Big Sky Bread Company

Big Sky Bread Company is our favorite source for locally produced bread.  Big Sky is a franchise operation based out of Alabama.  I don't know much about their overall business strategy, but the Des Moines-area Big Sky is a family-owned and operated business.  They have a store in Urbandale, at which one can get sandwiches, breakfasts and a full range of their bakery goods, including muffins, cookies, granola, cinnamon rolls and, of course, bread.   Honestly, though, I can't speak on the store itself, as I've never been there.  Instead, I've purchased their breads in stores.  Over 100 local vendors, including most of the Des Moines area Hy-Vee supermarkets, carry Big Sky breads, and the company also sells its wares at some of the Des Moines area farmer's markets. 

I recently picked up a loaf of Big Sky's Whole Wheat Three Seed bread at the Monday farmer's market at Southridge Mall.  I've tried several of the Big Sky breads over the years, but so far my and Juli's favorite is the Three Seed bread.  This hearty, flavorful wheat bread is fortified with poppy, sesame and sunflower seeds.  It makes wonderful toast, and is great topped with peanut butter, jelly, jam or preserves, or simply butter.  At the farmer's market, I saw a variety that caught my attention, a Wyoming Sourdough bread that is advertised as having a more robust sourdough flavor than the more common San Francisco version.  No samples were available at the farmer's market, so I haven't tried it yet, but that description sounds tantalizing enough that I suspect I'll probably buy a loaf next time I get the opportunity.

Toasted Three Seed Bread topped with apricot preserves.

Those interested can check out Big Sky Bread Company's Facebook page.  Big Sky Bread Company is located at 7021 Douglas Avenue, Urbandale, IA, 50322.  Their hours are Monday through Friday 7 am to 5:30 pm and Saturday 7 am to 2 pm.

Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread

The current issue of Cook's Illustrated (March/April 2011) includes a recipe for Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread that looked really, really good.   It's a fairly complex and time-consuming recipe, but the promised results - a hearty wheat bread with a soft texture - sounded worth the time and effort, so I made a batch this past weekend. 

Some of the work was done the night before, giving the major components of the bread - bread flour mixed with yeast and water and whole wheat flour and wheat germ soaked in milk - time to develop.  After mixing these components with some honey, more yeast and a few other ingredients, everything was blended into one dough, which went through rounds of kneading, rising, turning, shaping and rising again, after which the loaves went into the oven.    The recipe printed in CI makes enough dough for two loaves.

My bread never did rise quite as much as suggested by the recipe, despite giving the dough more time to rise than called for.  The problem there was my own making, as I didn't have rapid-rise yeast and went with ordinary yeast.  As a result, my loaves weren't as puffy as the ones discussed and pictured with the recipe article.  We still found the texture quite pleasant and light, though, and the flavor was excellent. 

This bread slices cleanly and has a great, wheaty flavor with just the slightest bit of chew and the tiniest hint of bitterness.   It really does work well for sandwiches - Juli has made some with rare roast beef and provolone - but it's also great for toast, or just sliced and served with some butter. 

We've been eating our way through one loaf, while I wrapped the second one and froze it for later.   Once the second one is finished off, I'll probably be making this one again.

Frybread Scramble

This is the third and last post (at least for now) about Navajo Frybread.  Navajo Frybread is tasty, filling and wonderfully versatile.  It can be eaten on its own as part of a meal, or topped to make a taco, or sprinkled with powdered sugar, cinnamon and  honey.   Or, you can top it with cheese, beans and scrambled eggs to make a great, hearty breakfast.  

Or, if you're trying to watch cholesterol, you can simply top the frybread with the beans, some shredded cheese and a bit of salsa verde and hot sauce, as I did.  

Frybread Scramble

yield = 4 servings

1            can (15 ounce) chili beans
1            can (4 ounces) diced green chilis
1/4         cup shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese
              + 1/3 cup for the eggs and + 1/2 cup to top
7            eggs, lightly beaten
3/4         cup milk
1/2         teaspoon table salt
1/2         teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1            teaspoon butter (optional)
4            pieces Navajo Frybread
              hot sauce, tomato salsa, salsa verde or other
              toppings as preferred

Add chili beans and green chilis to a saucepan.  Heat to a low boil over medium heat, then stir in 1/4 cup cheese and reduce heat to low.  Simmer until thickened, then cover and remove from heat.

Pour milk in bowl with the beaten eggs.   Add salt and pepper.   Spray a skillet with nonstick cooking spray and heat over medium-high heat (or melt one teaspoon butter, if you prefer).    Add the egg mixture.  Cook until the egg mixture is about halfway solidified, then break apart and scramble with a spatula.  Cook until the egg mixture is almost cooked through, then stir in 1/3 cup shredded cheese.  Remove from heat.

Top Frybread with bean mixture, extra cheese (if desired) and 1/4 of the scrambled eggs.  Top with hot sauce, tomato salsa, salsa verde or other toppings as desired.

Note:
If you like, you can fry and crumble some bacon or sausage and stir that into the eggs along with the cheese, or stir in a tablespoon of salsa.

Leftover Navajo Frybread can be warmed up pretty easily.   Preheat an oven to 400 degrees with a rack at the center position.  Lay Frybread pieces directly on the oven rack and cook 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.

Our favorite brand of chili beans is Mrs. Grimes Tex-Mex Style Chili Beans.  That's what I use with this recipe, the Indian Tacos, Spicy Chili Mac and any other recipe we make that calls for canned chili beans.

Navajo Frybread

I've written a fair bit about Indian cooking of the curry variety, but this time around, I'm writing about a different type of Indian cooking:  American Indian, or Native American,* if you prefer.

Frybread is one of the most basic recipes in American Indian cooking.   The Navajo version is probably the most famous, and many sources cite the Navajo as the tribe among which Indian frybread originated, but many other tribes have their own versions, each with numerous variations.  All Indian frybreads have some some things in common.   Essentially, they require one to mix flour, a bit of salt, baking powder, warm liquid of some sort (water, or milk, or both), and maybe some sort of oil into a dough.   The dough is shaped into flat, round or oval shapes and fried in very hot oil.  

When we vacationed in Arizona a couple years ago, we encountered, and quickly became quite fond of, Navajo frybread.   There were frybread stands here and there, both in town and out in the more rural areas.  Not too far from where we were staying, we found a little strip-mall restaurant that featured a menu mostly served with or on frybread.  Frybread topped with scrambled eggs, several different types of chili and frybread, frybread tacos, frybread with cinnamon sugar, or jam, or honey... we tried all of these, and probably some others I'm forgetting, and they were all delicious.   I'd tried some other versions of frybread many years before, but I barely remembered them; they hadn't made much of an impression.  The Navajo Frybread was unforgettable, and for awhile now I've wanted to try making it myself.

In seeking out a recipe for Navajo Frybread, I found no lack of contenders online.  Everyone from Emeril Lagasse to Smithsonian Magazine offered up a version, as did most of the major recipe sites and a number of tribal sites, not to mention the webpages of any number of individuals and organizations.   They were mostly pretty similar, which was good, as this provided some basis for comparison.   A few included atypical ingredients such as cornmeal, eggs or shortening, but most did not.  I ended up focusing on what looked like the most basic recipes for the traditional Navajo version of the recipe and studied them to come up with the most typical ratios of various ingredients.  The various recipes differed most in terms of the amount of liquid used.  Some specified the dough should be fairly dry, others suggested a stickier dough.    I decided to go conservative with the liquid,  then adjust upward from there to try to find the right texture. 

I started with 3/4 cup of water, the smallest amount of liquid suggested in any of the recipes I consulted.   I thought that would likely be too little liquid, and I was right.  The dough wouldn't really even come together with that little water.  I added another 1/4 cup, and that was better, but still not right, so I added yet another 1/4 cup - for a total of 1 1/4 cups - and that ended up being too much, with the dough being wet and very sticky.   I added in a bit more flour to make up for excessive water, and while I eventually got the dough to a manageable texture, I knew at that point the frybread probably wouldn't turn out well.  A lot of the recipes - including most of the ones I followed most closely in designing my own - warned quite clearly about over-working the dough, and having to repeatedly mix in more water, find the texture not right, then add more flour, then more water again... well, I was pretty sure that was more than enough kneading to qualify as over-working.  

Sometimes it sucks to be right.

Some of the recipes I studied called for rolling out pieces of the dough to make individual servings of frybread, while others stated one should flatten and shape the dough entirely by hand.    This appeared to be the more traditional technique, so I went with this.  That was a mistake.  The dough was stiff enough that shaping it by hand was not an easy task, so the dough got even more over-worked from my attempts to squish, stretch, pinch and otherwise shape the dough, but eventually I got several flat, round (well, sort of round, anyhow) pieces of dough ready to fry.

All the recipes stated to fry the bread in very hot oil, with suggested temperatures ranging from 350 to 375 degrees.  Traditionally, Navajo Frybread is often cooked in a cast-iron skillet, but knowing how much oil can splatter all over the stove top during frying, I wasn't about to keep with that tradition.  Instead, I used a Dutch oven.  I got the oil to about 370 degrees, then tossed in one of the rounds of dough to fry.  After a couple minutes on each side, the first one was done, and I continued with the others.

The results didn't look much like the Navajo Frybread we'd had in Arizona, and while they tasted good, the texture was all wrong.   Too chewy, not nearly enough puffiness.    That's what comes from over-working the dough.    The taste was right, though, and the bread had cooked through despite being pretty tough, so I knew I was on the right track.     I decided immediately that I'd make up another batch of frybread, and tradition be darned, this time I'd roll them out.   Maybe an expert frybread-maker can manage to shape them by hand without ending up with thick, rubbery frybread, but I clearly didn't have the right amount of skill.  Or maybe some people just like their frybread to have texture similar to that of a mouth full of rubber bands.

In making the second batch of dough, I had a better idea how much water to use, so this time the dough came together with a minimum of hassles.  After letting the dough rest, I divided it up into servings, then rolled them out.  I started heating the oil while I rolled out the dough, and therein lay a near-catastrophe.

I was shooting for 370 degrees, but somehow the oil went from about 270 to way, way too hot within what seemed a couple minutes time.   When I next checked it, the thermometer was registering past 400 degrees, and the oil was starting to smoke.  I went to turn the burner temperature way down, and as I did, I heard a pop.   I had a pretty good idea what had happened, and I was right.  I could see shards of thin glass at the bottom of the Dutch oven; my thermometer had broken from being heated past its range.

That oil wasn't going to be usable any more, and with the oil that hot, that Dutch oven wasn't going to be available for awhile, either.   Juli had originally suggested I cook the frybread in our Presto electric skillet, since that was large enough to cook two rounds of bread at the same time, so I went with that.  Thankfully, we had just enough fresh oil to cover the bottom of the skillet in oil to a depth of about 1/2 inch.  One advantage of the Presto is that you can select a specific temperature, so in short order I had heated the oil to 370 and put in the first two rounds.  Right away I knew this batch was going to work out much, much better than had the first one.   The rounds of dough immediately puffed up, forming the same big bubbles I'd remembered from the Navajo Frybread we'd had in Arizona.  A few minutes later, we had another batch of frybread ready.

After one bite we both knew we had the recipe and technique figured out.   This batch of Navajo Frybread was excellent... great flavor, and not the least bit greasy due to how quickly they'd cooked in such hot oil.  The rounds were crispy on the outside, yet soft on the inside, and flexible enough to bend around toppings to form a taco.

I'll write more about tacos made with Navajo Frybread, and some other good things you can do with the Frybread, in another post.

Navajo Frybread

yield = 6 servings

3       cups all-purpose flour
1/2    cup dry powdered milk
1       tablespoon baking powder
1/2    teaspoon salt
1       cup + 3 tablespoons hot water
         vegetable oil for frying

Mix the flour, milk, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.   Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in one cup of water.   Use your hands to mix the ingredients into a thick, slightly-sticky dough, adding in as much of the additional three tablespoons of water as necessary to get the right texture.  Spray the bottom of a medium-sized bowl with nonstick cooking spray, then add the dough.  Turn it over to oil both sides, lay plastic wrap directly over the dough and set aside.   Let the dough rest at least 30 minutes.

After the dough has rested, roll the dough ball into a cylinder.  Slice the dough into 6 evenly-sized portions, rolling each into a ball then flattening it slightly.   Sprinkle a counter top or other work surface lightly with flour.  Take one of the dough balls, set it on the floured surface, then flip it over.  Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to form a disc or oval about 8-10 inches in diameter.  Shake off excess flour, then repeat with the rest of the dough balls, stacking them on a plate.

Pour oil into an electric skillet or Dutch oven to a depth of 1/2 inch or more.  Heat to 370 degrees.   Add one of the dough discs (or two, if there is ample room for them to not overlap) to the hot oil, being careful to not splash the oil.   Cook for about two minutes or until lightly browned on the first side, pressing down on any overly-large bubbles that may form, then flip and cook another 1-2 minutes or until lightly browned.  Using tongs, lift the frybread from the oil, allowing excess oil to drip off, then transfer to a plate or baking sheet lined with 3 layers of paper towels.  Repeat with the remainder of the dough, then serve.


* Should anyone take offense to my use of the name "Indian" in reference to the people who were already living in North America when the Europeans arrived, I sincerely apologize, as no offense is intended.   Most of the Native folk I've known have used the term 'Indian' in preference to 'Native American,' so that's the term I use as well.

Navajo Frybread

Spaghetti with Homemade Meatballs + Crusty French Bread

This weekend, I made up another batch of my Chunky Marinara Sauce in order to make Spaghetti with Meatballs.  But while the sauce is something I've made before, I did a couple other new things.  Specifically, rather than use our dependable favorite Graziano Bros. meatballs, I made my own.   I also took my first stab at making bread and cooked up a couple French loaves.

Having had some difficulty with lamb meatballs in the recent past, I consulted some meatball recipes before putting together one of my own.   I ended up closely styling mine after an old Cook's Illustrated recipe, but I changed a few things to better reflect Juli's and my preferences.   Most notably, I changed around the ratio of beef to Italian sausage, going from the 5:1 ratio CI suggested to a 2:1 ratio.  I made this change because I wanted a bit more of the sausage flavor. 

The meatballs turned out great.... nice texture, flavorful and a good complement to the sauce.   I'm not going to claim my meatballs are better than the ones we purchase at Graziano Bros. Grocery - at least not yet - but I'm quite pleased with them.   We'll keep some of the Graziano meatballs around for when we need meatballs in a hurry and with a minimum of hassle, but I'm confident that I'll be making my own meatballs most of the time from now on. 

Jeffrey's Italian Meatballs

yield = 24 meatballs

2           tablespoons olive oil
2           medium yellow onions, chopped fine
4           teaspoons minced garlic
4           teaspoons dried oregano, crushed
1/2        teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
4           slices white bread, torn into 1-inch pieces
2/3        cup milk
1           cup freshly-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1/3        cup chopped fresh parsley
2           large eggs
1           teaspoon salt
1/2        teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
2           pounds 85% lean ground beef
1           pound fresh, loose sweet Italian sausage

Heat olive oil until shimmering in a large skillet over medium-high heat.   Add onions and cook until golden-brown, about 8 minutes, stirring frequently.  Stir in garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes and cook 30 seconds, then transfer onion mixture to a large bowl to cool.

Add bread pieces to a medium bowl.  Pour in milk and allow the bread to soak for 5 minutes, then use hands to squeeze soaked bread into rough paste.  Add bread-milk paste to the large bowl with the cooled onion mixture.

Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position.    Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Set a wire rack within a rimmed baking sheet and spray the rack and sheet with nonstick cooking spray. 

Add grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, parsley, eggs, salt and pepper to the onion/bread mixture.  Stir together to mix these ingredients, then add ground beef and sausage to the mixture.  Using hands, mix all the ingredients thoroughly, then shape mixture into approximately 24 meatballs, each somewhat larger than a golf ball.  Arrange meatballs evenly but without touching on the wire rack and bake until well-browned, 20-25 minutes. 

After baking up the meatballs, I mixed them in with the marinara sauce and served the meatballs and sauce over spaghetti with a sprinkle of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.   Our meal was rounded out with a Caesar salad and slices of Crusty French Bread.  I made the bread using a recipe that came with our Cuisinart Stand Mixer.  Unfortunately, my first try at making bread didn't work out quite as well as did my first tries at cake or pie.   It wasn't bad, mind you, just not as good as I'd have preferred. 

The Crusty French Bread had a great crust and good flavor, and while Juli thought it was okay, I didn't really like the interior texture.   The bread was too dense for my tastes.   I will probably try out a different recipe next time I decide to make French bread, but I suppose this recipe might be a good starting point if I decide to experiment with making my own recipe some day.  Still, it didn't keep us from enjoying this meal, and it didn't in any way dampen my happiness with how the meatballs had turned out.

Potato Chowder and Easy Garlic Bread for a Blustery Day

It's gotten suddenly cold and blustery here in our little Iowa town, and that means comfort food is on the menu.  This is a pretty easy soup to put together, and if you have leftover ham from a holiday dinner, you can use some of it here.  Despite the milk, cream, and cheese, the soup heats up reasonably well even from a frozen state.  This is one of my son's favorite soups. 




Ian's Favorite Potato Chowder

1/4 cup butter
1 small onion, diced fine
8 cups diced potatoes
1 49-ounce can chicken broth
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cups milk
2 cups half-and-half cream
4 cups grated cheddar cheese
2 cups diced ham
1 15-ounce can corn
1 15-ounce can creamed corn

1.  Melt 1/4 cup of butter in a large skillet.  Saute onions until cooked through.

2.  In a Dutch oven, boil potatoes in the chicken broth, adding cooked onions.

3.  When the potatoes are cooked, make a white sauce:  melt 1/2 cup of butter in the large skillet.  Blend in flour, salt, and pepper.  Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and starting to bubble.  Remove from heat, stir in milk and half-and-half.  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.  Boil and stir for one minute.  Add the white sauce to the cooked potato mixture in the Dutch oven.

4.  Add the remaining ingredients and cook until cheese melts and all ingredients are heated through.

Cheater's Garlic Bread- this is so easy, it's not really even a recipe!  Buy a loaf of good Italian or French bread at the grocery.  Split in half, and spread generously with softened butter.  Sprinkle with a good quality garlic powder and dried parsley.  Close the two halves back together and wrap with foil.  Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until butter has melted.  Voila!  Garlic bread!  And you don't have to pay twice as much for the already-wrapped-in-foil loaves from the store!

New Mexican Pork Stew and Homemade Flour Tortillas

So far I've made almost half of the recipes in the newest (December 2010) issue of Cook's Country, and have been quite pleased with most of them.   It is rare that I get that much use out of a single recipe source, and especially rare for a cooking magazine.

The two most recent things I've tried from that particular magazine are a natural combination:  posole - a stew common to New Mexico, made from pork, hominy and pureed onions and dried peppers - and fresh, homemade tortillas.  The stew was by far the more time-consuming of the two recipes, due to it having several steps - roasting the dried ancho chilis, rehydrating them in hot broth, browning onions, pureeing the onions and peppers, browning the pork and the hominy, long periods of stewing - but the bulk of that was time when ingredients just cooked on the stove top. 

The flour tortillas were comparatively quick to make:  Mix shortening, flour and water into a dough, roll the dough into small balls, roll the balls into thin, flat rounds and quick-fry them in a smoking-hot cast iron skillet.   My Lodge cast iron skillet came in quite handy for that, naturally. 

Both the posole and the tortillas were pretty easy to make, really.  The clearly-written recipes are about as close to foolproof as one can get.

I liked the stew a lot more than Juli did.  I found the tender, shredded pork, the rich, smoky, chili-based broth and the hominy to be a great combination, making for a hearty, flavorful stew.  Juli, however, was less than thrilled with the texture of the hominy.  We both loved the tortillas, though.  I'll definitely be making the tortillas again - like, next time I'm in a mood for tacos, more likely than not - but I'll probably only do the stew only occasionally, if I decide I'd like to make some to take to work as lunches.   If you like the idea of a hearty stew with a rich, complex mix of distinctly southwestern flavors that does not rely on over-familiar staples like chili powder and cumin, give it a try.