Whole Wheat Pitas

It has been a while since I have blogged, but Al really wanted me to blog the pitas I made.  They are delicious.  As I type this, I am eating my pita stuffed w/ hummus, scrambled, eggs, ham and warm spinach.  Here is the recipe and some tips:

Whole Wheat Pitas 

(Adapted from a recipe in "The Best Bread Ever" by Charles Van Over (my hero))

500 g. whole wheat flour

10 g. sea salt

10-12 g. sugar

1 tsp instant yeast

1 Tbsp olive oil

approx 320-330 ml water

Place flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in food processor.  Pulse to mix.  Add the olive oil and most of the water and process for about 30 seconds.  Add more water if needed and process about 25 more seconds until dough is soft, warm, and well incorporated.   Place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for at least 3 hours. (the last time I made this i forgot about the dough and I think it sat out for about 8 hours - it was still fine).  

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with a baking stone if possible.  After the dough has risen, dump it out and cut into 12 pieces - form each into a small ball and flatten slightly.  Cover and let these rest about 15 - 20 minutes.   Roll out to about a 7 inch circle using a little flour.  Cover and let rest 5-10 more minutes.  Make sure they do not stick together if they are overlapped at all - flour will help with this.  I had a few that stuck a little and had to be pulled apart and then did not puff very well in the oven.  Place about 3 pitas on the stone at a time - be careful not to handle them too much at this point, or they will not puff up.  You can use a pizza peel and flour for this step, or you can just use your hands like I do and risk more oven burns.  

They will be done in about 6 minutes and you can watch them puff up like a ball in the oven (I should have taken a picture of this).  Do not over-bake, as this will cause them to be brittle later when filling the pita.  Take them out of the oven and cool on a wire rack for about 1 minute.  Then I put them right into a plastic bread bag.  The steam will cause them to deflate and soften.  When serving the pitas, I think they are best if warmed slightly before stuffing.

Here is the Hummus Recipe:

15 oz. garbanzo beans, drained - reserve some liquid

3 Tbs. Tahini  (you can omit this and add more olive oil if there is a sesame allergy)

1 clove minced garlic

2 Tbs. lemon juice

2 Tbs. olive oil

cumin (optional)

paprika (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

Just puree everything in a blender or food processor.  Add some of the bean liquid at the end if too thick.  This will also thicken a little in the fridge.   The amounts in this recipe can be adjusted to your individual tastes.

Paul's Christmas Gift

    This is Paul's Christmas Gift - a BYU T-shirt quilt.  It was a little tricky to find time to work on this and keep it a surprise from him - especially since my sewing machine broke just as I started piecing it together.  Thanks to a great neighbor (who let me come over to use her machine while she watched my kids and fed them dinner) and to Paul's mom for letting me use her machine to finish up, I was able to get it mostly pieced together before Christmas.

    I was really excited to have him open it on Christmas morning because I knew he had no idea.  I actually shed a few tears because I never saw him so happy opening a gift.  Last night, I finally got around to finishing the open end, top-stitching, and putting in a few ties.

Merry Christmas!

This is for all of you who are so sick of seeing Halloween on my Blog.  I will post more about our Holiday later, but for now, here are a few cute Holiday pics.

Halloween Highlights

Here are some highlights from Halloween:

Carving 12 pumpkins and roasting 0ver 10 cups of pumpkin seeds.  

Great halloween

 parties at Cathy's house and at Debby's. 

Paul trick or treating as Darth Vader with the kids in the warm rain.

Home-made donuts, bratwurst, and fondue on Halloween night.

Krispy Kreme Donut Recipe

Halloween is time for home-made donuts at our house.  For the past three years we have been making cider donuts.  This year was my first attempt at raised donuts and I think I'm hooked.  These were a lot lighter and airy.  They didn't soak up as much oil as the apple cider donuts.

I found this recipe online and I changed it a little so that I could make the dough in my food processor. (You will need to adjust this recipe smaller if you have a 7 or 11 cup food processor.)

Here is the food processor version of the recipe:

1 1/2 c. milk

1/4 c. warm water (105 degrees)

2 tsp. instant yeast

1/2 c. sugar

2 eggs, beaten

5 cups all-purpose flour - approx. 750 grams (I'm sure if you have cake flour, that would even be better)

1 tsp or 9 grams salt

1/3 cup shortening

Oil for frying

Glaze 

Gently heat milk on stovetop until smoking slightly, do net let burn or boil.  Remove from heat.  Add sugar to dissolve.  Mix yeast with warm water.  Stir and let sit.  When milk has cooled a little, add beaten eggs.  Make sure your milk is not hot, or little pieces of egg can cook.  You can temper the eggs by adding a tablespoon or two of warm milk to the eggs and quickly whisking it in and then add those eggs to the milk mixture.  Place flour, salt and shortening into food processor.  Mix.  Then, with the machine running, add water and yeast mixture and then the milk mixture.   Let it mix and knead until smooth.  You can add more flour or water as needed.  This is a very sticky dough.  Be careful not to add too much flour.  When the dough is kneaded,  transfer into a large greased bowl and cover. (When I cover bread dough, I always put one layer of saran wrap right on the dough, and then another layer on the bowl - this helps the dough to not dry out.)  Let rise until double - at least an hour.  Mine sat on the counter for probably about 4 or 5 hours (because I was doing a lot of other things) and it was fine.  Slide dough onto a floured surface and gently roll to 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into donuts approx 3 inches.  Do not attempt to re-roll the dough and make more donuts.  (I didn't want to waste the extra dough, so I quickly formed some long rolls, let them rise and then baked them to eat our Bratwurst in. - they were good) Place cut donuts on a floured baking sheet.  Let rise for 30-40 minutes.  (I actually cut out the donuts and then put them in the fridge for an hour or two, then I sat them out for 40 minutes before frying because I wanted our guests to have warm, fresh donuts.)  Heat oil to 365-375 degrees.  Fry until golden brown - about a minute (less for the donut holes), turning halfway.  The donut holes are hard to flip once one side is brown.  I found that it is easier to constantly stir them a little as they fry for more even browning.  Carefully remove from oil and drain on a cooling rack placed on top of paper towels.  Then dip the donuts in the creamy glaze or chocolate glaze.  You can then dip them in candy or sprinkles if you want.  I haven't tried the chocolate glaze.  With the overload of chocolate on Haloween, we just stuck with the creamy glaze.

Creamy Glaze:

1/3 cup butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

4-6 Tbsp hot water

Heat butter until melted. (I just put it in a bowl and carefully microwaved it).  Remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth.  Stir in water, 1 Tbsp at a time until reaches desired consistency.  I think I made my glaze a little too thick - but there were no complaints.

Chocolate Glaze:

To make the chocolate glaze, it is basically the same as making the creamy glaze, except you melt 4 oz of milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips with the butter in the first step.

*If you don't have a food processor, here is how you mix the dough.  You still mix the yeast with the water and scald the milk.  Let milk cool until lukewarm, then transfer to your mixing bowl or mixer.  Start with your whisk or paddle.  Add sugar, salt, shortening, eggs, and yeast mixture.  Add 2 cups of flour and mix really well.  Then you can change to your kneading hook and gradually add the remaining flour- remember this is sort of a sticky dough.

Fall Break in St George

We had a great long weekend in St. George for UEA break.  It was so nice to be in warm weather again.  Suz and her girls stayed with us one night and the kids had fun swimming together.  We had a great time on Saturday wakeboarding and surfing behind Kimberly and Robert's boat at Sand Hollow Reservoir (even though the water was a little cold).  Abigail lost her first tooth and the toothfairy found her at our St. George home!  We are now trying to adjust to a greater than 30 degree temp drop!

Happy Birthday Superman!!

Phillip and William working as a team at the Gateway Museum.

The life-flight helicopter

Anthony having fun at Chuck E Cheese!

Here are some photo highlights from Anthony's 3rd birthday.  He has been begging for a Superman birthday for months.  On the morning of Anthony's birthday, he came running into my room and gave me a hug.  I told him Happy Birthday and he touched his head and said "I'm still little.... I want another birthday!"

On Monday we met a whole bunch of cousins at the gateway.  We celebrated Anthony, Phillip, and Joseph's birthday at the food court and gave all of the kids happy meals and Cathy made some yummy cupcakes.   We all then went to the Discovery Gateway Museum to play.  The kids had so much fun playing there.  I loved watching all of the cousins work as a team building things with the oversized-stuffed blocks in the construction area.

On Wednesday, Anthony's actual birthday, we had a Superman party at Chuck E Cheese with some more cousins.  They all had a great time.  Ally was the best at winning tickets with over 400.  Grandpa said, "thats great - now you can get a plastic little ball."  It was nice not to have a party at home, because I didn't have to worry about much mess - only the mess of making and decorating a cake and trying to figure out where to put all of the new toys.