Entries Tagged 'Baked' ↓

Amy’s triumphant return from Budapest brought Grab ‘n’ Growl week to an end, as well as a large bag of authentic Hungarian paprika. Given these two fantastic new developments, it was time to cook it the hell down.

We’d been searching for a good recipe for Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup for quite some time, never really satisfied. I recently stumbled upon this one from Sweet Cheeks in the Kitchen, in turn nabbed from the Candle Cafe Cookbook. It was sufficiently awesome that it required almost no modification–we added half a cup of soy creamer; that’s it. I also learned something really interesting: when a recipe calls for a dry white wine, it’s acceptable–nay, preferable–to use a dry vermouth. It’s cheaper, dryer, and saves better than an average white wine.

Not surprisingly, we rounded the soup out with breadsticks and an amazing salad based on our recently acquired paprika.

The salad was inspired by VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, with paprika taking the central role in place of wasabi.

Check it:

Paprika Cashew Chickpea Salad

Cashews & Chickpeas

• 1 cup raw cashews
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas
• 2 tsp sugar OR enough maple syrup to coat the cashews
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp soy sauce/tamari/shoyu
• salt & pepper, to taste

You can approach the cashews one of two ways: baking or sauteing. We sauteed them, but our friend Ryan has baked them with better results. So.

Baked Candied Cashews

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, coat the cashews in maple syrup. Once thoroughly coated, toss in 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Bake until brown, stirring often.

Fried Candied Cashews

In a medium-sized pan over medium heat, saute the cashews in high heat oil, coating in sugar, 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Cook until the spices and oil have congealed. Remove from heat. Note: they’ll seem soft at first, but they’ll firm up.

Paprika Chickpeas

In the same pan (if such a beast was used) as you cooked the cashews, saute the chickpeas in the soy sauce and remaining spices, until well coated and no liquid remains, salting and peppering to taste.

Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup hummus
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp honey/agave
• water, to desired consistency

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Finally, the salad

Toss the chickpeas, cashews, some diced purple onions, and cherry/grape tomatoes (optional) in with some fresh lettuce and enough dressing to coat lightly.

Growing up, I ate a lot of leftovers. My parents both worked two jobs so it was much more efficient to make a few big meals and then eat leftovers on off nights–especially since I could heat them up myself. Since you can’t always eke out a full meal from a single leftover, you often have to combine things or eat separate dishes. My mom referred to this as “Grab ‘n’ Growl”, a term passed down through the generations in my family’s unique (read: very bizarre) lexicon, which posits a family as a bunch of Neanderthals scavenging the fridge for food, battling over the best bits. Closer to the truth, perhaps, than we’d like to admit.

With Amy in Budapest, it’s officially grab ‘n growl week. This is sort of weird, since it’s just me, but I feel less lonely if I growl. Since I tend to do most of the cooking, the swingin’ bachelor life doesn’t necessitate eating cold beans out of cans, scratching my crotch, and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. I may prowl the house growling, but I can still drink whiskey from a glass. What the bachelor life does invoke, however, is my occasional need to purge the refrigerator of leftovers and about-to-go-bad food. On a small scale, this is best accomplished in a single meal. But with Amy gone–taking her need for delicious, inventive cuisine with her–I’m free to do a major purge, using up everything in strange and sometimes wonderful/sometimes not combinations.  In other words, this isn’t generally the kind of food I’d foist on other people.

But from the ashes doth arise the phoenix! Behold these Curried Potato Everything Cakes aka Poor Man’s Pakora:

These puppies used up mashed potatoes, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, kale, and a scosh of raw sushi filling, as well as some leftover Chik’n Almond Bake and crushed crackers for the breading. For combining so many different–and somewhat disparate–ingredients, these were actually pretty awesome. The cracker/Chik’n Almond Bake combo was the key.

I enjoyed this with leftover Avocado Wasabi Salad ala Vegan Yum Yum:

Remember that Roasted Poblano Chili? The leftover beans (I still haven’t mastered the exact yield of dry beans when you cook them) were a perfect base (along with rice, obviously) for beans and rice.

On Saturday, I made a green Thai curry out of a small smattering of frozen veggies (ack! I know), tofu, and the leftover raw Siamese Dream Soup.

And finally, last night I made a version of Zuppa Toscana, using up the rest of the mashed potatoes; some dilapidated turnips that didn’t make it into the Potato, Turnip, & Rosemary Soup; and the unused tempeh (we get it in bulk) from the Smoky Tempeh Hummus Wraps.

That’s a lot of food! As I’ve chiseled away at out leftovers (and this post), it’s become clear to me that we both cook and shop for our palettes, not from our resources. Forgive me if I’m stretching here, but this, in a general sense, is one the key problems with the American food industry. You can get as much of anything, from anywhere, at any time, as you want.  The variety comes from the store, not from your kitchen and brain.

Equally problematic is the amount of time between trips to the grocery store. Like most Americans, we tend to go once a week, if that. We task ourselves with predicting what our future selves will want to eat–based on what? How can we know what we’ll want to eat 3 days from now? This means that as the week wears on, we become less satisfied with our choices and less likely to cook with what we bought. Scanning our half-full fridge, nothing looks good. So we either (a) settle on something merely “acceptable” or (b) give up completely and go out for dinner. I’m not against going out to eat, but I think it should be a deliberate choice–because you want to, not because you need to. But (a) is a bit of a crapshoot; on nights when I’m feeling creative, it’s a fun challenge and usually turns out pretty tasty. On off nights, it’s a burden and “edible” suffices.

One solution to this is to shop more frequently and buy less. This also helps ensure the freshness of your food. The other solution, I’m afraid to say, may be getting comfortable with “pretty good” some of the time. Maybe it’s been a good week for culinary creativity, but I feel like I’ve eaten pretty well with nary a thought of hitting up the grocery store (okay…that’s not entirely true…when I ran out of soy sauce, I felt a ripple of panic). This may owe, in part, to the very fact that I’ve used up almost everything in the fridge; my choices have dwindled as the week wore on. While some choice is certainly good, a lot of choice, it turns out, is actually rather bad (think about your occasional trip to an all-vegan restaurant–it’s almost paralyzing; you’re not accustomed to so many choices). The problem with too many choices is our tendency to weigh any single choice against the combined best parts of all the other choices. While this doesn’t actually change how good any single choice is, it does change how satisfied we feel.

So my final thought, in this lazy cognitive meandering, is that our enjoyment of our food is often based on our frame of reference. Given my limited options, what I came up with seemed really good–as soon as I’d eliminated the other possibilities. This is the fulcrum on which “leftovers” become “leftover surprise”.

Rrrrrooaawww!

If you’re like us, you often feel nostalgic for things that maybe aren’t that awesome. But there’s a context, a larger experience that imbues them with something better, gives them a prominent place in our happy memories. The Olive Garden is one of those for us. For both of our families, it was one of the “going out to eat someplace ‘fancy’” defaults. When we (independently of each other) became vegetarian, it became an even better option, since there were still many things on the menu we could eat. Once we became vegan, though, things got a little dicier. Depending on who you ask, the minestrone, breadsticks, capellini pomodoro, and salad are or aren’t vegan. The pasta may or may not have eggs. The marinara may or may not have meat broth. The salad dressing definitely has cheese in it–there are no vegan dressings.

Since (a) we’ve never been able to get a straight answer and (b) we now live in an area with other family-suitable options (namely, Chinese), we don’t eat at the Olive Garden any more. But every once in a while, we get the hankering for the enveloping warmth of minestrone and hot fresh breadsticks–and a big ol’ vegan salad. So last night, we created some real “hospitaliano”–vegan style.

The minestrone was only slightly modified from this excellent recipe.

Olive Garden-style Minestrone

• 1 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 4 – 6 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 stalk of celery, diced finely
• 1/2 medium-sized zucchini, cut into small one-inch pieces or half-moons
• 1 small carrot (or half of a large carrot), grated
• a large handful of Italian/Spanish-style green beans (the flat ones–you can sub normal green beans in a pinch), cut into one-inch pieces
• 4 large stalks of kale (the curly kind), cut from the stalk and chopped coarsely
• 4 cups (2 cans) of cooked kidney beans
• 2 cups (1 can) cooked cannellini beans or white beans
• 4 cups (1 large can or 1 large jar) cooked tomatoes, with their juice
• 4 cups veggie broth
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 cup small shell pasta
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano (1.5 tbsp fresh, minced)
• 1/2 tsp dried basil (1.5 tsp fresh, minced)
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme (1 tsp  fresh, minced)
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup red wine (optional)

As you’d expect, saute the onion, garlic, and celery in a large pot over medium heat–in the oil of your choice (I recommend choosing safflower). When the onion has gotten soft, add in the broth, water, tomatoes, carrots, and herbs/spices. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. In a separate pot, cook the shells. When they’re done–but al dente–remove from heat, strain, and blanch with cold water. This will help prevent them from getting as bloated and mushy in the soup. A lazier person may decided to add the shells directly to the soup. But you wouldn’t do that. This is hospitaliano.

Once the 20 minutes is up, add in the remaining ingredients and cook until the zucchini and green beans are tender. It’s this crucial step that allows you to trump the Olive Garden–you can add veggies in at the end, ensuring their crispness, a paean to non-flaccid vegetables.

Now let’s trump their bread.

We used this recipe, unmodified, but reposted here for your convenience.

Breadsticks

• 1 1/3 cups of water
• 4 tsp melted Earth Balance ™
• 4 cups of flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• additional melted Earth Balance ™, for brushing on top
• additional salt, for sprinkling on top
• granulated garlic, for sprinkling on top

Combine all of the dry ingredients, minus 1 cup of flour, ideally in a mixer, using the bread hook attachment.

(We like to keep a giant thing of flour on hand so we can make bread any time we want.)

If you don’t have a mixer, you can theoretically mix by hand and then knead (we just got one for christmas and this was it’s maiden voyage–it was awesome). Combine the wet ingredients in a separate bowl/cup and then add slowly to the dry, while mixing. Now add in the remaining flour. Once the dough is mixed well (about 2 minutes in the mixer), roll out in to 16 long pieces. (We made about 12 and they were slightly fatter than the Olive Garden’s, but still awesome.)  Cover them and let them rise for at least 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit. Brush the bread with Earth Balance ™ and sprinkle salt on top.  Bake for 15 minutes. When you take them out, brush with Earth Balance ™ again and then sprinkle with granulated garlic.

And finally, the salad.

The salad, to be faithful to the OG original, should have lettuce (obviously), croutons, purple onion, roma tomatoes, black olives, peppers, and shredded carrots. We didn’t have any fresh tomatoes or black olives (which I don’t like) on hand, so we had to make due with some sliced zucchini instead. We made the croutons fresh, from a piece of bread cut into squares, lightly doused on olive oil, salt/pepper/garlic-ed, and toasted. The original salad should also have some sort of cheesy mayonnaise vinaigrette dressing, which we didn’t deign to copy. Instead, we made this vinaigrette, slightly modified.

Italian Vinaigrette Dressing

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp fresh dill
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a cruet and shake well.

When you’re vegan, you’re family!

Every once in a while we can’t, for the life of us, decide whether we want a soup or something more “entree”-like. In that event, the best bet is almost always a casserole–something most of us learn to a despise from a young age, but which can actually be awesome. This has broccoli, for supra health powers, white beans, for supra protein powers, and rice, for supra cheapness powers. For how easy this was to make, it was unbelievably delicious.

Broccoli & Rice Bake-em-up

• 2 cups white rice
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 1 – 2 stalks of broccoli, chopped into small florets and/or medium-sized pieces
• 1 cup cooked white beans
• 2 cups unsweetened faux milk
• 1 cup ground cashews
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 6 cloves of garlic, diced or pressed
• 1/2 one-pound block of soft (but not silken) tofu
• salt and pepper, to taste
• saltine crackers (optional, but almost excessively awesome)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit and start the rice cooking in the veggie stock. In a medium-sized frying pan, sautee the onions and garlic over medium heat, until soft. In a blender, puree the beans, faux milk, ground cashews, and tofu. When the onions and garlic are soft, add them to the puree, blend until smooth, then salt and pepper to taste.

Steam the broccoli until it’s tender, but not at all mushy–you’re going to bake this, so it better to err on the side of underdone. This will only take 5 – 10 minutes and should be done around the same time as–if not a little before–the rice. Once the rice is done, stir the rice, broccoli, and puree together in a 13×9 baking pan or casserole dish.

NOTE: we didn’t end up using all of the puree, but you’ll find it’s awkward to have just over a cup of white beans left, and just over half a block of tofu. The moral of the story is: add the puree in stages; just enough to get everything coated really well. Alternatively, you could add another 1/2 cup of rice to make a larger casserole. The power is yours.

Finally, drizzle safflower and/or olive oil on top and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes. If you’ve opted to add the cracker topping–an excellent choice, dear reader–then you’ll want to crumble enough crackers over the top of the casserole to cover it thoroughly then drizzle more oil on top of that. Bake for an additional 10 minutes. If you’ve decided to forgo the cracker topping, you can just bake it for 40 minutes straight.

We had this with a delicious salad, bread, and Tom/John Collinses.

Perusing Chow Vegan, we stumbled on this post about chili fries. This seemed like just the thing on an unseasonably warm fall day.

Unlike Chow Vegan, we love beans, so we pressure-cooked some up and made our own chili. We followed the recipe for Spicy Baked Potato Chips, but cut the taters into fry shapes and left out the cayenne, since the chili had enough kick on its own.

We topped it with Follow Your Heart cheddar which, while helping to scratch the cheese part of the chili cheese fry itch, wasn’t ideal. Don’t get me wrong–these were awesome–we just don’t eat a lot of processed stuff and these types of cheeses always feel really processed to me. A homemade nacho cheese probably would have been a better choice, but we’ve been a little nooched out lately and most faux-cheese recipes are centered around the nooch.

Cheese aside, the awesome thing about these is that, though they felt like a total indulgence, they’re actually not bad for you. The fries (a bit of a misnomer here) are actually baked (using a high heat oil–safflower) and the chili was made from scratch with canned tomatoes, freshly cooked black beans, carrots and celery from our garden, and onions from a local farm. Once you get over the psychosomatic “I destroyed myself” feeling, you realize you actually feel pretty good after eating this. Huzzah!

Let’s just start this with a picture:

Every year when fall blows in and we buy that first jug of cider, a desire for apple cider doughnuts begins worming its insidious way through our brains. This is fueled largely by nostalgia for visits to the apple orchard as kids. Knowing this does not help quell the desire. What does help is making freaking apple cider doughnuts!

And since we rarely bake sweets, I thought it was only right to finish off Vegan MoFo by making something I wouldn’t normally make, challenging myself a little.

As you’ve quite possibly learned by now, we’re not into frying so Amy hunted down this baked apple cider doughnut recipe. I took great pains to veganize it by, well, leaving out the egg. That simple. They were still light and fluffy, so I’m not really sure what the egg was supposed to do in the first place. Maybe in the olden days people had more eggs than they knew what to do with? Like me and zucchini.

It’s been a long time since I had a proper apple cider doughnut, and these weren’t fried, so I can’t compare very well. Amy thought they were delicious, but not a perfect replica of the platonic form of ‘apple cider doughnut’.

I should mention in advance, that you’ll need a doughnut pan for thus. You can get them pretty cheap in the intarwebs–be sure to get a nonstick one.

In any case, here they be:

Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 1½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup apple sauce
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/3 cup apple cider
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine all of the dry ingredients, except the brown sugar, in a large mixing bowl. Combine all of the wet ingredients plus the brown sugar in another, mixing thoroughly. Pour the wet mix into the dry and mix until just moistened.  Lightly oil or spray the doughnut pan and pour enough batter in each pocket to fill about half way. I filled them my first time using the pan and the doughnuts were all huge and lopsided. Caution, dear readers, caution. Bake for 15 minutes, or until they spring to the touch. Let them cool for a few minutes, then remove them from the pan using a knife to pop them out. In a small bowl, mix about 2 tsp cinnamon to 1/4 cup sugar (until it tastes sweet and not too sharp). Spray/brush the doughnuts with oil lightly and dunk the doughnut in the dry mix, coating thoroughly. BooYa!

Eat with hot cider. Or else:

Happy Halloween!

Happy Final MoFo!

For me, cooking is largely a creative endeavor, like making art–something steeped in inspiration and which doesn’t like being bossed around. For the first few weeks, the MoFo was just a great way to push myself a little harder, a context for creation. But in the last few days, it’s become harder–for better or worse. Maybe now is the most important time–when it’s no longer easy and I have to start making real decisions, instead of being blown by the winds of whimsy.

It was in this state that I approached last night’s meal: Seitan Bread Bake, Roasted Acorn Squash Soup, and Scalloped Potatoes. With the additional caveat: I must not produce any more leftovers that Amy won’t eat (it gets a little old eating pot pie for lunch every day for a week). So, I wanted to craft a meal that catered to all of Amy’s cravings.

(I’m feeling a bit loquacious today–feel free to skip to THE ACTION)

Mulling over how to put all of this together without creating a hodgepodge of crap, I took inspiration from this really attractive meal at The Airy Way. It reminded me of two things that I often really like in a meal: lots of different, small portions and a nice mix of complex recipes with simple ones.

We usually approach a soup as a meal, but every once in a while I get a wild hare to do an appetizer-type soup. We had a few acorn squash to use up, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for Roasted Acorn (and Garlic!) Soup. Riding out the Autumn trend (which happened to be saddled to the Amy’s-Craving trend), it seemed like a good night to take another stab at Faux Gratin Potatoes. We’ve been a little nooched out of late, so we decided that a simpler, cleaner Scalloped Potato might be a nice change.

The surprise champeen of the dinner, to my surprise, was the Seitan Bread Bake. We had tomatoes and bread to use up and Amy mentioned this sort of tomato and bread bake that a friend’s dad used to make. My interest was piqued. Of course, we also nad seitan to use up (there’s a theme here). The original recipe used basil, but we have a mess of pesto in the freezer right now–this, I firmly believe, was the crucial element. I don’t have words for how awesome this stuff tastes. You could prepare it faster than I could describe it.

In any case, here’s THE ACTION:

Roasted Acorn Squash (and Garlic!) Soup

• 2 small acorn squash, cut in half and degutted
• 1 HEAD of garlic
• 1/2 medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• 3 cups veggie stock
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the acorn squash in half, remove the guts, then place on an oiled cooking sheet. Slice off the top of the head of garlic, place in foil, and douse with olive oil. Bake the squash for 45 minutes and the garlic for 30 minutes (i.e. just put garlic in 15 minutes after the squash).

Meanwhile, sautee the onion in oil or Earth Balance in a medium-sized pot over medium heat, untill soft. When the squash and garlic are done, remove them from the oven and give them at least 10 minutes to cool. Spoon and knife the squash and garlic, respectively, into the pot with the onion. Add in the stock, stir well, then blend with an immersion blender. If you’re using a standard blender, you can put all the ingredients directly in the blender, then transfer to the pot. Blend until very smooth. Add the cumin, then salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a swirl of Rooster Sauce.

Scalloped Potatoes

• 4 medium – large potatoes, cut into thin disks (peel, if using brown taters)
• 1/2 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/2 cup cooked white beans, drained
• 1/2 cup ground cashews
• 1/2 cup milk-like product
• tsp ground mustard seed
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp Earth Balance
• salt and pepper, to taste
• bread crumbs (optional)

This is very much like the Al-Faux-Do sauce, but with white beans and a bit more lemon. It’s a bit thicker and, despite the lemon, a tinch less sharp (and even less so after baking).

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare the potatoes. Sautee the onion and garlic in the Earth Balance over medium heat. Once they’re soft, add them to the blender along with the other ingredients (except the potatoes) and blend until smooth.

Put the potatoes in an oven-safe casserole dish and pour the the sauce over them, mixing very thoroughly. The more shallow you stack the potatoes, the faster they’ll and the more bread crumbs you can fit on top. Your call.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and add bread crumbs (if you’re using them). Bake for an additional 15 minutes. Check the potatoes with a fork–if they’re nice and soft, you’re done. Otherwise, cook for an additional 5 minutes and check again. Repeat as necessary.

Seitan Bread Bake

• 2 thick pieces of bread, cut into large cubes (we used our homemade bread; use 3 pieces if using sandwich bread)
• 1 large seitan cutlet (or two smaller ones), cut into large cubes
• 3 small tomatoes (or 1 large tomato–use your judgment), cut into pieces
• 3 cubes frozen pesto (~1/2 cup) OR fresh garlic and basil, minced
• olive oil

Preheat oven to 425. Place the bread, seitan, and tomatoes in an oiled oven-safe casserole dish or cooking sheet with a little depth (there will be a fair amount of oil and tomato juice–so you don’t want a totally flat sheet). Mix them up, so everything is fairly evenly distributed. Douse generously with olive oil, then spread pesto on top (if you’re thawing, you’ll probably need a little olive oil to the pest when warming). Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil, stir everything thoroughly, and bake for another 15 minutes, until bread and seitan are somewhat firm. Prepare your tastebuds. Fantastic!

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to move away from buying a lot of pre-made food is to bake your own bread. For some reason, we struggled against this for years, but our friend Jen recently turned us on to this recipe. The genius of it is upkeep. Make more dough when you run out so you always have it on hand. Then you can always have a loaf in the oven while you’re preparing the rest of the meal. Also, you can make the loaves any size you want (though the recommended size seems to work perfectly for two people) so you don’t end up with more bread than you really want. You can use it for pizza crust, naan, sammiches, croutons, bludgeons, etc.

Super Simple Homemade Bread

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)
• 1 1⁄2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
• 6 1⁄2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
• Cornmeal
• (baking/pizza stone)

What’s awesome about this bread is that, if executed properly, it’s a never-ending well of awesomeness. The key here is to always have more dough on hand. Each batch makes 4 medium-sizes loaves. So, when you make your last loaf–make more dough. Don’t wait. Unless you want to wait later. The real key here is discipline. You can use the dough-scrapins from bowl as a starter for your next batch, for added power/glory/flavour.

So, to make the dough:

In a large mixing bowl (resealable/lidded is ideal), combine the yeast and salt with lukewarm water (in theory, 100 degrees Fahrenheit). We usually just use warm-hot tap filtered tap water.

Mix in the flour both gently and gradually, in that order, with a wooden spoon. If necessary, you can use your hands to mix this but don’t knead it. Though dough should still be a little wet.

Now comes that dread beast, the waiting game: cover the bowl with a towel and leave out at room temperature for 2 – 5 hours.

Your dough is now ready for use and/or storage! In theory, you want to refrigerate the dough for 3 hours or more before using; it makes the dough easier to work with. In a pinch though, we’ve used it immediately after two hours. The remaining dough can stay in the refrigerator for up to two weeks (in fact, the flavor “matures” over that time). Leave the lid to the container loose. You can double/triple/quintriple/etc this recipe with no adverse effects. Huzzah!

Time to bake it up!

Sprinkle cornmeal on a working surface (or pizza peal, if you have one). Cut off a grapefruit-sized piece of dough and sprinkle it with flour, stretching the dough out, but keeping it in its ball shape–sort of tucking the dough into the bottom of itself. Like an Escher drawing. This bread should look impossible. Place the ball on the working surface/peal and let sit for 40 minutes. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and set your timer.

After 20 minutes, put your baking stone and empty broiler/cake pan on the middle rack. Sprinkle flour on top of the loaf and slash 1/4 inch deep with a knife. You can do diagonal lines, little Xs, a hand making the metal sign \M/…

When you reach the final countdown, carefully slide the bread into the oven–you want this to happen in one motion, so you’ll need to perform some sort of zombie-jerk-motion.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown. After a loaf or two, you’ll have a good sense of exactly how much time your particular oven requires. And don’t be too hasty here. I know it looks delicious, but let the bread cool down at least a little so it firms up and you can cut it.

Variations

You can use this dough for pizza crust, naan bread, dinner rolls, etc–merely by shaping it differently. Naan and pizza involve rolling the dough out. Dinner rolls involve making small oblong balls. Experiment here–it’s hard to produce something that isn’t good. After a few days (if by some miracle you fail to eat it–usually the result of making too many loaves at once) you can cut the bread into small pieces; brush/douse with olive oil, garlic powder, and herbs; and toast/bake on high for about 5 minutes to make croutons.

Achtung! This post has been updated and moved to:

http://irreverentvegan.com/2009/11/spanksgiving-faux-turkey/