Helen's Stuffed Braided Pizza Bread

Have you met Helen at our bakery? Not only is she great with customers, we love that she's also always coming up with ideas for how to use our baking at home.

Last week she brought home some of our pizza dough and used it to make a stuffed braided pizza bread. She says it's easy to make and wanted to share her tips on how to do it.

Helen started with a ball of our white pizza dough. We sell it frozen, so just thaw it before you're ready to use it. Roll it into a thin rectangle and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Cut 1.5-2" wide strips along each edge. Here's a drawing showing where to cut:

Spread pizza sauce (you could even try some spreadable cream cheese) down the middle. Top with your favorite cheese and toppings. For the toppings, just be sure not to choose anything too juicy, since that will make the dough soggy. If you really want to use something juicy, like fresh zucchini, pan fry it first to get most of the moisture out. Helen's favorite toppings include bell peppers, onions, olives, ham, salami and cooked turkey.

Starting at the top, fold each of the cut strips over the middle and slightly angled towards the bottom, alternating strips from the right and left. If you know how to braid, this should be easy to do. Tuck in the ends. Bake at 350° F until golden brown. Helen has a convection oven and she suggests 18-20 minutes. For a traditional oven, you'll want to add a few minutes.

Do you have a favorite way to use our pizza dough? Let Helen know the next time you're at the bakery!

Cinnamon Pretzels

We had a snow day today...plenty of the white stuff! With school cancelled, we had the kiddos home, and they were looking for something fun to do. They pulled out their Rainy Day Play book (which we renamed the Snowy Day Play book just for the day). They found a fun idea for making soft pretzels. I remembered that I had a ball of frozen pizza dough from Grandin Bakery in our freezer. I put it in the fridge to thaw this morning and it was ready to go later in the afternoon.

I had brown pizza dough on hand, but we also make white dough at the bakery if you prefer. The kids made long "snakes" out of the dough and shaped them into letters, pretzels and other shapes (including Santa's sleigh, can you spot it in the last picture?) We put the shapes onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. My parchment is oven-safe to 425°F. If you don't have any that is safe at that temperature, just use a greased baking sheet. We then brushed the pretzels with melted (salted) butter, and sprinkled them with cinnamon and a generous amount of brown sugar.

The pretzels went into the oven, preheated to 425°F, for about 12 minutes. How long you bake them will depend on how thick they are. Ours were about as thick as my thumb.

When the pretzels came out of the oven, we let them cool on the pan for a couple minutes and then moved them to a wire rack to rest until they were cool enough to eat. The kids dipped them in maple syrup...mmm...just right!

Glad I had the dough in the freezer. Made this project quick and easy. One snow day down, how many to go?

Homemade Focaccia

Helen, who works at our bakery, often recommends using our pizza dough to make Focaccia bread. We thought we'd share her instructions with you all. Thanks, Helen!

HELEN'S FOCACCIA:

Take 2 balls of Grandin Bakery's pizza dough and combine into one large ball. Place dough in a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten. Poke dough with finger tips to create indents.

Brush with olive oil (flavored or plain). Sprinkle spices on top. Choices are yours, but some good ones to try are garlic, oregano, and pepper flakes. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top (or your choice of cheese).

Bake until golden @ 350 degrees F.

** If you've never used our pizza dough, we keep it hidden in the freezer. White or brown. Just ask for it at the counter.

Pizza Contest

Grandin Bakery recently held a contest on Facebook. We asked our customers to share ideas for ways to top our pizza dough. Thanks to Nancy Malaka for one of the winning suggestions: creamy rose sauce with roasted chicken, bacon, tomatoes, red peppers and a ton of cheese.

Our family made a couple of Nancy's pizzas last night for dinner...the kiddos gobbled them up! Here's the scoop on how I made them.

The night before, I pulled the dough out of the freezer and let it thaw overnight in the fridge (Grandin Bakery's pizza dough is sold frozen and you can keep it in your freezer until you're ready to use it).

I actually did some of the prep work in the morning (while school was in!) since it's always nice to be ahead of the game. I made the rose sauce, fried up the bacon, shredded a rotisserie chicken and popped it all in the fridge until I was ready to make the pizzas later in the afternoon.

Preparing the Rose Sauce

Here are the ingredients for the rose sauce:

• 1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup 10% cream
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Dash of pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 213 ml can tomato sauce
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp sugar

To make the sauce, start by getting your spices and garlic ready in prep bowls: one bowl with onion powder, salt, pepper and the bay leaf, another bowl with minced garlic, and the last bowl with oregano and sugar. It helps to have these ingredients measured and ready to add while the sauce is simmering. 

Next, warm the milk and cream together in the microwave for about 45 seconds. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk for a minute or two. Slowly add the warm milk/cream, whisking constantly to prevent lumps from forming, mixing until smooth. Add the onion powder, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and garlic. Simmer over medium heat, stirring very frequently, until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. If after 7 or 8 minutes the sauce is still not thick, turn the heat up just a bit. You don't want to boil the sauce, so don't set the heat too high. 

Remove the bay leaf from the pan. Add the tomato sauce, oregano and sugar. Stir for a minute and remove from heat. This recipe makes enough sauce to cover three 12" crusts.


Making the Pizzas

I made our pizzas using Grandin Bakery's brown dough, but the method is the same if you use our white dough. I baked the pizzas in two stages: for a few minutes before adding the sauce and toppings, then again after they were all loaded up. 

To prepare the crusts, grease 12" pizza pans with olive oil and then sprinkle a bit of cornmeal over top. This gives the pizza a nice, crispy crust. 

Prepare the pans with olive oil and cornmeal

I stretched out the dough by hand, but you can also roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Press the crusts onto the pans and bake for 8 minutes in an oven preheated to 425°F (middle rack). 

Remove the crusts from the oven. You'll notice that the crusts will have bubbled up. Just poke them in a few places with a fork to let the air out before you put the toppings on.

Add your rose sauce and toppings:

• Mozzarella cheese
• Cooked, shredded chicken
• Fried, crumbled bacon
• Diced tomatoes (be sure to remove the seeds so they don't make your pizza soggy)
• Diced red peppers

Topped and ready to bake

 
Return your pizzas to the oven and bake for about 15 more minutes, until the crust is baked through and the cheese is ooey, gooey. 

Try this pizza with a ranch dip, super yum!

Let's eat

Sweet Potato French Toast Recipe

 
 













I love every opportunity I can get to sneak veggies into my kids' food.

Now, I won't proclaim that this recipe is super healthy. I mean it does have both syrup and brown sugar. But, this French toast does include a veggie and it tastes yummy. My girls gobble these up!

I usually buy canned sweet potato at a health food store, but you can also make your own. Click here for directions on how to bake sweet potatoes. Once they're cooked, you just need to let them cool enough so that you don't burn yourself, then tear off the peels (they should come off easily) and mash.

Here's the recipe:
3/4 cup pureed sweet potato
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs, beaten
10-12 slices bread (I use brown)

Preheat a non-stick frying pan on the stove top at just below medium heat. Mix the sweet potato, milk, cinnamon, vanilla & eggs in a shallow dish. Quickly dip both sides of a slice of bread into the mixture and put into the pan (you don't want to let the bread soak in the mixture, just dip to coat). Cook about 2 minutes, flip, then cook for about 2 minutes more. As you take the toasts out of the pan, move them to an oven-safe dish and keep them warm in the oven at 200 degrees F while you cook up the rest of the French toast.

Serve with margarine, a drizzle of maple syrup and a sprinkle of brown sugar (trust me, the combination of syrup and brown sugar is fantastic!)