What we ate: June 30-July 4

I got busy this week, with D out of town and PE getting a stomach virus mid-week, so I didn't write down what we ate every day. I vaguely remember leftovers on Monday and turkey meatloaf in the middle of the week (not a hit), then on to D. grilling chicken on Friday. So, I'll use this space to talk about the only memorable thing I made:

3 Things From the Same Dough

(This was on the same night as the turkey meatloaf; PE will not eat meatloaf, even when disguised as a hamburger in a bun; creativity ensued...)

Since I was making bread in the bread machine anyway, I put it on the dough cycle. When done, I took out and divided into 3 balls on a wooden board dusted with flour.

• The first ball was pushed into a small greased loaf pan, left to rise in the oven, set to "breadproofing" (100 degrees).

• The second ball was rolled out into a rectangle, then spread with butter and sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon, with a small handful of raisins pushed into dough. It was then rolled back up into a log and put in a small, greased loaf pan into the oven to rise.

• The third ball was rolled into a mini pizza, very thin crust, and set aside to rise a little while the the others were rising, until I could make the sauce for it.

After I rolled out the mini pizza, I made some quick tomato sauce in the microwave (see Recipe in previous posts). I took the two loaves out of the oven to rise some more and set the oven to 375. I added the sauce and shredded cheese to the pizza dough and put it in when oven was hot enough. I then added the 2 bread loaves when they had risen enough.

Lessons learned:

• Bread dough is not the same as pizza dough--it's less moist and thus less flexible. So, it was not a perfect pizza, but PE didn't seem to mind. She liked having her own little pizza. An adult might notice the difference.

• I've never figured out how to get raisins to stick to raisin bread. Once sliced, a few of the raisins always manage to fall out. Maybe I should add the raisins to the dough cycle in the machine, so they'll be more integrated, then add cinnamon and sugar as an afterthought? I don't know how Pepperidge Farm gets their raisins to stick...