Julie Butler

Chicken Fettuccine

Italian Bread

Tossed Salad

Chocolate Chip Cookie

Chicken Fettuccini

2 Chicken breasts

2 T. Vegetable or olive oil

Italian Seasoning

¼ C. Butter

½ onion

½ can or ¼ C. mushrooms

1 clove of garlic

Pint of heavy cream

1 chicken bouillon cube

2 C. parmesan cheese

8 oz. fettuccini

Combine oil and Italian seasoning and cover chicken with oil mixture. Broil chicken until done, turning chicken over to brown both sides. Dice chicken and set aside. Save chicken pan for later. Start a pot of water boiling for noodles and when boiling add noodles. Melt butter in pot, sauté onion, mushrooms, and minced garlic in butter. Reduce heat to medium low, pour all but ½ C. of cream into the pot, pour other ½ C. onto the chicken pan to help remove the drippings. Pour chicken drippings mixture into the pot.  Add bouillon cube and dissolve. Add cheese and remove from heat. When noodles are done drain and add to the sauce. Serve warm.

Italian Bread

Ingredients

Biga

• 2 cups bread flour
• 1/4 tsp. Instant dry yeast
• 8 oz. water @ room temperature

Dough

• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 tsp. instant dry yeast
• 1-1/3 cups water @ room temperature

Other

• Pam spray (I use olive oil Pam for this recipe; regular Pam would be fine too)
• Cornmeal
• Large baking sheet

Start the evening before with the biga or pre-ferment

Making the biga couldn’t be much simpler:  combine all ingredients in a medium to large bowl, and knead for a few minutes, forming a shaggy dough. I always coat the inside of the bowl with a generous spray of Pam; this makes things easier later on.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and leave out for three hours at room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.

 it will have risen and bubbled quite a bit as it fermented.  When you’re ready to form the balance of the dough, remove the biga from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature.

Mixing the dough

Likewise, the dough itself is simplicity:  flour, water, yeast.  NOTE:  do NOT add the salt at this point.  Combine the 3 ingredients in a medium to large bowl.  Knead for 3-4 minutes and cover dough loosely with plastic wrap; let the dough rest for 20 minutes at room temperature.  (Again, I coat the interior of the bowl with Pam prior to putting the dough back in it.)

After 20 minutes, I sprinkle one of the two teaspoons of table salt over the dough, and then add the biga to the dough by inverting its bowl over that containing the dough.  A spatula will help in removing the biga.

Pull the dough/biga mixture out of the bowl and knead it on a clean surface prepped with some Pam spray for a few minutes, thoroughly mixing the salt into the dough.  Then add the other teaspoon of salt to the dough and continue to knead it for another 3-4 minutes.  Make sure you continue to turn the dough on itself to ensure that the salt is thoroughly mixed throughout the dough and that the biga and new dough are completely blended with one another.

The next few steps aren’t taxing, they’re just time consuming.  Let the dough mixture (tightly covered with plastic wrap) rise for an hour at room temperature.  Then remove the plastic wrap and gently fold one side of the dough to the other, fold the top to the bottom, and flip it over in the bowl. Having used Pam in the bowl makes this much easier.  You are NOT punching down the dough, but rather gently folding it upon itself.  Recover tightly with plastic wrap – and repeat this process twice for a total of 3 hours’ worth of rising. 

At this juncture you’re going to have to resort to working on a floured surface.  If preparing two loaves, cut the dough in half after turning it from the bowl onto your work surface.  Dust your hands and the top surface of each piece of dough with flour.  Shape the two pieces into rectangles measuring appx. 8″ x 10″ Fold the two top corners toward the center and then begin gently rolling the dough into a log shape, Put the seam side down, and tuck the ends underneath. Transfer the two loaves onto a baking sheet onto which you previously sprinkled cornmeal:

Cover the loaves loosely with plastic wrap and let rise one hour; (pre-heat your oven to 500°F at the 45 minute mark) then use a single edge razor blade or very sharp paring or chef’s knife to cut a 1/2″ deep slit lengthwise in each loaf, stopping and starting about 2″ from the ends of the loaf:

Oven pre-heated?  Great!  Bake for 10 minutes at 500°F; turn loaves 180° (rotate baking sheet one half turn) and lower heat to 400°F.  Bake for another 30 minutes until loaves are a deep golden brown.  Interior temperature should be ~210°F.  When thumped on its bottom, a properly baked loaf should sound hollow.