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Put it in your Meatballs!  Roll your Meatballs in your homemade bread crumbs!  Make Rolls!

I was asked for the meatball recipe and for photos on yesterday's blog for Italian Sandwich Rolls I made useing Dan DiMuzio's recipe for Sicilian Semolina Bread...which I snuck in a cup of Organic White Wheat in enchange for the cup of Bread flour...forgive me Dan!!  It was my ADD..I think that's what you call it!

This is a recipe given to me by my 50+yrs. Italian girlfriend.  This is the way her mother made meatballs and was probably taught by her two 98yr. old aunts still living in the house where she was born in Cleveland, OH...it has the old orginal wood fired oven out back..and Gayle always tells me how there is a cemetary next door!  I just had to put that in...I've heard it so many times!  The Aunts did all their canning, making and wine making down in the basement in this 3 story old home. 

This is not exact measurements but pretty close..you can adjust for your own taste...I like lots of garlic!  The clear bowls hold a cup and half when full with water...just to give you an idea of the preportions I used today. I also used 2 1/4 lbs. of lean ground chuck.  It made a lot of large meatballs.

Meatballs-  The Measurements I have pictured are for a larger batch, what I made today. 2 1/3lbs of meat.  All the ingredients pictured are the porportions I used today.  The clear glass bowls hold 1 1/2 cups of ingredients.

Meat can be a combination of Beef - Veal - Pork

I used only Beef   -  I do not use any salt  -  I think the garlic replaces the need for it!  Taste before adding any..you can always put it on your sandwich later!

Recipe for a smaller portion of meat balls:

1- 1 1/2 lbs. Ground Meat

1/2 cup bread crumbs    I make fresh in my food processor, using my homemade bread, fresh italian parsley, finely chopped garlic, fresh ground pepper, grated parmesan cheese to taste.  Place breadcrumbs onto a plate for rolling the meatballs.

3 regular slices of bread soaked in 1/4 cup water- Do not use bread Crumbs in your meatballs..it makes them tough.

1 - 2 eggs

1/2 cup of Grated Romono Cheese

1 large clove garlic finely chopped

Chopped fresh Italian Parsley

Chopped fresh Basil  - you can use dried

Little salt and pepper.   I don't use any salt for the whole recipe...just fresh grated pepper

In a small bowl mix Eggs, Cheese, Garlic, Italian Parsley, Basil, salt and pepper

Pour egg mixture over meat add dampened broken up bread with most of the crust removed.  With wet hands, gently mix the meat until all is incorporated.  Keeping your hands wet shape into round meatballs.

Roll the meatballs over the bread crumbs.

Fry in canola or I use regular Olive Oil.  I fry at a medium to medium low heat turning until evenly browned.

Add to your pot of tomato sauce...and finish cooking if still a little pink in center of meatballs!

This is the portions I used today!

This is how many large meatballs I got...you can count them ; )

This many plus 5 more!

Sprinkel with Mozzarella and Parmesan Cheese

Crumb Shot for David and Pamela ; )

You could pick these up and easily take a big tender bite...Mike ate 2!

Sylvia

My first pass at the Portuguese Sweet Bread turned out pretty well.  I followed the BBA recipe exactly, and I found that I only needed 24g of water per loaf of the 42g maximum Reinhart allotted.

And now that is has cooled, the crumb shot . . .

Most people associate pancakes with maple syrup, butter and fruit. Since I have had to stay away from sweets I have begun to use pancakes in a different way. I use them as a savory grain side dish to accompany soup, beans, and stew, sometimes even tearing them up, putting them right in the soup or stew. I use them as part of a snack with unusual toppings and spreads like peanut butter, tahini, chopped liver, salsa or gravlax (home cured salmon).
The high proportion of nutritious ingredients makes these pancakes a substantial part of a snack or meal.

We normally flip a wheat pancake when bubbles form around the edges. With gluten free pancakes we need to wait another few minutes after bubbles form because the extra moisture and density of the batter takes more time to cook properly.

Allow at least 7 hours of fermentation time after feeding the starter before using the starter in cooking. This will ensure your flours are properly soaked before cooking and eating.
So that means if you feed the starter in the morning the batter will be ready for pancakes for dinner. If you want pancakes in the morning feed the starter the night before.

 
Sourdough Pancakes – Basic recipe

For pancakes: prior to cooking, have the last feeding of the starter be ½ cup of buckwheat or gluten free oat flour and slightly less than ½ cup of water. Let ferment 7 hours. A pure rice flour starter tends to be on the thin, soupy side and buckwheat or oat flour will give the pancakes some needed density.

For 4 pancakes:
1 cup mature brown rice flour sourdough starter (including the last feeding of buckwheat and water)
1 tablespoon oil, melted butter or fat
A large pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons freshly ground flax seed (grind in a dedicated coffee grinder)

Mix oil, salt and ground flax seed into starter
Let sit for at least 15 minutes to allow the flax to thicken the batter. The batter should be like a thick cake batter.
If the batter is too thick whisk in a little water, a tablespoon at a time, until you get the desired consistency
 (The batter can also sit for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator. The finished pancakes will be thinner and lighter)
Oil pan or griddle and heat to fairly hot
Spoon or ladle out the batter onto the pan
These take longer to cook than wheat pancakes so flip a few minutes after bubbles show up or the edges start to dry out.
Cook another 1-2 minutes and serve.

You can also cool them on a rack and refrigerate in a container for a 3-5 days. Just reheat them in the toaster.

This is Major Tom to Ground Control!

My local grocery store have just started to stock buckwheat flour, a flour I'm completely new to. To try to figure out what it's all about, I pulled Whitley's "Bread Matters" from my shelf - a great book by a passionate baker with a separate chapter on gluten-free baking. On buckwheat, Whitley says:

Good qualities: Traditionally used in Russia (in wholegrain form) to make kasha (porridge) and as flour to make blini (pancakes), usually in combination with wheat flour. In modern gluten-free baking, mainly used sparingly to provide some flavour and nutritional value in breads, cakes and savoury biscuits.

Problems: Disliked by some on account of its pungent flavour, which is an acquired taste.

Hmm. "Pungent flavour". Well... better start off easy on the buckwheat then, right?

So far, I've experimented with a buckwheat content between 5% - 25% of the total flour weight, and I can't say I notice any negative pungency. There's certainly a different flavour note to the breads; quite subtle and hard to describe, really. A subtle, piercing, nutty kind of flavour. Anyways.

Today I baked what I think is becoming one of my favourite multigrain sourdoughs: There's 20% buckwheat and 10% whole rye in this loaf, and the soaker is a combination of flax, sunflower, quinoa and pumpkin seeds.

I do think the buckwheat makes the crust brown quicker than what I usually get. The loaf comes out with a crackling crust, almost like a baguette. And the crumb attains a slightly grey colour, also due to buckwheat, I would guess?

It's fun to mix in different flours in tested recipes. Earlier last week, I used 30% whole rice flour in a pain au levain, and that gave the loaf a completely different flavour. Slightly bitter, I would say. Not something I'd like every day of the week, but certainly terrific together with an ageing brie I was having a love affair with.

For dinner, I went with a blind baked pâte brisée tart shell filled with scrambled eggs, a dab of Dijon mustard and freshly cooked crab. The recipe (and inspiration) came from Michel Roux' brilliant book on pastry.

Cherries are also starting to pop up in grocery stores and markets around here, and this week I had the opportunity to make a cherry clafoutis (not photographed, recipe also from Roux' book) and a Gâteau Basque:

This is a very simple tea/coffee cake with a pastry cream and/or cherry filling. Since I had some left over cherries, I pureed a bunch in my mixer, and used that as the single filling in the cake. As I wrote, it's a very simple cake: Cream butter, sugar and eggs, and fold in flour, a speck of baking powder, some vanilla extract and load up your pastry bag. The batter resembles that of choux pastry, and it's deposited into the pan by first filling the bottom in a spiralling motion. Then pipe a border along the rim, top the interior with filling, before you pipe the top over the whole to seal it. Sprinkle on chopped almonds and bake in a low oven for just under an hour. Nothing too fancy, but goes well with a cup of coffee!