Easy French Bread

This technique is great for people who have some experience with baking bread. I have decided to bake all of my bread from scratch, so this technique is perfect for me. To get started, let me give you a list of ingredients:

4 C Flour (I like bread flour)
1 T Yeast
1 T Salt
Very warm (not hot) water
Extra flour for kneading
Water to make steam
Oil to grease cookie sheet

This guy is seriously brilliant. I have to say, for the minimal effort, this bread is pretty tasty. After I bake my bread, a few days later, if there are leftovers, I put them in my food processor to make bread crumbs, and put them in a bag. These are called panko bread crumbs, and they are wonderful to cook with (more posts on that later). Let me know how your bread turns out if you give this a try. Trust me, you'll be glad you did!



By the way, I use the bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches, using cheddar slices, and they are out of this world delicious!

Grilled Cheese Bento

Right now I am trying to transition my way of cooking and eating to include more organic and local goods as possible. Organic goodies tend to be more expensive, so I have decided to take some time to make the permanent shift. I am a frugal person, so I cannot just waste what I have in my pantry and freezer. The good news is that I have very little processed goods so far. Meals in boxes and freezer bags are not in my house any more. So while my diet and my choices are far from perfect, I am taking some time and making it my goal to get there by January. Wait, not that I think that I can be perfect, but that I think I can give my best effort to be more conscious about where my food comes from and how it is produced.

I give myself kudos for baking my own bread when our last loaf went bad (in Germany the mold grows very fast!). My bread always seems to be smaller than what I get at the store, so it works perfectly for my bento boxes. After I slice my bread, I butter one side of a couple of pieces of bread, slip in a half slice of havarti cheese, and heat it up in my skillet on medium heat. I lightly brown each side, and get it ready to serve my daughter. Since she rarely eats a whole sandwich, I cut it in half, and give her one for dinner, and wrap the other one for her bento box. For my own bento, I cut my sandwich in half and stack the halves on top of each other, keeping the curves together. I wrap my two halves and my daughter's one half in cellophane, then add them to the boxes. My heart-shaped silicone cups hold some cut-up tomatoes, and I cut a plum in half, using cute blue elephant picks to decorate each half. Since the sandwich remains loose, I wedge in a few slices of cucumbers to secure it. My daughter loves hearts, so I add a paper heart with some tape. Cute stuff!