So I told you about the blog the gracious pantry and how I had been reading her posts and recipes. Her goal is to not eat anything that has more than five ingredients in it. She is striving for clean food and has reworked many recipes to decrease the chemicals and unnatural ingredients in them. I love the website! Tracy and I have made a committment to try to do this :) You should have seen us yesterday at the grocery! Reading labels and putting stuff back on the shelf because it had too many ingredients and ingredients we couldn't pronounce! Tiffany (the gracious pantry lady) would have been proud of us!
Our first cooking endeavor with five ingredients or less was "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes A Day." We made bread and it was awesome! Whole wheat flour, small amount of white flour, vital wheat gluten, water, salt and yeast...that is six! Oh well guess the flours can count as one! Mix them up in a 5 quart container, let it stand at room temperature for 2 hours, then to the fridge for 2 hours and you are ready to cook some delicious healthy bread! Tracy molded the loaf, let it rise for 90 minutes and then you are ready to cook! You preheat your oven @ 450 degress for 30 minutes with a cooking stone in the oven along with a large cookie pan. After the preheat time you put the bread on the stone (using parchment paper between the bread and stone) and pour one cup of hot tap water in to the cookie pan. Cooking with steam is soooo exciting and leads to a wonderful crust and dense but not too dense bread! Bake for 30 minutes and here you go!
Healthy Bread In 5 Minutes A Day!
Do not be intimidated in any way! I have tried to make bread over the years and have had a few successes and many more failures but despite how good it was I always wondered if it was worth the effort...kneading, flour messes, proofing, yeast failure, rising, etc. This is another world. Once you mix up your dough mixture which makes enough for 3-4 loaves you are done. Anytime you want fresh bread, cut off a grapefruit-sized ball of dough, form it, let it rise and cook! The dough lasts up to 14 days in the fridge and as time passes will develop even more characteristics of a sourdough bread. I just can't say enough about how easy this is and how wonderful the bread is. The book I bought yesterday has dozens of additional recipes and I can't wait to make carrot bread and oat-date bread! Tracy is looking forward to rye bread! We held a piece of our favorite store-bought bread up to the homemade bread and the store-bought looked weak, limp, and unappetizing! Don't think I will ever eat store-bought again plus it cost nearly $4 a loaf and the homemade is about $0.40 a loaf!
I took another grapefruit-sized ball of dough and Tracy roll it out to make a pizza crust. I topped it with homemade pizza sauce, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions (Oh yeah, those turkey pepperonis I used had more than five ingredients but were low fat and not greasy) Cooked the pizza at 500 degrees (no steam pan this time) and here are the unbelievable results!
Seriously some of the best pizza I ever ate! We figured it cost about $3-4 to make and was completely natural except for the turkey pepperonis which I pick off anyway :)
My next clean eating challenge was fixing my lunch today! Food at work is an ordeal to begin with because anything I pack must be portable and I have to have a few things that will fit in my pocket because they won't let us eat at our desks and often we get no breaks. Sooooo, yes, I put things in my pocket and slip around and eat them because 13-14 hours without eating and working your butt off is very difficult! Lots of my old standbys are "no-nos" now because of the ingredient list. Here is the lunch I packed for tonight and everything there has less than six ingredients:
Baked Lay's, carrots and cucumbers, Natural JIF on homemade bread, Back to Nature Chocolate Chip cookies, Triscuits and natural Cheddar cheese, and homemade pizza! Except for the pizza I think I can sneak and eat any of it on the run! LOL
The gracious pantry website has dozens of 5 ingredient recipes and when I am off again I am going to try some of them out! I know we won't always eat clean but every time we do will be awesome and hopefully someday almost all of our eating will be clean AND delicious! Love and prayers to my followers, it is time for bed for me because night shift is calling me back after five lovely days off. EXTRA special reward this week: the girls are coming, the girls are coming! We are going to make pizza with them and will be sure to video for youtube so everyone can enjoy!!
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