Brooklyn Forager

Have I mentioned it's hot? It's really too hot to bake.  But it's also too hot to cook.  And it's a whole lot easier to have a quick sandwich for lunch or dinner than to deal with even the lightest of chopping or boiling or stir-frying.  So, because it's also too hot to even go grocery shopping, I decided that baking in the air conditioning using the convection oven to minimize heat made the most sense.  I think I chose correctly.

I've shied away from breads that required kneading and have become a bit of a one-trick pony with my no-knead bread.  I came across a recipe at a clean eating blog that I enjoy, Clean Eating Machine. With a short list of ingredients, the title of clean eating and a not-so-lengthy amount of rising time, this seemed like the one to try.

A loaf before baking - on it's last rise.A couple of thoughts:

• The original recipe calls for a small bowl.  You're adding 3 cups of flour and 1 3/4 cups of water to this bowl and letting it double in size.  Use a large bowl. 
• The dough is very sticky.  There wasn't a lot of discussion about flouring your kneading surface or adding extra flour.  I did a less robust kneading job in the bowl (again, large is very good here) to minimize mess and avoid adding more flour. 
• If you do use a mini-oven like my toaster/convection oven, a traditional loaf pan is a little large, so the top browns more than it should.  A small price to pay for fresh bread in this ungodly heat. 

Clean Eating Whole Wheat Bread (adapted from Clean Eating Magazine)

• 3 cups white whole wheat flour (whole wheat is also fine)
• 1 3/4 cups water
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp honey

1. Mix flour, water and yeast in a bowl.  Let rise until double in size, about 30 minutes. 
2. Add remaining ingredients and knead well.  (Note: I used the kneading process to incorporate the wet ingredients and then just kept kneading for a bit).  Let rise for 30 minutes. 
3. Knead one more time.  Place in standard loaf pan and let rise until it fills the pan (for me it was more like 15 or 20 minutes, but did I mention that it's hot?). 
4. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes or slightly less in a convection oven (mine was done after 30-35).

As I have collected more of them, birthdays and anniversaries pass with less and less fuss. One thing, however, doesn't change. The best part about a birthday is cake for breakfast in the days that follow.

The actual first Blog-iversary was a couple of days ago, and though I didn't get the post out in time, I am still enjoying the cake that I made to mark this special day. I whipped up a very interesting and surprisingly special lime yogurt cake with raspberry sauce from smitten kitchen. (This will show up again on our table in many variations.)

The limes are certainly not local (although they may have been organic) and the yogurt was big organic. I like to think I kept it Brooklyn Forager-style by using hand-picked raspberries from Vermont (my in-laws' harvest has been very good to us) in the amazingly bright and tart and tasty sauce. And, of course, the mint garnish is from our own little urban terrace garden.

In the next year of Brooklyn Forager, I hope to take more advantage of our great farmers' markets in Brooklyn, forage in other Brooklyn hotspots, learn a lot more about urban gardening and farming and homesteading, and doing a lot more preserving at home.

Thanks for following along and I look forward to more adventures!

 Another spur-of-the-moment baking experience that yielded great results.  After finishing up the Apple and Carrot Nut Bread, I needed another grab-and-go breakfast item and, as usual, wanted to go about it with little or no additional shopping.  

This recipe fits the bill, especially, because of its flexibility.  I used agave nectar, but that can easily be substituted with an equal amount of honey or maple syrup.  I almost always have a few bananas in the freezer, but you could also use roughly 1 - 1 1/2 cups of another mashed item like pumpkin or sweet potato.  Everything else is pretty much always in my house! 

I have now made these twice and am still enthusiastic about the results.  I've mixed in about 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (whatever you have on hand - for me, it was a mix of walnuts and almonds) on one occasion and then 1 cup of frozen blueberries handpicked in Vermont last season on the second.  Each worked nicely, so I've recommended a "grab bag" of 1/2-3/4 cup mix-ins of your choice.  Leave your variations in the comments if you play with this recipe!

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

• 1/3 cup organic agave nectar
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 large ripe bananas (or 1 1/2 cups pumpkin or sweet potato puree)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 3 tbsp plain whole milk (or lowfat) yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2-3/4 cup mix-ins (nuts, dried fruit, berries - fresh or frozen, grated carrot or zucchini, have fun!)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Combine all ingredients until well mixed.
3. For 6 large muffins, cook 20 minutes (for 12 regular, cook 10 minutes).  For loaf bread, cook 35-40 minutes.

I rarely plan my baking ahead of time.  I do work muffins or bread or some treat into my weekly meal plans from time to time, but more often than not, things come up and big planned baking projects go by the wayside.  I do manage, however, to find quick and easy recipes that use exactly what I have in my pantry right about when I am getting the urge to bake.  These recipes, as you might imagine, are far more likely to make it into my day.

One such recipe, Apple-n-Carrot Nut Bread, popped up on fellow Brooklynite blog 30 Bucks a Week not too long ago.  Like the original, I happened to have an apple and some carrots in the crisper, begging for some noble use.  I did not have juice on hand, as the recipe requires, but I did have some vanilla soy milk.  I added about 2 tbsp maple syrup as well since I had the last of the bottle to use up and thought it could never hurt.

The modification I made which I might not recommend is using whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour.  My bread was very tasty and made for a week of hearty breakfasts, but it was definitely on the heavier, healthier tasting side.  Since I ate mine warmed up with a good dose of honey, it didn't really affect me much, but it's just something to consider. 

I also used 1 cup almond slivers and crushed walnuts because I had those around and I didn't have any dried fruit to throw in there.  This worked out well in my household, but feel free to play around with the nut/fruit add-ins for these.  The recipe is extremely flexible.

Apple and Carrot Nut Bread (adapted from 30 Bucks a Week)

• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (all-purpose is fine; regular whole wheat is okay, but heavy)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• sea salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup juice (apple or orange), milk or soy milk
• 1 grated apple
• 1 grated carrots (or about 6 baby carrots)
• 1/2 cup dried fruit, optional
• 1/2 cup nuts

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix together dry ingredients in large bowl.
3. Whisk egg, oil and juice together in seperate bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined.
5. Fold in grated apple, carrots, nuts and dried fruit.
6. Grease a loaf pan and coat lightly with flour.  Shake out excess.  (I used a silicone loaf pan and didn't need this step)
7. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, until toothpick in center comes out clean.

One cold rainy afternoon, I sat by the window contemplating snack time.  The weather was terrible and there would be no leaving for a quick bite or missing ingredients.  I had also been emptying the freezer and reviewing the contents, so I knew that I had four frozen bananas (Starting to turn brown? Pop them in a freezer bag and into the freezer.  The skin turns dark, but the bananas stay fresh!) that I wanted to use up.

My fellow healthy-food lover Alissa over at The Simply Wholesome Kitchen told me about a blog that focuses on healthy baking, Sweet & Natural.  I figured I would take a look over her recipes and see what I could do with my bananas.  Here I found Banana Coconut Bars which had the benefit of using up some of the coconut I have in the freezer and the agave sweetener that I picked up at Trader Joe's. 

I can't say that my pantry always has the items required for this healthy snack or that yours might, but the recipe itself is a good argument for keeping them around.  The result is a healthy-tasting bread-like sweet bar which is perfect for tiding one over until the next meal.  I used whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour, because that was what I had around.  The result was fine, although my understanding is that the pastry flour yields a lighter bar.  Play with it.

The last comment I have is with respect to agave nectar.  I've been very intrigued by this ingredient since it often comes up in clean eating recipes and is generally considered a healthy alternative sweetener.  Over the past couple of weeks, however, I've been hearing whispers in the health food community that agave nectar is very highly processed and that there are some heavy environmental impact issues surrounding agave's production.  I'm going to find out more and continue to experiment, but I wanted to put out my current thinking on the subject.  I'd appreciate hearing other perspectives.

Banana Coconut Bars (adapted from Sweet & Natural)

•  4 mashed bananas (fresh or frozen)
• 2 tbsp molasses
• 1/4 cup organic agave nectar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Prepare 8x8x2 baking pan with olive oil cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, mix together first four ingredients and mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients (except coconut) until combined.
4. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just blended.
5. Fold in coconut.
6. Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for approximately 50 minutes.