Bread and Pasta

Ella and I decided to make homemade bread and pasta for dinner tonight. Ella really likes to help me make bread dough. She's quite the stirring expert. We let the dough rise while we went to the store to buy fruit and coffee. 

When we came back, I put the dough in a 3x5x9 inch pan and let it rise again. While it was rising I got started on my pasta. I have to use lots of mushrooms in the pasta since Ella has become obsessed with them. She likes a few noodles with her mushrooms.

I also picked some basil, oregano, and hungarian wax peppers from our garden. I love having a garden to pick cooking ingredients from.

I started with a little butter, the mushrooms, some sea salt, some wine. a couple zucchini, a shallot, two cloves of garlic, a handful of black olives I had left over in the fridge, a handful of cherry tomatoes, the peppers and herbs all chopped up and stirred into my pan. I added some black pepper, parmesan cheese and a little half and half to finish it off. This is the sort of pasta that is different every time. and usually delicious.

Getting a picture of freshly baked bread is a little difficult...

Easy Bread

1 cup of water

1 tsp. yeast

4 tsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. oil

Mixture of Whole Wheat White Flour and Bread Flour

1 tsp salt

1. Mix lukewarm water with sugar and yeast in a bowl and let sit.

2. Add oil and 1 cup Whole Wheat White Flour (mix well)

3. Add salt and 1 cup Bread flour (mix well)

4. Keep stirring in flour until a spongy dough forms. (No need to kneed.)

5. Cover and let rise for at least an hour.

6. Place in 3x5x9 greased pan. Let rise again for about an hour.

7 Bake at 400 for ~20 minutes