Bread, Cookies, and Burgers, oh my!

We have been cooking a lot this week, and in the last 2 days have made bread and hamburger buns, cinnamon and sugar cookies (we both have a serious sweet tooth), and turkey burgers.

Baking Bread
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Simple-Whole-Wheat-Bread/Detail.aspx
Zach and I bought a nice bread loaf pan from Williams and Sonoma (gosh it was expensive!) but apparently it is a great one to use for homemade bread. It reflects light in just a way that makes the color of the crusts perfect. This is the second time we have made bread, and this time we added gluten to make it more like store-bought sandwich bread. We also added sunflower and poppy seeds and salt (since we forgot to add it the first time!).

Letting the dough rise

I make Zach knead, but he likes the workout! 

 Our hamburger buns

 See the golden color on the left loaf? That's because of the fancy bread pan!

The bread on the right is with a cheap bread pan, and the color is a bit darker. 

The bread turned out great both times we have made it, although the added gluten helped with the texture the second time. It's great sandwich bread, and we highly recommend this recipe to anyone who wants to bake their own bread! The whole process took about 3 1/2 hours because it has to rise 3 separate times, but it's totally worth it.

Cinnamon Sugar Cookies
I found an easy cookie recipe from my cookbook College Vegetarian Cooking. Luckily, I had all the ingredients the night Zach and I had a sugar craving and whipped it out in 20 minutes. They weren't the best sugar cookies we have ever had because they were more chewy than we're used to, but definitely satisfied our craving.

 Turkey Burgers and Fries
Craving burgers, we tried a turkey pesto burger recipe from George Foreman Indoor Grilling Made Easy. It contained pesto, parmesan cheese, and added pine nuts. It was moist, so Zach was impressed by that because he says a lot of turkey burgers are dry, and really flavorful. The pesto we made from our homegrown basil plant. For the hamburger buns, we used the rolls we had made when baking the bread. They weren't as soft as hamburger buns, but when toasted they worked well.

We thought Cajun fries sounded delicious, so we made some! We used cajun seasoning, oregano, tobasco, olive oil, and pepper, and baked them in the oven on 400F for about 30 minutes. They were crispy and spicy, a very nice complement to our pesto turkey burgers.

Until next time!