Sorry, gotta post my cooking photos!

Food - Bread and Calzones

It may or may not be evident from some of my previous posts, but I love to cook. I've even been baking my own bread all summer, using the book The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It's a technique that requires no kneading at all - just mix the dough up, let it sit for a while, then come back later, shape a loaf or whatever, and bake it. (There's also a website: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ )

I made a loaf of their Buttermilk Bread yesterday - using yogurt as a substitute for actual buttermilk - and it turned out so good, so perfect, so pretty, that I decided I was going to have to post a photo of it.

It tasted wonderful, too!

But that wasn't all.



I also mixed up some of their olive oil dough, which can be used for pizzas and other flatbreads, and made calzones! Pizza pocket type things, with filling of precooked ground beef, cut-up pepperoni, and mozzarella and parmesan cheese, mixed with some pizza sauce to hold it all together. (I also thought that mixing the sauce into the filling might keep the dough from getting soggy, as it might with the sauce spread directly on it.)

I rolled out the dough, spread the filling on it...

Wrapped it up neatly... (well, mostly neatly...)

Brushed it with oil... And cut slits in the top of one, to see what difference it might make... 

And baked them! Ironically, the only leakage came from the back of one, not from the seam...

Okay, here's one with the flash. Still new at taking food photos.

I was amazed at how quickly I was able to put these together! The only thing I would change is to maybe put a little less filling in, and to add some extra seasoning - the pizza sauce I bought was pretty bland. Still, the calzones were delicious - and the one I had tonight, reheated in the oven, had the same delicious crunch around the edges as the one last night did when it was freshly made!