oil
1 3/4 cups sugar

Mix well:
3 cups raw grated zucchini
3 tsp. vanilla

Add:
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup nuts, optional

Grease and flour 2 large loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 1 hour.


Mmmmm....just posting the recipe and looking at the pictures makes me want to make more! We made this a few weeks ago, so we haven't had any for a while. I did make one change to the recipe though. I had some extra whole wheat flour that I ground to make homemade bread, so I decided to use that for zucchini bread instead of all-purpose flour. It turned out really good!

Banana Bread!

This is a really yummy recipe for banana bread that I got from my mom, and I think she got it from her mom (my Grandma Merrell), so it's been in the family for a while. It's soooo delicious!


cream:
1 cup shortening

add:
2 cups sugar
4 eggs

Beat well.
6 bananas (mashed)
4 cups flour
1 tsp. soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Add to first mixture: bananas alternately with mixed dry ingredients. Fold in nuts. Bake 1 hour at 375 degrees F. (Makes 2 loaves.)
Helpful tip: It might be a little gooey in the middle, so after the time is done, you can turn the oven off and leave the bread in for a little longer. That way it won't burn and then the inside can get more done. The outside will probably still be a little dark, but it's still tastes good! When I made it, I actually put it in for 55 minutes instead of an hour.

And there you have it! Delicious banana bread!

Homemade White Bread & Sweet Honey Butter

Who likes homemade bread? I do, I do! It has taken me a while to actually make some because I don't have a bread machine and I know it takes quite a while to make homemade bread by hand. This recipe that I found in the Cooking for Two cookbook actually wasn't too bad! It took a while to get to the finished product since you have to let it rise and all that, but it was really easy to make. :) Eventually I want to get some wheat flour and make homemade wheat bread, but I thought I'd start by making homemade white bread since we had all the ingredients to make it.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk + 1/2 cup water
1 package active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. sugar
3 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
Heat milk in saucepan just until warm. Pour into mixing bowl. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Add to milk. Stir in oil, sugar, salt, and 2 cups of the flour. Beat at low speed with electric mixer 1 minute, and then on high for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining flour until you can't stir any more. Knead the dough on floured surface, adding flour if needed to make a slightly stiff dough. Place in greased bowl and cover. Put in warm area to rise (I turn the oven to 200 for a few minutes just to warm it, and then I turn it off before placing the bread inside). Let rise until double (about 1 hour).
Punch the dough down. Roll in flour and shape into loaf. Grease a loaf pan and place dough in pan. Cover and let rise in warm area until almost double in size. Heat oven to 375. Place loaf in oven and bake 30-45 minutes. Remove from pan and place on cooling rack. Tastes yummy served warm with sweet honey butter. (see recipe below)

The "I" in the recipe above is referring to the author of the cookbook. Just thought I'd clarify that the "I" wasn't talking about me. :) This recipe only makes one loaf, so I doubled the recipe and made two loaves. Also, I've never seen anything with such a big difference in time (30-45 minutes), so I experimented and did 35 minutes. I think that was a little too much time because the top of the bread came out darker. I think 30 minutes would be just fine. It does taste really good right out of the oven with honey butter on it!

Sweet Honey Butter

1/4 cup honey

3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Soften butter. Cream together butter and honey. Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla until well blended. Spread over warm bread or scones.

This honey butter recipe wasn't my favorite, but it was still yummy! It's pretty sweet, so be sure not to put too much on your hot bread (the bread soaks it right up when it's hot, making it seem like it doesn't have much honey butter on it, but don't keep adding more! That was the mistake I made, so it was really really sweet!) I doubled the recipe for the honey butter so I would have more for when I had toast for breakfast or whatever.

Hope you enjoy your homemade bread with honey butter! :)

Healthier Banana Bread!

I posted another recipe for banana bread a while ago. You can find it HERE. I had 3 really ripe bananas that needed to be used (see picture below). The only problem was that the recipe calls for 1 cup of shortening and I didn't have enough. (Well, it would be 1/2 a cup since I only had 3 bananas.) There was only about 3-4 tablespoons of shortening left in the container we had. I was thinking about having Ryan buy more shortening, but I knew there were banana recipes out there that didn't call for shortening so I decided to look up new recipes on the internet. I found some recipes that called for applesauce instead of shortening, so I decided to try it! It is actually really good, and more healthy for you! Shortening is just solidified fat. Gross! After I made this new recipe of banana bread, I threw away the container of shortening that we had. There wasn't much left in it anyway. I'm not planning on ever using shortening for anything ever again, especially when there is healthier food that can be substituted for it.


Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. applesauce
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. flour

Directions:

Place bananas in large bowl and mash with electric mixer. Stir in the sugar and let stand 15 minutes. Add the applesauce and eggs and beat well. Beat in the baking soda, baking powder, salt and vanilla, then gradually beat in the flour, mixing thoroughly. Pour into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan that has been coated with nonstick spray.

Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before removing from the pan.


When I made the bread, I put it in the oven for 45 minutes, but then I turned the oven off and let it sit in there for another 15-20 minutes because the middle was still gooey. I didn't want to burn the bread, but leaving it in with the oven off will do the trick. :)


I got the recipe here. It has optional frosting that you can make. I didn't make it because I like banana bread just plain. Here is the frosting recipe if you want to make it:

1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp. milk

Beat until well blended. Frost bread.

Pizza Crust (and breadstick dough!)

Time for an update on this recipe blog!

Ryan and I LOVE homemade pizza! We can put whatever we want on it, and it always tastes SOOO good! It's also really filling, so I only eat one or maybe two pieces of it. Then we have some to eat as leftovers on other days! OH the joys of homemade food! We used to use another recipe for pizza crust, but I found this one and like it a lot better! We usually double the recipe to fit one of the really big cookie sheets, and then we have leftover dough that we use for breadsticks. Yum!

2 3/4 to 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 package active dry yeast

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup warm water (120 to 130 degrees)

2 Tbsp. cooking oil

In a large mixing bowl combine 1 1/4 cups flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and oil. Beat with an electricmixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl. (I usually just mix it with a spoon and it works out well.) Beat on high speed for 3 minutes. (Once again, I just mix it with a spoon.... REALLY fast! It's a nice workout for my arms! :) Feel free to do whatever you want, though.) Stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can. Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Knead in enough remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is smooth and elastic. Divide in half. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Use to make pizza... roll out dough and top with toppings. Put in oven for about 15 minutes at 425 degrees.

(A typical pizza for us is pepperoni or canadian bacon, pineapple, olives, and mushrooms. The pizza shown in the pictures has fresh tomatoes from our little garden on it. Delicious! We also make homemade pizza sauce with a can of tomato paste and a can of tomato sauce with some seasonings. The sauce is Ryan's specialty and it turns out different every time, but it's still good!)

For the breadsticks, we made a mixture of melted butter, garlic powder, and parmesan cheese and put spoonfuls of it on top. Then we put a little bit of shredded cheese on top. They were good!