Waffled sandwiches on tomato-basil bread

One of my favorite treats when I was a teenager was waffles and ice cream. There was a deli near our house that served up fresh, fragrant, warm waffles with multiple scoops of Breyer's ice cream. Peach or strawberry was my ice cream of choice. Sigh. I can almost smell those waffles as I type. (Or maybe it's the tomato-caraway bread baking downstairs!) Anyway, I still have a fondness for waffles, although now they're the vegan variety. But I hardly ever have them because I'm so lazy. The sandwiches I made recently for supper reminded me of one of my favorite treats - minus the ice cream.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I don't usually eat sandwiches. I don't have anything against a good sandwich, but it's more satisfying to me to bring leftovers to work and heat them up. Now that I've accepted the microwave into my life, (at work, not at home!) it's become much easier to enjoy a nice hot lunch. It just feels more balanced and less bread-y. But there must be some part of my sub-conscious that's been feeling sandwich-deprived, because I've certainly had my fair share of them during the last month! Today I was thinking about how I've always wanted to grill a sandwich in the waffle iron, but it seemed like too much effort to haul it down from its high storage cabinet just to make a sandwich that could be made in the toaster oven or in a pan. Today I not only made that waffled sandwich, I made the bread, too.

There was a jar of tomato juice hidden in the back of the refrigerator (my husband does the shopping so I'm never quite sure what I'll find lurking in the fridge) and a bag of basil that I got in yesterday's CSA box so I made tomato-basil bread with crushed red pepper. The color was gorgeous and the taste and texture were good, but not quite as basil-y or tomato-y as I'd hoped. There was slight heat from the pepper flakes but nothing alarming. It was made in a bread machine.


Tomato basil bread (1-1/2 pound loaf)

• 1/2 cup water
• 5/8 cup tomato juice (low sodium if you can get it)
• 2 cups white whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill is a good source)
• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons evaporated cane juice or agave syrup
• handful (3 0r 4) basil leaves, minced
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1-1/2 teaspoons instant active dry yeast

Put everything in the bread machine in the order given. Choose medium crust. Press start.



Now for the fun part. For the sandwiches, I used a piece of Follow Your Heart vegan mozzarella that was left over from making pizza last week. I've noticed that this cheese spoils really fast - I was surprised to find it still white and not pink - and I wanted to use it up. I layered it with tomato from the garden, heated up the waffle iron, sprayed both sides of the sandwich with olive oil, placed it between the grids and "closed" the waffle iron. "Closed" is in quotes because the waffler didn't really close with the sandwich stuck inside of it, but it cooked the sandwich to perfection. It looked really cool as you can see in the picture, and it was crispy and delicate at the same time. I wish I'd done this when my kids were small. I think kids would really enjoy sandwiches made this way. And although the cheese doesn't LOOK melted, it was. The sandwich was served with broccoli from our garden with raspberries from the CSA for dessert.

Sandwiches coming out of my ears

I've been going a little crazy with the sandwich thing. The truth is that I hardly ever even eat sandwiches. All of a sudden it's sandwiches for lunch, sandwiches for dinner. I made bread again and the machine worked fine, thank heavens, after my little cleaning blitz, so I made more sandwiches. I've been slicing veggies from our garden really thin and cooking them in the wok, putting them on the bread and adding a little hot sauce. I've been using eggplant, zucchini, tomato, jalapeño and homemade vegan sausage (not from the garden, obviously).
I lightly spray the wok with oil and spray again if needed. That's the dinner version. The lunch version has hummus, cucumber, tomato and avocado. I think I'm about ready for a good home-cooked meal!

Aaron's grilled tofu sandwich

When we ate at our son Aaron's apartment recently, to go with spinach salad and roasted green beans, he made grilled tofu sandwiches. He based his recipe on a sandwich he had at Baguette Box, a restaurant in Seattle, where he lives. These sandwiches were delicious and satisfying, although he said the original ones have deep fried tofu, making them even more tasty. However, grilling the tofu is healthier and less fattening so I'd go with this version. This recipe is a bit more involved — it requires some marinating, and making an easy sauce— but the result is really worth the modest effort.

Grilled tofu sandwich
•1-pound block of tofu, sliced into 1/2-inch slabs and marinated (recipe follows)
•thin-sliced red onion
•ripe avocado slices
•cilantro
•2 marinated carrots (recipe follows)
•vegan dressing (recipe follows)
•good quality bread or baguette, 8 slices

carrot marinade
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons brown rice vinegar

dressing
1/4 cup veganaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
salt and pepper

tofu marinade
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tamari
1/4 cup lime juice
2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
black pepper
hot sauce or chili peppers (opt.)
1 to 2 tablespoons sugar (opt.)
Marinate the tofu slices in a shallow pan for at least one hour (or overnight). After the tofu marinates, Aaron cooks it on a George Foreman grill that someone gave him. I don't have one of these so I'd probably just pan fry it in a small amount of olive oil, or maybe use the grill on my waffle iron.


Julienne (or grate if you're feeling lazy) two carrots and marinate them for an hour in the 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar.

Mix together the 1/4 cup veganaise with the 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 clove minced garlic, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne, salt and pepper to make the vegan dressing.


Assemble the sandwiches with grilled tofu, red onion, avocado, marinated carrots and cilantro. Spread the bread with dressing.

I was in the kitchen thinking about the great sandwiches Aaron made for us, and I started wishing there was some bread in the house so I could make a sandwich. I considered baking bread, but it was way too hot. Too, too hot. I was thinking I would stroll on down to Trader Joe's and have a look around, when out of the corner of my eye I spied the breadmaker, sitting unused on the counter. I hardly ever use the breadmaker to bake bread. It's mostly used to make pizza or bread dough that gets baked on a stone in the oven. But I COULD use it to bake bread. All the ingredients were in the cupboard. I was feeling a twinge of guilt. So I spent about five minutes adding ingredients to the machine and went off to accomplish something while it made bread. It made a very credible loaf of 100% white whole wheat that made an excellent sandwich of thin sliced sautéed eggplant, avocado, tomato, cucumber and homemade vegan sausage.

And here's the problem. After I soaked the pan, I discovered a lot of crusty gunk under the washer-thing on top of which the mixing blade sits. I don't think this washer-thing is even supposed to come off, but at this point in the bread machine's life, it does. After I scraped everything out with a toothpick and examined it, I couldn't tell if it was old dough gunk or old washer gunk. What if I scraped out the hardened remains of some dried out rubber part? The shaft seemed a bit wobbly. So off to the Internet I went to look up replacement parts just in case, and was disturbed to find that the the only replaceable part on my machine is the little dough paddle. Some models have a replaceable pan (not my model) but the cost with shipping is about $55, making such a purchase seem weird. That machine is BIG and will take a lot of space in a landfill if I've wrecked it. I hate this. I just hope the unsavory gunk I obsessively cleaned was old dough and not old, unreplaceable machine part. By the way, I have a Breadman Ultimate TR22ooC.

Can home-made pizza be fast?

Well, now, it depends on your definition of fast. In light of how long it can take to make pizza, yes, this recipe seems pretty fast to me. Is it easy? I think so but you'll have to decide for yourself. There are always short cuts for anything. No leftover pasta sauce in the fridge? You can always keep some emergency cans of pizza sauce on hand. Don't want to blend up a vegan cheese substitute? You can always buy some vegan mozzarella (Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet is a good choice) And there's the wonderful bread machine.

I once laughed my friend Deborah out of the house when she first rhapsodised about a new appliance that had just come out - the bread machine. Understand, she was talking to someone who had once taken a pottery class to create a huge bowl in which enough bread dough could be made to create four loaves of bread. I still have that bowl but it hasn't seen the light of day in years. I love my bread machine and without it there would probably be no pizza at our house. So, yes, making pizza dough seems quite do-able to me.

(I have a bread-making book called "The Bread Maker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart and it's an amazing book. Not fast. Not easy. It's an all-day (sometimes two-day) approach to making the best bread you've ever tasted. Sometimes I use the recipes and adapt them to my machine (just for making the dough, not for baking). I'm telling you this because if you really want to learn about bread-making, you might want to read this book.)

I'm about to simplify something that's not really so simple and that I've been trying to perfect for about 30 years. Anyway, I'm going to give the recipe I've been using pretty successfully and hope that it works for whoever tries it. Before scooping the flour into the measuring cup be sure to stir it up well to lighten it. And level off the cup with the flat side of a knife or chopstick.

into the breadmaker (I have a Breadman) put:
1 cup semolina flour (the yellow, sandy stuff meant for noodles and baking)
1 cup unbleached white flour (you can substitute 1 cup unbleached white for the semolina and just use 2 cups unbleached white)
2 cups white whole wheat flour
3 Tablespoons evaporated cane juice (like Sucanot)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking yeast (the kind called "instant yeast")
1 1/3 cups water
1-2 Tablespoons olive oil (optional)

Set the machine to make pizza dough. This will make enough for two large pizzas.
When the dough is ready, I put it into a bowl, spray with oil, cover with plasic wrap and a towel and let rise if I have time. If I'm in a hurry I just use it right away. Divide it in half and cover the part you're not using. Turn on the oven to 500˚. (I keep a baking stone in my oven at all times and bake my pizza on it. You should too.)

Sprinkle cornmeal on a large wooden board and roll out the dough very thin. I make it about 15" diameter to fit on my stone. I then put it onto a cornmeal-sprinkled wooden pizza paddle and cover it to rise while I cut the veggies. (The cornmeal sticks to the dough and prevents it from sticking to the stone. NEVER oil the stone. This is very important.) If you don't have a stone, put the dough on an oiled pizza pan to rise. I then thinly slice mushrooms, broccoli and onion. To use the Follow Your Heart cheese, slice about 1/2 of a bar as thinly as you can. It's easiest to slice across the end. This will be enough for two pies.

Spread sauce (you know, that leftover pasta sauce or stuff from a can or jar.) lightly on the dough. Use less than you think you'll need. Too much sauce makes a soggy pie. (Last night I made the best pizza ever and I was sure there wasn't enough sauce.) then arrange the cheese slices in a pattern around the pie. Next arrange the onion, then the mushrooms and broccoli. Sprinke the whole thing with oregano and spray with olive oil. Ease it onto the stone with the help of a spatula if necessary (or put the pan in the oven, near the bottom or on the bottom) and set the timer for 4 minutes. After 4 minutes, lower the temerature to 350˚ and set the timer for 10 more minutes. Check the pizza and if it's all brown and delicious looking take it out. Or bake a little longer if it's not quite done. Cut and EAT.

As soon as the first pizza goes in the oven, start assembling the second so it can go in when the first comes out. Good luck.