Last night was my second attempt at homemade pasta using home-milled flour. While my first attempt (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25340/experiments-pasta-milling-my-own-flour) was delicious, I tried a few new things based on comments there and reading elsewhere.

 I started out milling a 50/50 mix of durum wheat (14%) and hard white wheat (13%). After milling, I used a #30 mining pan (yes, as in 'gold mining.' It fits perfectly on 5 gallon buckets and large containers like the one shown) to sift out some of the bran, ending up with 85% extraction by weight. I ended up with a little more than 2 cups of flour.

Next, I medium-chopped three cloves of garlic and sauted them in a tablespoon of butter for 5 minutes or so, then added 6 oz of fresh spinach, sprinkled lightly with kosher salt, and cooked 3-4 minutes, until nicely wilted. Moved to a seive and let drain and cool a bit for 20 minutes.

After draining, I put the spinach/garlic mix into a blender, added two room-temperature eggs, a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil (remember there's butter and salt from the spinach). Blended up, and poured into a well with the flour.

I worked this in with a fork until it became too much to stir. After ending up with an excessively wet dough last time, I was determined to sneak up on the proper hydration this time. I dumped the still-dry mixture onto my board, and began working in water by hand until it just came together.

After about 12 minutes of kneading, it came together into a nice dough that felt like Play-do. It wasn't at all sticky, nor was it noticably dry. I sprayed it with olive oil, put the lid on the container, and then went about my day. I got back to it four hours later. I put it on a lightly floured board, rolled it out to about the thickness of a pencil, and fired up the Atlas.

This time, I only had to add a tiny, tiny bit of flour to the sheets between setting 3 and 4, and they cut perfectly. They got to dry for right at an hour while I worked on everything else.

Here's the final dish. Toasted almond slivers, mushrooms, onions, garlic and green peas with shrimp. The pasta was cooked for around 4 minutes, then mixed in with everything for a couple of minutes in the pan. It had a great flavor, and was sooooo soft, almost like udon.

I debated between naming this thread Jim Lahey's Popeye Pizza, and Jim Lahey's No-Knead Pizza Dough. But since Jim Lahey's name is practically synonymous with "no-knead," maybe the latter is redundant. Anyway, it's green, and St. Patty's day is this week, so I thought I'd share.

Click here: Popeye Pizza   (the video is worth watching)

I made this pizza a week or two ago, right after I saw the show. I printed out the recipe, and when I got to the salt and yeast, I ran into problems. My instructions said 1/8 tsp yeast and 1/8 tsp salt, but I clearly remembered him adding 1/2 tsp salt. I haven't made pizza in years, and toppings tend to be salty, so I wasn't sure what was customary. I decided to trust Jim and I put in 1/2 tsp. And then my dough didn't rise, so I ended up making something else for dinner that night.

The next day I started earlier, but decided to go by the printout and use 1/8 tsp. It still took longer to rise, but the dough was a joy to stretch out, and the pizza baked up thin and crispy---just the way I like it. Except that the crust tasted bland. Otherwise, the pizza was pretty good. Roasted spinach is interesting. Thin and papery, but nice mild flavor. It's different, but I'd make it again. Looked just like the one in the picture, except that I forgot to drizzle on the olive oil before serving.

A week later, I decided to try the dough in a more familiar pizza with red sauce. I doubled the salt and yeast (1/4 tsp each) and it was still bland. Also the pizza sauce made it soggy. I think I prefer thin pizza without the sauce. At this point I went back to the website for another printout, to find the amounts on salt and yeast now say 1/4 tsp. Yes, I put the two side-by-side to make sure I wasn't going crazy. They corrected the amounts, but this still can't be right.

In the video, JL puts in 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp yeast. What sounds right to to you all?

Everyone in my family is HUGE fans of the Spinach Parmaggiano Fougasse that we get each week at Wegman's (my four year old being the most loyal and vocal fan... so much so that he only calls it by the name "good bread" as in, "Mom, can we get Good Bread this week?" and everyone in our family knows what he is talking about). I would love to make a version of this at home for when we run out mid-week (or mid-day... as we just went to Wegman's a few hours ago and he's already 3/4s of the way through it). It's an amazing bread that is brushed with garlic oil after it comes out the oven to cool which leaves a wonderful taste that lingers on your tongue and makes you want to eat the loaf in one sitting.

I was wondering if anyone had tried to recreate something like this before so I don't completely reinvent the wheel. If not, will just start with a basic focaccia recipe and experiment a bit from there (and keep everyone here at TFL posted!). I would also love to eventually add some whole wheat flour to the mix so that my youngest can get some extra nutrition since he's a bit of a picky eater, while still having it be a deliciously flavorfull bread.

Thanks,

Lisa

Recipe is from: http://whatdidyoueat.typepad.com/what_did_you_eat/2007/10/whb-spinach-and.html

This bread goes very well with soups and helps makes a great tomato-mayo sandwich.

Recipe is from: http://whatdidyoueat.typepad.com/what_did_you_eat/2007/10/whb-spinach-and.html

This bread goes very well with soups and helps makes a great tomato-mayo sandwich.

Three Breads. One Day.

Loaf 1: ~5lb Sourdough High Extraction Miche Type loaf

Loaf 2: Garlic Explosion (Garlixplosion?) W/ Cheese

Loaf 3: Spinach and Feta Cheese with Caramelized Onions.

They were all around 65-70% hydration doughs, all with a small amount of sourdough culture thrown in as a preferment/leavening. The miche was leavened solely by the sourdough, I added some active dry yeast to the other two.

PICTURES!!!

Spinach & Veggie Stuffed Snail

Green Stuffed Olives & Cream Cheese