Lunch Box Focaccia

My dad  & me! 

My favorite way to get into deep thought is either to:

1.                     Mow

2.                     Read

3.                     Write

4.                     or Bake

So when I once lived in a civilized apartment, we did a Daniel’s Fast. My father, Scott, also a writer as mentioned in my other post, decided to get creative with the limited ingredients and made Focaccia bread; a bread supposedly with no yeast. Delish! So one day I was craving to get messy in my Nanny’s kitchen and looked up a recipe for Focaccia bread. I collected a recipe from there and I was thinking I didn’t want plain, dry Focaccia reminiscent of the Daniel Fast, but something with a little oomph should I say. And here is my recipe for my Lunchbox Focaccia:

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 jumbo bag of mixed cheese (Colby Jack is what I used)
• A package of bacon and/or turkey/chicken breast lunchmeat

Directions

1.      Combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Mix well. Warm water and vegetable oil until room temp, and add to yeast mixture along with the egg. Blend with an electric processer at low speed until moistened. Beat for 2 additional minutes. Stir in 1 3/4 cup flour while beating, until dough pulls away from side of bowl.

2.      Knead in additional 3/4 cup flour on floured surface. Put dough in a bowl and place a clean towel over the top and let rise for an hour.

3.      After timer place in heavily greased rectangular or circular pan and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle your quantity of cheese and meat and follow step four.

4.      Bake at 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) for 22 minutes, until just golden. Remove from baking sheet, and cool on rack (I left it in the pan).

 P.S. Once by mistake I forgot the egg and if you're allergic to eggs it tastes just as good.

ENJOY!!

Pretzel Pizza Snacks

This past weekend I went down to visit my 2nd second cousin in Arkansas.  Sweet baby Briley was born with complications and severe SMA, but God will help her out. I just know He will.

While there I met a girl at the hospital and my father and her mom grew up together. So I had the honor of going over to her house and messing around in the kitchen. So at first we started making something in her Easy Bake oven, but that didn't work out too well. Here's our failed, but yummy, recipe

1-2 Chocolate chip granola bars

Chocolate syrup

And two caramel candies

1. Make a crunchy crust along the sides of the small metal pan and then add chocolate syrup and caramel candies
2. Set the pan inside the toasty Easy Bake Oven and then five seconds later, pull it out. A caramel candy got stuck in ours so make sure it's melted. What we ended up doing is putting it in a real oven for about five minutes or until caramel melted.

We also made Pretzel Pizzas. They aren't very hard to make, although I wouldn't normally use dough from a bag. Who knows what's in there!

You will need:

One bag of instant piza crust

A bag of mozzerella cheese

Ragu pizza sauce (when my dad has more time he makes his own sauce)

and a large pan

1. Follow the directions on the pizza crust bag and heat the oven to 475 degrees
2. Once dough has risen and has been kneaded, add a handful of cheese to the dough and make sure you flour up your hands real good.
3. Mix cheese in thouroughly. After that separate your dough into palm-sized balls and then roll out until skinny. Oil up your strings of dough and cross the two ends to make a breast cancer sign.
4. Apply sauce and cheese and then bake until cheese and dough has browned.

 Enjoy!