Saturday, March 13, 2010

Pesto and Pinenut Bread & the Soft Pretzel



Today was baking day with yet another bread from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, the second book from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. The recipe choice came from the google group HBin5 run by Michelle who has made a wonderful schedule and this one is timed perfectly to coinside with St. Patrick's day . . . Pesto and Pinenut Bread (found on pages 98-99). I followed the recipe fairly close with miner changes for altitude ajustments.

Having read a few fellow members blogs and talked with Bonnie of City Home/County Home, I made a focaccia with 1/3 of a full batch of dough. I pressed the dough inside a 9 by 13 inch pan that had been oiled with olive oil. Let it rest for one hour, on the top drizzled olive oil and grated some quaility parmesan cheese and baked it for 25 minutes in the standard way with a steamed oven. What a delicious return! This is a great sandwich bread and will be used again. It had an excellent flavor and crumb.

click here to enlarge

Next I made some soft pretzels. They were very easy to fashion. If you haven't made pretzels before you might view a youtube video here before you begin. After mine had rested for 40 minutes I washed them with an egg yolk , sprinkled them with coarse salt and baked for 18 minutes. They were quick and easy to make and disappeared just as quickly with a favorite marinara sauce.

I took the final pound of dough and dusted it with flour and put it in a zip lock quart bag, marked it with today's date and froze it for another day's pretzel or focaccia. This dough receives extremely high marks and I recommend it to all of you with the book and to those of you who haven't gotten it yet, what are you waiting for?

Go HERE to view other ideas of how to use this bread recipe on
the HBin5 7th Bread Braid

21 comments:

  1. Sounds delicious. I have been debating on weather or not to buy the book, let me know if you think it is worth the $30 when you get a chance. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cristie, I loved the pretzels. I also liked this for pizza crust

    ReplyDelete
  3. It looks sounds delicious! I haven't ever made pretzels. I think I need a lesson!

    ReplyDelete
  4. wow great job, I was lazy this time and just did the guacamole one!
    love the pretzels your a talented lady

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is so inventive! I love the idea of Pesto and Pine nut pretzels. They are so gorgeous. I'm going to ahve to make another batch of dough so that I can try them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I found this bread to taste wonderful also and I made some flatbreads also. I love your pretzel idea!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yum! I am all about the soft pretzels. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tes bretzels semblent délicieux.
    j'avoue que je n'en encore jamais fait.
    Salutations de Paris.
    A bientôt.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I almost made Pretzels with the WW Olive Oil Bread and now for sure at my next opportunity, I going for the pretzels!

    Glad you enjoyed the bread, it's now one of our favorites!

    ReplyDelete
  10. These look positively wonderful. I love soft pretzels and whenever I am in America I am always sure to eat tons of Auntie Annie pretzels. Great flavours that you used.
    *kisses* HH

    ReplyDelete
  11. Loved your focaccia. It came out beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Love your pretzel idea! They look fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The pretzels look really great. My daughters and I made pretzels years ago when they were children. I remember how good they were but probably not too good for us. I am sure there was not whole wheat involved. Thanks for coming by!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Everything looks WONDERFUL! I especially like the idea of making focaccia in a 9x13 pan for sandwich bread. I will definitely need to try that next time!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Nice pretzels. Your focaccia looked great and I love the idea of putting it in a 9x13 pan. Kudos.

    ReplyDelete
  16. What a great idea to make pretzels with this dough. I loved the pesto pine nut dough so I think it would be good as most anything.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Boy, that looks good. I love pesto and I love pretzels so the two together sounds like bliss.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Great idea to make pretzels. You did not have to poach them first?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Pretzels! What a terrific idea!!! I keep telling myself that I'm going to try making pretzels one of the days (thats in the same mental-someday category as bagels and donuts). Your focaccia looks fantastic too!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Your focaccia and pretzels are beautiful. What a great idea to make the pretzels! I like your blog very much, and I look forward to stopping by again!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails