How to make friends and impress people

I went a pot-luck on Saturday night and was asked to bring bread. So I made some foccacia in the breadmaker. It never ceases to amaze me how impressed people are when you make homemade bread. I think they have this vision of me spending hours in a hot sweaty kitchen, energetically kneading huge mounds of dough. The thing is, when you have a breadmaker, it is incredibly easy to make bread. In fact, to be honest, I was out for a while on Saturday and had my 12 year old son make one of the loaves for me. Yes, the kitchen was coated in a fine film of flour, and some of the ingredients have inexplicably disappeared, having been 'put away' in the wrong place. But the loaf was beautiful. The recipe and the breadmaker are, quite simply, foolproof (in case my sensitive son is reading this, please don't read anything into the use of the word 'fool' darling, it's a turn of phrase!) If you have a breadmaker sitting idle, and fancy trying the focaccia recipe, then look at the blog entry for 3/25/13. You will, quite simply, make friends and impress people. And if you want to seal the deal, feel free to string them along with tales of endless, flour-covered, bicep-stimulating, kneading sessions in a sweaty kitchen.

Today, I decided to try something new in the breadmaker, and have been reliably informed by my daughter (quite a bread aficionado herself) that it is "very yummy", and this from a sullen pre-teen whose most effusive praise is often something like a mumbled "it's OK, I guess..." I take that as praise indeed, and certainly an indication that the recipe is worthy of an entry here. The basis for the recipe came from a Better Homes and Gardens publication called "Best Bread Machine Recipes", but I tweaked it using a different cheese and using the 'Dough-Only' cycle on the machine, so that I could take it out and shape it myself, making it much more like the Asiago Bread we often buy at the store (which is apparently yummy too, but often disappears before I get to taste it!).

So get your breadmaker out and set it to work.

Asiago Bread
(makes a 1.5lb loaf)

3/4 cup 2% milk
3 TBSP water
1 egg
1 TBSP butter, (soft, not straight out of the fridge)
3 cups bread flour
3/4 cup finely shredded Asiago cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1 rounded tsp active dry yeast

For topping:
olive oil
1/2 cup finely shredded Asiago cheese

1. Add ingredients to bread machine in order shown. (If you are setting the breadmaker to delay its start, make sure the yeast sits on top of the flour, without touching the other ingredients).
2. Set breadmaker to go on 'Dough-Only' cycle.
3. When breadmaker finishes, take dough out of machine and shape into a rectangle (about 1" thick) on a baking sheet sprayed lightly with olive oil spray.
4. Brush the top of the dough with olive oil and sprinkle with shredded Asiago.
5. Leave the dough in a warm-ish place to rise (mine rises beautifully just set on the kitchen counter, or on a winter's day, sitting on top of the dryer in the laundry room) for about 45 minutes. By then it should have doubled in size.
6. Bake at 400 degrees F for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

Best eaten fresh and still warm :-)

 

Any left-overs (yeah,right) make a great crunchy topping for your next mac and cheese, pasta bake etc. Just whizz the remaining bread up in the food processor and sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top.