Orange You Glad it's Football Season?

Now, I know Seeley’s not a big fan of American football.  To be fair, she has a good point, it’s not very aptly named.  I mean, the ball has very little contact with anyone’s feet… but whatever.  American’s take their football very seriously, and unless you live under a rock in this country, you know the playoffs have begun.  In honor of the season, I’ll be making a few football friendly recipes (basically just tasty finger foods) starting with this fabulous orange pull apart bread. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 packet of yeast (about 2 ½ teaspoons)
• 2 ½ cups flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 Tablespoon orange zest 
• 3-4 Tablespoons butter

When making a basic yeast bread, you always start the same way, by pouring warm water into a mixing bowl.  Using your finger as a thermometer, think warm bathwater. 

Stir in 1 tablespoon sugar and sprinkle your yeast over the top. 

Give it some privacy for 5-10 minutes.  It should dissolve and bubbles will start to appear.  Now that you have successfully revived your yeast, go ahead and add 2 cups of your flour. 

Turn the mixer on low and let it bring everything together. 

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, then turn the mixer on medium-ish speed and just let it run for a few minutes.  This will help to develop some gluten, which is what gives bread it’s chew and dough its stretch… see?  It’s getting stretchy already. 

Now switch to the dough hook and add the remaining flour.  Allow the mixer to run on low speed for a good 5 minutes.  While it’s kneading your dough for you (have I mentioned how much I love my Kitchen Aid?) butter a large bowl. 

When you return to your mixer, the dough should have cleaned the edges of the bowl and will be nice and smooth.  (Is it me, or is there something kind of scrotumy about that picture?)

The dough is quite sticky, so flour your hands, and then move it from the mixing bowl to the buttered balls… I mean bowl! Sorry, Freudian slip. 

Turn the dough over so you get butter on both sides, then cover the whole thing with a damp towel. 

The amount of time it takes for your dough to rise depends mostly on the temperature of your house. It’ll probably be roughly an hour, but if your house is cold, like mine, it’ll probably take a bit longer.  In the meantime, let’s make orange sugar. (Remember the lime sugar?) 

When you’re removing the zest from any citrus, make sure you only take the very outside layer.  Otherwise, it will be bitter. 

Add the zest (should be about 1 Tablespoon) to 1 cup of sugar, which you’ve put into a vessel with a lid.

Screw on the lid and shake, shake, shake, until the zest is evenly distributed in the sugar. 

When your dough has basically doubled its size, it’s ready to be shaped. 

In a small dish, melt 3-4 tablespoons butter, and pour the orange sugar into a bowl. 

Dip your fingertips into the butter. 

Then use them to deflate the dough somewhat. 

Pull off a little piece of dough. 

Dip it into the butter, coating all sides.

Then into the sugar, again coating the whole thing.

Then place it into a pan.  Simple enough, right? 

Now repeat with the rest of the dough, placing the pieces somewhat haphazardly in the pan, leaving a little bit of space between them.  Don’t be afraid of stacking some of them on top.  (If you want to make these ahead of time but still have them fresh on game day, put the pan into the freezer at this point, you can pull them out about 2 hours before you want to serve them and continue from this point.)

Cover the pan again, and give the dough some time to rise.  After 30 minutes go ahead and preheat your oven to 350°.  Once again, the rise time really depends on the temperature of your house, but this is what you’re looking for. 

When they’re nice and puffy and have filled in most of the empty space, bake for 25-30 minutes.  It should be nice and golden on top and if you tap on it, it will sound hollow. 

Leave it too cool for 5 minutes.  No more, no less.  Then turn it out onto… well, whatever you’d like.  I used a parchment lined sheet pan, but even a plate would work just fine.  See all that syrupy, caramelly, orangey, goodness?

You’ll have a little of that in the pan, so scrape it out and put it on top of the bread.  You don’t want to waste any of it.  Trust me.

Give it another 10 minutes to cool.  Yes, you might have to swat a few hands away during that time, but after that, everyone can just help themselves.  No knives or forks required. 

The pieces that were on top have a nice sugary crunch and the ones from the bottom, a fabulous gooey, chewy, goodness.  These will not disappoint! 

Who will you be rooting for this year? 

appetizers and breakfast

I am a great fan of multi-purpose things.

My couch is also a bed. My coffee table is also storage. My appetizers are also breakfast.

I haven't been able to find a local bakery that makes good sausage rolls. In fact, of all the bakeries I've been to, I found only one that had sausage rolls. They weren't very good. I mean really, how can you mess up something that is basically "pigs in a blanket"?

I'm most familiar with sausage rolls eaten at lunch or as an afternoon snack, with tea. But I've also had small versions of them as cocktail foods. And since I'm somewhat recently enamoured with biscuits and sausage gravy, I figure we may as well have them for breakfast too.

Because really, who wants to make breakfast the morning after a cocktail party. Or a family Christmas party.... I need cocktails for those.

Sausage Rolls

What you need:

• Biscuit dough!
• Sausage
• ...
• that's basically it
• but dijon mustard is tasty
• and egg wash makes them pretty (one egg with half a shell's worth of water beaten in)

(but of course, there is no egg in the picture)

What you gotta do:

Make yourself a batch of biscuit dough. I'm going to do these rolls two ways, so I've divided mine in half and rolled out one of the halves into a rectangle that's about 10 inches long and 4 inches wide.

For the first batch, I'm going to start with raw sausage. Whatever kind you like best. These came from a local deli/grocery that makes their own sausages, usually with local pigs. If you have time and want to dirty another bowl, you can mix in some breadcrumbs and extra seasoning (sage, parsley, thyme). I opted to go bare bones with my sausage and just brush the dough with a bit of grainy dijon mustard.

Bust open a sausage and place a thumb-thick strip of sausage a little closer to one edge.

I brushed a bit of egg wash on the inside of the dough before I rolled it up.

Slice the roll into 10 pieces that are about 1 inch wide each and once they're on a baking sheet, brush them with more egg wash. 

Into a 400 degree oven they go. Mine's been preheating this whole time. Has yours?

And since my biscuits tend to rise quite a bit...

Some of them toppled, but 25 minutes later they came out looking just fine.

Now, if you've got some leftover sausage, or if you don't want to deal with the raw, you can do this all with cooked sausage.

Again, roll out a piece of biscuit dough. This one didn't quite make it into being rectangular. Close enough.

The mustard and egg wash go on first, then the sausage. I cut into the sausage in a couple places so that it would lay a little straighter.

Roll, slice, eggwash.

This time, I baked a little hotter, 425 degrees which is typical for biscuits, and only left them in for 20 minutes.

These, with a bit of gravy on top... breakfast.

Or dipped into a little more dijon... appetizers.

What's your favourite multi-purpose food?