Sourdough Pizza Crust (and Tortillas)

We aren’t eating grain, but I still make things for my grandchildren, so I thought I’d share this recipe that I use to make sourdough pizza and tortillas. It’s a great way to use up starter and you can’t complain about a recipe that doubles for something else, right? I make it the exact same way for either. If I’m making tortillas for breakfast, I’ll make the dough at night and leave it out on the counter overnight. If I’m making pizza, I’ll make the dough in the morning and and let it sit out until dinner time. The one thing I haven’t done is let it do a second rise after rolling it out and putting it on the pizza pan. I should do that some time. Anyway, to make tortillas, just roll them out individually and cook on a hot skillet or tortilla pan. The sourdough taste doesn’t come through and I pass these off as regular tortillas all the time. It makes 6-8 tortillas, depending on size. For a neat trick on making evenly shaped tortillas, check out this post. I’ve only done this once, but it works very well.
Here are the instructions for making the pizza.

Sourdough Pizza Crust
makes 1 large pizza crust

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
3 Tbs olive oil (or melted coconut oil)
1/2 cup starter
1/4 cup sour raw milk (or water)
Extra oil for greasing pizza pan

Preheat oven to 425^o. Grease pan and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

You can also do this in a food processor, but I prefer doing it by hand.
Add oil and mix well.

Add sourdough starter and mix well.

Add milk or water and mix until it comes together to form dough. This shouldn’t be too sticky or too dry. If it is too dry, add more liquid 1 tsp at a time. If it’s too wet…well, I don’t know a remedy for that, so you may want to go slow when adding the liquid.
Once it forms a dough, put it in a glass bowl. I didn’t do it here, but it’s best to grease it with a little oil.

I put a piece of cheesecloth over the bowl and set it in my microwave. Any place relatively warm will do.

I got a late start, so it didn’t rise as much as usual, but this is what it looks like after sitting about 3 hours.

You can see the starter has done its magic.

I roll the dough out on my counter to the approximate size of my large pizza pan. Sometimes, I use my hands to stretch it, just because it makes me feel like a real chef.

I usually put a light coating of olive oil and sprinkle some garlic salt on top. Bake at 425^o for 8-10 minutes. Keep a close eye on it; you only want it to just start turning brown around the edges.

Remove from oven and continue preparing to your liking. Bake another 4-5 minutes once the sauce and all the toppings have been added. Remove from oven and enjoy! Super easy!

I keep mine pretty simple. I usually use a mix of 1/2 spaghetti sauce and 1/2 tomato paste. This gives the Italian flavor with the paste giving the sauce the thickness it needs. I usually add a little Italian seasoning and a little more garlic salt on top of the sauce. Then I top with grated cheese and pepperoni, the only two toppings my grandchildren agree on! (And, yes, they prefer some type of Jack cheese!)

Ready to bake:

Ready to eat!

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This post is part of the Fight Back Friday blog carnival hosted by Food Renegade.

King Ranch Turkey

It’s a question asked every year after Thanksgiving. What do I do with all that leftover turkey? Or not. Perhaps you didn’t have much turkey left over or what you had was eaten in turkey sandwiches. Not to fear. This recipe can be made with any chicken or turkey that is already cooked. With the red and green of the peppers, it’s a festive and spicy way to transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
As with all my recipes, I based this one (loosely) on this version.

King Ranch Turkey
makes a 9×12 casserole

3 cups cooked turkey (or chicken), diced or shredded
1 cup turkey or chicken broth (preferably homemade)
4 Tbs butter
1/2 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 Tbs spelt flour (or flour of choice)
1 Tbs red chile powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp garlic salt
4 oz can of chopped green chile
6 oz of red salsa
1/2 cup full fat raw milk or cream
1/3 cup yogurt or sour cream
16 oz. grated cheese (I used 1/2 cheddar and 1/2 pepper jack)
1-2 cups crushed organic tortilla chips

Melt butter in saucepan, add onion and bell pepper and cook for 10 minutes on medium low, stirring frequently.

Stir in flour, then add spices and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add broth and cook for a few minutes on medium.

Add milk, chile and salsa, mixing well.

Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover pot and add yogurt (or sour cream).

Stir to combine and add turkey to sauce.

An alternative method is to layer the sauce and turkey, but I prefer to take shortcuts wherever possible.

Preheat oven to 350^o
In a 9 x 12 baking dish, put 1/2 to 1 cup crushed tortilla chips. These are the chips I used.

This is the second layer, starting with chips.

Add 1/2 of the turkey/sauce mixture, spreading evenly throughout pan.

Top with 1/2 the cheese.

Make a total of two layers. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 5 minutes. Top with additional yogurt or sour cream, if desired.

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Thanksgiving Revisited

It’s twelve days until Thanksgiving. I’m trying not to panic. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this ill-prepared. As those of you who follow my blog know, we’ve had a lot of changes the past three months. I find myself feeling overwhelmed most days, from all of the new challenges we are facing. However, I am determined to focus on an attitude of thankfulness and just do the best I can. As I was looking over my Thanksgiving meal from last year, I decided that it was worthy of a repeat this year. So, since I have nothing new to share (at least not at this point), I thought it might be helpful to put all of my Thanksgiving recipes from last year in one post. I’m also going to add some of my other recipes that could be part of a Thanksgiving meal. Most are gluten free. I know my blog is not very user friendly, especially when it comes to finding past recipes. One of these days (my most used words!) I’m going to figure out how to put the recipes in categories so they are available without having to search.

This is a list of links to the following foods and how to prepare them:

TURKEY (DRY BRINED)


BROCCOLI, “RICE,” AND CHEESE

YUMMY SPINACH SALAD

CRANBERRY SAUCE

SOURDOUGH DINNER ROLLS

CRUSTLESS PECAN PIE

GF LOW CARB CHEESECAKE

I’m hoping I can add a recipe for green bean casserole, a gluten-free stuffing, and maybe some simple recipes such as ranch dressing. We’ll see. In addition to some of the above recipes, I also made some mashed sweet potatoes. My preferred way to do this is to either bake (whole) or steam (cubed) some sweet potatoes until soft, then mash with lots of pastured butter. I hope this has been helpful.

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~Karen

GF Banana Nut Muffins

Even though I previously posted a recipe for muffins with fruit added, I’m not sure it would work with bananas. And even if it did, I really like the simplicity of this recipe. It (like several of the gf recipes I post) comes from Elana’s Pantry. However, it’s a tweak on her banana bread. She does have a recipe for banana walnut muffins, but I still find the simplicity of this recipe the most appealing. And since, as with her paleo bread, she uses a specific type of loaf pan that I don’t own, I converted the recipe into muffins. My family loves these muffins and since they have a very minimal amount of sweetener (honey), I feel good about serving them. They make a great snack or light dessert. Since we don’t eat walnuts that often and since I usually have crispy pecans on hand, that’s what I normally use in this recipe.

GF Banana Nut Muffins
makes 12 regular-sized muffins

3 organic, ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 cups), mashed
3 eggs (pastured)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 cups blanched almond flour
1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chopped crispy pecans

Preheat oven to 350^o
Grease 12 cup muffin pan with butter or coconut oil. In food processor or bowl, mix bananas and eggs until well mixed.

Add vanilla and honey.

Add softened coconut oil and mix until all ingredients are well blended.

Add dry ingredients and mix well. (Because I doubled the recipe, I had to shift from the processor to a bowl)

Add chopped nuts and combine.

Divide batter evenly.

Bake at 350^o for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for a few minutes and remove to cooling rack.

Add butter and enjoy!

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Sausages and Sauerkraut

Here’s a quick and easy recipe for sausages and sauerkraut, without losing the health benefits of raw kraut. I’ve made this a couple of times now and we really like it. I used my homemade sauerkraut, which is really easy to make. Being new to sauerkraut, I thought it would be good to cook something with it. Then it dawned on me that it would kill the probiotic properties. That’s when I came up with this recipe. It’s nice for those times when you want to fix something that doesn’t take much time and uses few ingredients.

Sausages and Sauerkraut
serves 5

10 sausage links/frankfurters (I used chicken sausage)
1 leek, white and a little part of the green or 1 onion
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 Tbs butter
2 cups sauerkraut

Dice leek.

Melt 2 Tbs of the butter in large frying pan over medium low heat.

Add diced leek and cook over medium low heat until softened.

Remove leek to a small bowl and add remaining 1 Tbs butter to pan and increase heat to medium. Add sausages and cook till browned on all sides. This is the kind of sausage I used:

Once sausages are browned completely, add cooked leeks and the chicken broth.

I used homemade chicken broth.

Continue cooking over medium heat until broth is reduced to a thick sauce. Turn heat off. At this point, I decided to chop the sausages into 3-4 pieces per sausage. You can leave them whole or chop them before browning.

Cover sausages with sauerkraut.

Cover with lid and let sit for 5 minutes or until sauerkraut is warmed through. I usually leave my pan on the still-warm (but off) burner for this.

Remove lid, thoroughly mix and serve.

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Almond Flour Crackers (A Different Kind of Valentine)

In spite of the nourishing food, in spite of the extras like homemade elderberry syrup, in spite of being careful, sickness happens. Today is Valentine’s Day and my husband is sick. On top of that, I’m not feeling well. I’m trying to keep things simple today, but wanted to give my husband’s lunch that “loving touch.” Knowing I would be serving the chicken/turkey soup I made yesterday from homemade broth for lunch, I decided to make the rosemary crackers he loves and cut them into heart shapes. These crackers (from Elana’s Pantry) are like all of my favorite recipes: few ingredients, easy to make. I had already thought about this post a while back, because I wanted to show how I square off the outer edges of the regular shaped crackers.

Almond Flour Rosemary Crackers

1 3/4 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 Tbs fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 Tbs olive oil
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350^o.

Separate rosemary leaves and chop fine.

Measure almond flour, salt, and rosemary into mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine olive oil and egg until well mixed.

Add wet ingredients to dry.

Mix well to form ball. Place on sheet of parchment paper.

Place another sheet of parchment paper on top and roll out to about 1/4″ to 1/3″ thickness. At this point, I used my heart shaped cookie cutter.

Take the top sheet of parchment and place it on a baking sheet. Place crackers on parchment.

Bake at 350^o for 8 – 12 minutes. Remove them just as edges begin to brown. (The ones on the outer edges of the pan will be slightly brown, while the ones in the middle will not be)

I served them with the homemade broth for Valentine’s Day lunch.

Here’s how I make the regular shaped crackers. Roll out dough as described above (parchment on top and below). It usually looks something like this:

Then I square it off by cutting a line around the edges.

I then take these outer pieces, turn them around and lay them down on top of the places where it is needed to form a square. (See how the part I cut off above has a straight line on the inside? This is the part that should be facing out when you lay it upon the inner square)

I then roll them lightly with a rolling pin or work them in with my fingers.

Cut dough into squares. Here I have cut them into rectangles, because this is just the leftover dough from my heart crackers.

Bake at 350^o for about 10 minutes or till edges turn lightly brown.
Note: when baking the entire batch as squares, the baking time is increased to around 12 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool slightly, then gently separate crackers where lines are visible.

These crackers have the most wonderful flavor and are great when you need some crackers in a hurry!

This post is part of the following blog carnivals:

Monday Mania, hosted by The Healthy Home Economist.

Traditional Tuesdays, hosted by Cooking Traditional Foods.

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Almond Flour Buns

^*I’m editing this post to include some changes I’ve made to the recipe.

This recipe is based on one from Elana (of Elana’s Pantry) that she calls Paleo Bread. I’ve only made a couple of changes and have made it into a bun instead of a loaf. (Her recipe calls for a special loaf pan and doesn’t produce good results in a regular loaf pan) It’s been a life saver for our grain-free diet, so I wanted to share it with you. The pan I use is a muffin top pan. You can use a regular muffin pan, but the buns may need to cook a few minutes longer. (I was making a double-batch, so some of the measurements in the pictures may be different than the recipe lists)

In this picture I was using coconut sugar instead of honey.

Almond Flour Buns
makes 6 buns

1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/4 cup Salba, ground (can use regular chia seed)
2 Tbs cup coconut flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup coconut oil + enough to oil pan
1 Tbs apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs honey
5 eggs

Preheat oven to 350^o. Grease muffin top pan and set aside.

It takes 2 Tbs of Salba (or chia) seed to make 1/4 cup ground. (This is 1/4 cup, because I was doubling the recipe)

(Okay, maybe I was a little short there)

Put the seed in a coffee grinder if you are using seeds.

Pulse till they are well ground.

Put almond flour, coconut flour, ground Salba, baking powder, salt, and coconut crystals if using, all in a large mixing bowl. (This can be done easier in a food processor, I just prefer to do it by hand)

Mix well, breaking up any clumps in the flours, then add coconut oil.

Mix until coconut oil is well combined. Add eggs and vinegar (and honey, if using in place of coconut crystals). There are 10 eggs, because this was the double-batch.

(The white stuff is where the vinegar reacted to the baking soda when I used the same tablespoon to measure it)

Stir until well combined.

Spoon into muffin top pan, so that it is even with the top of the pan.

Bake at 350^o for 17 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool approximately 5 minutes, then transfer to baking rack to cool.

Regrease pan and put remaining batter in pan, filling to top of pan as before. (See above)

Use as you would any sandwich bun.

^* Here are the changes I’ve recently made:

Instead of using just Salba, I use 1 Tbs Salba seeds and 1 Tbs chia seeds, ground. I add 1 tsp ground hemp to the batter, then I sprinkle hemp seeds on top of the buns before baking. Very nice flavor!

These have so many uses! Here I used them for sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches.

I found a use for my biscuit cutters!

This post is part of the Fight Back Friday blog carnival, hosted by Food Renegade.

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