Crouton Manifesto

As the dog days of summer swiftly approach, I am finding myself more and more reluctant to do anything in the kitchen that requires heat. I have been eating a disproportionate amount of cold foods from pasta to leftover enchiladas, they all reach my mouth still chilled.

When we get to that point in the year, when it's so hot we just want to subsist on green salads alone, we must not forget the humble crouton. Even though making croutons requires--Gasp!--the use of the oven, at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, it is worth it. I promise.

You should NEVER, EVER, EVER, even consider buying croutons. Not only are store bought croutons a rip off, they're like eating small, dried chunks of particle board. Plus, if you use the heels of the loaf, like I do, you won't feel guilty about wasting anything. Because honestly, how many of us really do use the heel of the bread of sandwiches?

Simple Croutons

3 cups stale bread, preferably heels, cut into 1 in cubes

olive oil
1/2 t. dried oregano
1/4 t. garlic powder
salt
fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Drizzle olive oil over bread cubes. Toss to coat. They shouldn't be drenched, but they should have a nice olive oily sheen. Sprinkle with oregano, garlic powder, and salt and pepper. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Stirring ever 5 minutes until done.

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries...

If there is one recipe that screams summer, it is Grandma Bauhard's chocolate covered cherry recipe. I was in 3rd grade the first time Grandma and I made it together. I come from a family that just doesn't travel, but every summer I made the circuit from Grandma's to an assortment of aunts and uncles' houses, vacationing a week at a time, giving my parents a much needed break from me. Sometimes I stayed by myself, other times my cousin Erin or my sister Holly joined me. Every foodie looks back at formative experiences cooking on "grandma's knee" and correlates them to their love of all things culinary, so much so, that it's become rather trite.

STILL, I have fond memories of making this with Grandma in early June. Staying at the Bauhard farmhouse was always an adventure. It was a sagging, rather decrepit house, bursting at the seams with the memorabilia and detritus that 50+ years of marriage and the rearing of 9 kids brings. My Grandpa "B" was even born in that house. The whole house was a mysterious, cluttered archive of my mom's side of the family. The house smelled of dust, mothballs, old wood, and the earthy smell of old fashioned plater-coated walls in the cool morning air. There was a giant maple tree just outside the back door, off the kitchen. Grandma and I would begin cooking in the morning, while it was still cool. The maple leaves of the maple tree to the east, created dappled sunshine as the sun rose. Grandpa believed in buying summer fruit, apricots, peaches, and cherries in flats and lugs so Grandma could preserve them.

I still remember the sweet, stickiness of chocolate and cherry juice, and spitting out pits. With a surplus of bing cherries, Grandma chose the perfect recipe for me to make. Something that didn't require heating the house up with the oven, and that was simple enough for a child. Delicious, slightly messy, and utterly stress-free. This truly is a summer dessert.


Grandma B's Chocolate Covered Cherries

2 dozen, fresh Bing cherries washed and dried with stems attached
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 teaspoons butter-flavored Crisco

Melt chocolate chips and Crisco together on stove in a double boiler. Remove from heat. Dip cherries by their stems and let set on wax paper. Refrigerate until firm.

Pizza, Thyme with Swiss Chard

I love having a garden because it gives me the ability to stroll through my own private produce section whenever I wish without having to leave home. This leads to serendipitous, spontaneous cooking. Serendipity, spontaneity, and a good dose of laziness are true marks of summertime. (Which, as Holly so kindly pointed out, led to me missing my scheduled Wednesday post.)

Last night for dinner I planned on making pizza, simply because I had leftover red sauce in the fridge and could not bring myself to eat anymore pasta for awhile. Kent was overjoyed. After working several years at Roman Coin Pizza in Omaha, and having become quite used to diet of 'za nearly everyday, he begins to feel deprived if he doesn't get pizza often enough.

One of my favorite pizza topping is fresh basil. The basil in my garden has not taken off to the point that harvesting a good handful of leaves was possible, but when I got to WinCo, they were entirely sold out of fresh basil. So I improvised. There are few dishes that adapt themselves so well to whatever is on hand as pizza does. Pizza thrives by the inspiration of the heat of the moment. After all, pizza is like sex, there's never a bad slice.

Perusing the garden at dusk, I decided to improvise with fresh thyme. But the Swiss Chard caught my eye, too. In the last couple of days, it has had a major growth spurt. It's a beautiful chartreuse color, with bubbled, dimpled leaves. The taste is of concentrated fresh, green earthiness. Crisper, my far, than that of fresh spinach.

I added some thinly sliced button mushrooms, and chevre, and I had quite a sensuous, lusty pizza on my hands.

After much trial and error, I finally have perfected a wonderful sourdough pizza dough. Here's the recipe I made with my starter, Norton. Norton seems to be mellowing as he gets older. His aroma is deeper. This dough will provide a fine crumb and a slightly sweet finish. Sourdough takes longer to rise than dough with commercial yeast, but cheating by adding yeast will make the dough too poufy and focaccia-like.

Sourdough Pizza Dough
1 cup sourdough starter (use liquid measuring cup)
1/2 cup warm water (between 105-115 degrees, no warmer)
3 cups all purpose flour
1 t. salt
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil

Combine starter and warm water. Stir well. Add flour, salt and oil. Stir until rough mass forms. Knead by hand or with stand mixer and dough hook attachment for about 10 to 15 minutes or until dough is elastic and springs back quickly when pinched. Let raise, covered with plastic wrap for 2 hours. Punch down and let raise for at least another 1 more hour, but not more than 3 hours.

Thyme Pizza with Mushroom and Swiss Chard
1 sourdough pizza dough recipe
1 cup pizza sauce (I used straight bottled spaghetti sauce. So, truly, any red sauce/pizza sauce that you like will work!)
12 button mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 cups Swiss Chard, de-stemmed and cut into chiffonade
4-6 sprigs of thyme, stems removed
2 oz. chevre
grated Pecorino
olive oil
fresh ground pepper

Makes 3, 10 -inch, thin crust pizzas.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Roll out or hand toss dough very thin. Spread with sauce. Top with mushrooms, chard, thyme, and cheeses. Drizzle chard with olive oil and top with fresh ground black pepper. Bake directly on a pre-heated pizza stone or on stone hearth* for 10 to 12 minutes or until bottom crust is slightly brown.

* You can turn any conventional oven into a stone hearth. Simply measure your oven, and go to any hardware store and buy enough unglazed porcelain tiles to cover one oven rack. Set tiles directly on middle rack. In my oven, 8, six inch square tiles fit perfectly, side to side. I bake everything on them. The even, direct heat from the tiles is the only way to get a perfectly crisp pizza crust, and at about 5 dollars they are much more economical than the gourmet pizza stones for sale at Williams-Sonoma.