Tag Archives: bread

The Green Room- Stillwater

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Hi Everyone!  I hope you had a good holiday weekend:)
Like I said earlier The Hubs and I spent some of the weekend in Stillwater, Minnesota.   It’s a smaller town that sits on the St. Croix river and is full of antique shops and beautiful older buildings.  We checked out a few antique stores until we couldn’t look at another old china set.  My favorite find was the signed photo below.  The icy blue eyes of a husky……. 30 rock? anyone?

For lunch we checked out The Green Room.  It claimed ‘Local Food and World Cuisine’ however, I didn’t see anything on the menu or the website that called out what farms or suppliers they sourced locally.  I was disappointed there wasn’t information on it since that was my main reason for picking it out but the food was pretty tasty.  We were served warm fresh bread with herb butter and I’d ordered the spaghetti carbonara.

The pasta had really good flavor with a rich and creamy sauce.  The egg was cooked just right with a runny yoke and the pepper gave it just the right amount of kick.  It was really filling so I didn’t quite finish it but I would definitely go back and have it again.   It also made me want to go home to figure out the perfect way to poach an egg!

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do from the weekend, I don’t remember the last time I went to the grocery store, but I’m going to try and squeeze in both the dessert and drink of the month yet this week…. or I might just end up doubling up in June.  Either way you win:)

Pinterest Recipe of the Month- Rustic Artisanal No Knead Bread

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For the Pinterest Recipe this month, I wanted to try something other than a main dish and take a stab at bread.  I pinned this recipe form Anna’s Table and with only 4 ingredients, and the promise of minimal labor, this seemed like a good place to start.

Talk about easy!  First thing you do is combine your flour, yeast and salt with a wooden spoon or your hands.

Then you add in your water.  Anna didn’t call out what temperature it needed to be, I nuked mine in the microwave for a minute to make sure it got the yeast working.

Then I slapped some cling wrap across the top of the bowl and left it alone for a little over 12 hours.  You can leave it for up to 24, but I didn’t want to wait that long for my bread.

After 12 hours, you scrape out the dough onto a floured piece of parchment paper.  Make sure you have a good amount of flour down so your dough folds easily later.

Then spread it out to about a 10×10 square, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Then you fold in the edges from side to side and top to bottom.

Flip the dough, folded side down onto another floured piece of parchment and wrap with parchment loosely, then cover with a dishtowel.  Let it rise under the towel for another couple of hours.

When the two hours are up, put a cast iron dutch oven in the oven with the lid on  and pre-heat  to 500 degrees.

Once the oven has reached 500 degrees, put the dough in the dutch oven folded side up, place the lid back on, and let it bake for 30 minutes.

After the 30 minutes are up, remove the lid, turn the oven temp down to 375 and let bake for another 15-30 minutes depending on how dark you want your bread.

I ended up making 2 loaves this weekend.  The first one because I didn’t turn the oven down to 375 for the last 15 minutes.  The crust was burned a bit on top but the inside looked (and tasted) pretty good.

I gave it a second shot tonight and turned the oven down like I was supposed to.  The top came out a beautiful golden brown.

While it was still warm we sliced it up and buttered it to have along side some cheesy chili.  Pretty perfect for a night with a temp of 33 degrees:)

I was really happy with how the bread turned out and with such a simple recipe, I want to try making it again adding in some herbs or top with cheese.  I also want to try adding in some cinnamon or sugar to make a sweet bread for breakfast, I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.