Herb Bread

I posted a great rosemary olive oil bread recipe but I'm always trying to figure out how to improve. This recipe seemed simple and easy and called for whole wheat flour, which was good. I added five tablespoons of flax seed meal and almost 1 cup less flour, as well as a bunch of seeds and dried herbs.



I had this Indian spice mix with Cumin, Fennel, Black Onion, Mustard, and Fenugreek, so I threw in about 2 tablespoons of that and added coarse sea salt on the top of the loaf. It came out well, but burned a little at the bottom and I'm not sure it rose as much as it should have in the two hours I left it. The spice mix is very potent but delicious- I think this bread will be good as an open topped sandwich with greens and tofu, or with hummus, or olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Rosemary Olive Oil bread

Rosemary olive oil bread — the best thing I have made in ages! I used a recipe that called for a little bit of butter and subbed olive oil instead. I’m not sure I’ll ever buy bread again. I'd like to make it with olives in it as well some time.

1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup warm water
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons rosemary
3 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon olive oil

Dissolve the sugar in warm water in a medium bowl, and mix in the yeast. When yeast is bubbly, mix in salt, butter, 1 1/2 tablespoons rosemary. Mix in 2 cups flour. Gradually add remaining flour to form a workable dough, and knead 10 to 12 minutes. You may need to add extra flour if the dough is too sticky.

Coat the inside of a large bowl with olive oil. Place dough in bowl, cover, and allow to rise 1 hour in a warm location.

Punch down dough, and divide in half. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Lightly grease paper. Shape dough into 2 round loaves, and place on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with remaining rosemary. Cover, and allow to rise 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Bake 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

Vegan Sweetzels-crumb Apple Pie

If you don’t know what Sweetzels are, they’re a Philadelphia ginger snap cookie. You could use any ginger snap cookie you want.

My boyfriend is really into them, and we had a bunch of apples left over from our apple picking a couple weeks ago. I’d already made apple crumble a million times, so I decided to tackle pie, but I wanted to put a bit of a twist to it— so I made Sweetzels crumb pie!

Pie Crust
I used the easy piecrust recipe from Vegan Lunch Box:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt3
2/3 cup vegetable shortening
5 -7 tablespoons ice water, as needed
Mix together the flour and salt, then dot the shortening into the flour and mix with your fingers until it’s like cornmeal with no big lumps left. Stir in the ice water a tablespoon at a time until it can form a ball. Roll out so it’ll fit a 9” pie pan.

Filling
3 large apples, sliced very thin
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
I just sort of winged this part- I added some corn starch to thicken the apples a little, and some brown sugar and cinnamon. You could add allspice, ginger, raisins, cranberries, nuts, whatever you like!
I arranged the apples in neat rings around the pie pan to make sure they were distributed evenly in the pie, just to be sure.

Crumb topping
I winged this part too!
10 Sweetzels cookies, smashed to crumbs
2 tablespoons margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
I mixed the flour, margarine and cinnamon together to make crumbs, and then added the cookies and mixed. I added this on top of the apples.
Next time I’m going to try melting margarine and brown sugar to make a caramel- type syrup and add it on top of the apples and then sprinkle the cookies on top.

Bake in an oven at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.