Artisan Bread Stuffing Casserole

*Note ~ this post was originally written in November 2009 and is reposted here from my MotherHen Jen bread blog because I don't have time to write anything new today, and I wanted to share this easy and fresh bread stuffing recipe with you for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


For many years I purchased the box of dried up bread pieces marketed as "seasoned bread stuffing mix" and added my own fresh ingredients to make a bread stuffing casserole to serve at Thanksgiving dinner. It was tasty enough to please my guests who liked bread stuffing. Me, I never much liked bread stuffing. It didn't have the fresh homemade flavor that I thought it should have. It was either too dry or too mushy for my taste.

Well, this year I decided I could do better than the boxed stuffing mix. So I created a recipe using my own MotherHen Jen artisan breads as the base and then added my other fresh ingredients to make a wonderful and tasty bread stuffing casserole. You can also stuff the turkey with it, but I prefer it as a casserole side dish as I usually stuff my turkeys with a rice & meat based stuffing recipe that was handed down to me from my Mom.


This recipe is flexible on the amounts of fruits, nuts and vegetables that you add in. Add more of what you like best. The broth and juice can be adjusted to your liking as well, depending on whether you like a more moist or a drier stuffing.


It tastes great straight from the oven, warm & moist with a crisp top, but I think it tastes best when served with some nice turkey meat and good homemade turkey gravy ladled over the top.


Here's the recipe:

Bread Stuffing Casserole ~ by MotherHen Jen
for Thanksgiving or Anytime


12-14 oz MHJ Rustic Wheat Bread, (1 small loaf) day old, cut/crumbled into ½ inch cubes
1 C (2 ribs) Celery, chopped
1 C Apple, unpeeled & chopped
½ C Walnuts, chopped
3 Tbs Butter, melted
2 Tbs Olive Oil
1 Egg
½ C Chicken or Turkey Broth
¼-½ C Apple Juice, Apple Cider, Orange Juice or Water
Black Pepper, Cinnamon, Oregano, Basil


Preheat oven to 350 degrees, Butter or Oil a 2 Quart Casserole Dish

1. In a large bowl, gently toss together bread cubes, celery, apple & walnuts.

2. Stir together melted butter and olive oil. Pour over bread mixture and toss gently to coat.

3. Season to taste with black pepper, cinnamon, herbs (fresh or dried)

4. Add egg to cool chicken broth and stir to mix. Add juice and stir again.

5. Drizzle broth mixture over bread mixture and toss lightly to coat.

6. Spoon (use hands) stuffing into the prepared 2 qt casserole dish and bake covered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 5-10 minutes for a crisp top. Serve with turkey or chicken and gravy.


Variations:

Substitute other nuts for walnuts or omit nuts

Add raisins, dried cranberries or other chopped dried fruit

Use MHJ Artisan White Bread or Egg Bread instead of Rustic Wheat Bread (or any other loaf of your favorite artisan bread)

To make the savory version, substitute chopped onion for the apples, substitute water or broth for the juice, season with garlic powder instead of cinnamon.

Please tell me about any other delicious variations you create for this stuffing recipe or any recipes using MotherHen Jen artisan bread.

Enjoy!





© Copyright 2010 Mountain Harvest Basket

Jam & Bread

Homemade Raisin Bread (left) & Wheat Bread (right) Sandwich Loaves

I finally created a couple of wheat sandwich loaves that were tall enough to produce decent sized sandwich slices. I made one a plain wheat bread and one I turned into cinnamon raisin bread. This was my first time making the raisin bread and I didn't quite get the raisins and cinnamon to produce the nice spiral swirl effect I was aiming for. See the photo below.


Cinnamon Raisin Bread Sliced ~ raisins slightly misaligned

It still tasted good though, even if the raisins were sort of all clumped together in places. Next time I will make a few adjustments to my swirl technique.


Remember that Homemade Strawberry Jam?

I had to make some sandwich bread so that I could eat some of my homemade strawberry jam that gave me so much trouble last weekend. I've been looking at the jars sitting on my kitchen counter all week admiring the deep rich red color. Tonight was the first time I tried some of this particular batch.

It was very good!


Almond Butter & Strawberry Jam on Raisin Bread = Dinner

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

White Bread Rising

White Bread Dough Rising

Homemade White Sandwich Loaf

Same Loaf, Different Angle

Sliced Bread

BLT in the Making (note my homegrown lettuce)

Dinner!

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Woman Does Not Live By Bread Alone

Wheat Bread Loaf #2

...but baking my own bread is very satisfying.

I have made two sandwich loaves of wheat bread in my recent baking flurry. Both of them were made with a combination of White Whole Wheat and All Purpose flours. They came out reasonably well, with good taste and texture and color, but not quite as tall and fluffy as I would like. The white whole wheat flour produces a nice & soft, lighter tan colored loaf. I think I need to either use more yeast or let it rise longer to get the lift I desire in my bread. Or maybe do both.

Baking and cooking is good creative expression for me. It allows me the freedom to design what I want and to make it my own way. Gives me freedom and also some control. I say some control, because my creations don't always turn out exactly the way I want them to. Actually, that's sort of the fun part. A little adventure and surprise in the kitchen. Safe adventure. Just my speed.

I started this recent bread baking because I became aware that I was spending almost $5 per 1 1/2 lb loaf of store bought bread. So I decided that making my own bread would save me some money. It does that. Now I am not sure I can go back to eating store bought bread again. I really like the way my homemade bread tastes. It is so much fresher tasting that store bought. Even when my wheat loaves don't rise as tall as I would like.

It makes great sandwiches and toast.


Slices of homemade Wheat Bread

Hopefully, I will find the time to bake some more soon. I do enjoy it.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

OMG PB&J Sandwich-gasm!

Peanut Butter & Apricot Jam on freshly made white bread

It was so good that I almost forgot to take a photo for you all. That was probably the best PB&J sandwich I have ever tasted.

I like this bread baking stuff. Gonna keep doing it.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

White Bread Again

Farmhouse White Bread #2

Well, I decided to try baking another loaf of Farmhouse White bread that I wrote about in my previous post.

This time I used the same basic recipe as last time with just a few tweaks. I added 1/4 teaspoon more instant yeast and I cut way back on the salt, using only about 1/4 teaspoon this time, since I found the first loaf a little salty for my taste buds. I also didn't have any bread flour available, so I used all purpose flour with some extra wheat gluten added in (1 teaspoon gluten per cup of flour to make bread flour substitute). Again, I used my favorite brand of flour, King Arthur.

Just for experiment purposes and also because I was too busy today to tend to mixing and kneading bread dough all by hand, I put the ingredients into my bread machine and let the machine do the work for me. After first rise the dough was ready for me to remove and shape into a loaf. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I was distracted by other things and let the risen dough sit in the machine for about 30 minutes longer than I was supposed to.

Well, I took it out and flattened it out a bit into a large rectangle, then rolled it up like a jelly roll into a log shape and plunked into the same loaf pan that used for the first loaf I baked a few days ago. Making sure to crimp the edges together so it would stay together as a nice loaf shape. I covered it with a damp tea towel and set it on a TV tray in front of the fire in my woodstove to maintain a temperature of about 74 degrees F while the dough rose in the pan.

Well, either the warmer room, the little more yeast, the smaller amount of salt or the gluten enhanced flour made this loaf rise a lot more than the first one did. After about 60 minutes it had doubled in size and was pushing the tea towel up and up. So into the oven it went to bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees F.

It came out fluffy and beautiful. Much more the shape that I desire in a homemade sandwich loaf of bread.


Better shaped sandwich bread

It tasted a better to me than my first try because it isn't as salty, and I like that better. I have already eaten 3 warm pieces of bread with butter, and I usually don't use butter even when I bake. I only use it on fresh warm bread, so this bread baking hobby of mine may not be so good for my saturated fat intake. Perhaps I should try my fresh bread dipped in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yes, that might be good.

I will have to see how this second loaf performs as toast and in sandwiches. Will it fall apart or will it be elastic enough to hold substantial sandwich contents? How long will it stay fresh? So much experimenting to do!

I do plan to make bread completely from scratch, doing the mixing and kneading completely by hand again, but I had to try it out at least once using the bread machine. Now I know what results I will get on those days when I don't have time to do it all by hand. I may also have learned something about the kneading process from the bread machine. I may have kneaded the dough a little too roughly by hand, perhaps making more gluten than I needed to, in my endeavor to be thorough my first time out. I am after all, a massage therapist by profession, one whose specialty is deep tissue work which involves a lot of heavy kneading of my client's muscles. I may have taken the kneading job a bit too seriously when making bread the first time. So the next time I make fresh bread completely by hand, I will lighten up a bit, perhaps giving my bread dough a lighter "spa massage" instead of the full up "sports massage". Ha!

Happy baking everyone. Good thing to do on a cold winter's day.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Bread 101

Freshly Baked Loaf of White Bread

Well, since we have had Muffin Monday and Soup Saturday here at Mountain Harvest Basket recently, I thought it was time for "Bread Baking Sunday". Well, so much for continuing with the fun alliteration...oh well, maybe "Sandwich Loaf Sunday"...

I have baked bread before "from scratch", but always with the aid of a bread machine to do the mixing and kneading etc. I would usually take the dough out of the machine before the baking cycle, and shape and bake it in my oven since I don't like the way my bread machine baked bread turns out. Funny shapes and hard crusts come out of that bread machine, but it does make mixing the dough an easy task. However, easy does not always give a good homemade product. So this time I decided to try my hand at mixing, kneading etc all by hand. I really want to be able to make great tasting, healthy and less expensive fresh breads for myself and my family.

So I started with this recipe I got from Farmgirl Susan from her great blogs Farmgirl Fare and A Year in Bread. She calls this bread Farmhouse White. I have tried several of her other recipes over the past year and have always been pleased with the results.



Since Farmgirl Susan's recipe for Farmhouse White bread makes 3 loaves of sandwich style bread, I decided that for this first bread making experiment I would only make one loaf just in case I really screwed up and it didn't turn out. I didn't want to waste 3 times the ingredients my first time up at bat.

I followed her instructions carefully and I was very pleased with the results of my first time making and baking a loaf of bread completely from scratch. Of course, her loaves of bread look so much better than mine do. Mine wasn't as tall and fluffy looking as hers were. She gives some hints on which loaf pans to use to get that tallness, and my pan was not exactly the right size. This does give me a good data point from which to progress with future baking projects.

I was very pleased with the taste and texture of this bread. It was moist yet not soggy. It was elastic enough to make a good sandwich without falling apart as my previous breads had. It tasted great, perhaps a bit salty for me (since I don't use salt in much of anything), and the crust turned out a beautiful light golden brown.



I will make this bread again. I will find better loaf pans. I will experiment with different kneading techniques and play with the ingredients.

Someday I want to make whole grain breads and crusty artisan loaves as well as this basic white sandwich style bread. I had a fun time baking on a cold and rainy Sunday. I just might enjoy this as a new hobby. I'll see how it goes.

Any suggestions from you all on which bread baking book I should buy that will tell me the basic methods and also have other recipes for me to try?

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket