All Greek to me

I love Greek food. I especially love pita bread and tziziki sauce. And rotisserie chicken. And roasted veggies...and potatoes...

I found a great recipe for pita bread and tried it for the first time a few months ago. That time, they came out good, but not knowing what I was doing, I over baked them a little bit. Not so this time...they came out perfect!

I made the dough by hand by hand mixing 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour with 1 1/2 c. unbleached all purpose flour, 1 pkt. rapid rise yeast, 1 T. honey, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 2T olive oil and about 1 1/4 c. lukewarm water. Mixed that by hand until it came together, then kneaded it by hand for 10 minutes. It's possible to do this in a stand mixer, but I did it by hand. After 10 minutes, it was nice and smooth, and I put it in an oiled bowl, covered it with a towel and let it rise for 90 minutes.

After it was nicely risen, I took it out, and cut it in 8 equal portions. Next I rolled these into little balls by sort of cupping my hands over them and rolling them lightly on the board. These got covered with a towel and allowed to rest for 20 minutes. You can see how much they rose in just 20 mintues!

While they were resting I put a cooking sheet upside down on the middle rack of the oven and  heated the oven to 400 degrees. Then the pitas were rolled out to about 1/8 in. thick. When they were all rolled out it was time to bake them. I did them two at a time right on the inverted cookie sheet. About 30 seconds before I put each pair in to bake, I spritzed the oven and the sheet with a few sprays of water. Not exactly sure why, but the recipe said to do it, so I did. I put two of them on the inverted cookie sheet and baked them for 3 minutes.

It amazes me how much they puff up in only 3 minutes! If you want them crispy you can flip them over and let them bake another 2 or 3 minutes. As I said, I did that last time, and they were good, but I like a soft pita so I prefer to take them out after 3 minutes.

These got served with rotisserie chicken, homemade tziziki sauce, roasted fingerling potatoes and veggies, and homemade herb butter.

Mmmmmm.....enjoy!
-J

Kiwi Bread

Every other week, we get a produce delivery from a great company, "Orlando Organics". It's great because they deliver right to your door, and they have a number of options for you to choose from. The really great thing, in my opinion, is that they very often include things either I like and don't get a lot, like kiwi, or things I've never even seen before, like persimmons. This week we got about 4 kiwis in our delivery and we still had one in the fridge from last time. Now, I like kiwi as much as the next person, and I've made my share of kiwi smoothies, strawberry kiwi jam and used kiwi in salads, but I needed to find a diferent way to use up these kiwis.

So a web search turned up this recipe for Kiwi Bread. I made just a few changes along the way.

I peeled 5 kiwi fruits, and using my hand blender, pureed them. Recipe called for a cup, and I got about a cup and a half out of them.


In my stand mixer, I combined 1/3 c. vegetable  oil, 1/4 c. honey and 1 egg. Then I added 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour with which I had sifted 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. baking powder, about 1/4 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg instead of cloves called for in the recipe, and 1/4 tsp. salt.

At this point, the batter was looking pretty dry, but that's ok. To that, I added the kiwi puree, 1 c. of chopped pecans (a replacement for the walnuts in the recipe. I hate walnuts too.) Since I had added more kiwi, it was now a little on the wet side, so I added about 3/4 c. of rolled oats to the mix.

All this went into a 9 in. loaf pan sprayed with cooking spray. Again, the recipe called for an 8" pan, but I'd added enough stuff that I thought I should use the bigger pan.  Then I sprinkled some oats on top and put it in a 350 degree oven. Checked it at 45 minutes, but it wasn't quite done yet, so I put it back in for another 10 minutes.

Pulled it out and let it cool for a few minutes. Couldn't resist trying a slice with my last cup of coffee...

Not bad!

Enjoy...

-J