Don't let the less-than-stellar photo fool you. It was deeeee-licious. The main course was Cooking Light's Tuscan Baked Chicken and Beans. Basically, the reason this dish was so fantastic is because every element of it is cooked in bacon fat. I ask you: Can you go wrong when you cook everything in bacon fat?
However, there was only just enough bacon and bacon fat to flavor everything; it wasn't actually a fatty dish (check out the nutritional info at the bottom of the recipe in that link). And since I don't use a lot of bacon in my cooking, the smoky, savory deliciousness of this dish actually kind of surprised me. Anyway, this post is not about the chicken dish, so I'll move on, but I definitely do recommend it.
The recipe I want to share with you is the one for the bread you see there. I made a savory sweet potato bread, and it was pretty good. The sweet potatoes did not impart a strong flavor, but they did give the bread a nice, golden/orange color, and the texture came out really nice. The crust had a great chewy texture, kind of like French bread.
Since I've started making baby food again, I have a bunch of sweet potato food cubes in my freezer. The only problem with them is that they turned out a little too lumpy for Jane. So I started brainstorming about how else I could use them. Remembering a savory pumpkin bread that my friend, Bonnie, made one time, I figured that sweet potatoes would probably work in bread, too. Sure enough, I found a sweet potato bread recipe in a cookbook called The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook, but I had to substitute certain things because I didn't have all the ingredients it called for (yogurt for sour cream, orange juice for orange zest, etc.). Here's my version. This is a 1.5-lb. loaf, and this recipe will work for most bread machines (only a few have you add ingredients in an order other than wet ingredients--dry ingredients--yeast).
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Sweet Potato Bread
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon orange juice
3/4 cup pureed sweet potatoes
3 tablespoons plain yogurt
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3 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon gluten
1.5 teaspoons salt
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2 teaspoons yeast
Program bread machine for Basic or Fruit & Nut cycle and press Start. When bread is finished, remove from pan and let cool (or have some while it's still warm!).
3 comments:
Yum, I'm a huge fan of beans and greens (and bacon, of course)! I might try something similar with kale, instead, since I am not a big on cooked spinach. Unless it's Julia Child's spinach quiche, something about 2 cups of cream makes it ok :)
Also, the bread looks like it would make really good toast! My standard use for leftover baked sweet potato is biscuits, but I bet I'd like the bread too.
i just read that recipe last night - i'll tear it out and put it in the file now that i know it's so good!
Kim, I bet it would make good croutons the day after, too. Erin, it was really good! Enjoy!
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