Bread & Pizza Recipes

Man Does Not Live By Bread & Pizza Alone and neither does The Reluctant Gourmet.
I don’t bake a lot of bread but I have friends who do and who have shared with me some of their best kept secrets and tips on making great bread at home.
We do have our own outdoor pizza oven so we make a lot of pizza especially for spring, summer and fall get togethers with our friends and our children’s friends.
Here are some my favorite bread and pizza recipes.
A First Attempt At Making Homemade Scones Our friend Betsy is a dance movement therapist and is working with my daughter Maddie and me to stretch our muscles and strengthen our cores. For Maddie, it is to help her with cerebral palsy, for me it is to help me deal with the years. Betsy’s husband […]
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How to Make the Pizza Dough By Hand Homemade pizza is one of my family’s favorite meals especially now that we are making them from scratch in our outdoor wood-burning oven. I thought making pizza was easy and it is but making it perfect is another thing. One of the most important steps to making […]
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A Friend’s Childhood Memory of Pizza This pizza recipe is adapted our friend Laura. She grew up in an Italian household so I am thrilled she sent me her grandmother’s recipe. Here is what she says, “This was my grandmother’s recipe and it was her mother’s, and probably older than that. What makes it […]
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Grandma Mary’s Traditional Irish Soda Bread If you are looking for a simple but delicious recipe for Irish Soda Bread, here is one from a good friend of mine when I lived in New York City. She says, “Here’s a great recipe for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s my grandmother Mary McLean Taylor’s recipe for […]
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Uncle Walt’s Pizza This recipe comes to me from my Uncle Walt who is no longer with us but his memory is. I’ve always known my Uncle for his ability to use his hands. He has that natural ability to build or fix everything and anything. When I heard from my dad that he had […]
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A Cowboy’s Point of View Some of you may remember Fred Engel’s COWBOY POINT OF VIEW for making Baked Potatoes and Pinto Beans Over the Fire. Well Fred has blessed us with another of his fine recipe poems, this time for Zucchini Bread. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. If you are interested in […]
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Fred Engel’s Zucchini Bread Recipe Without the Rhyme Many of you who have checked out Fred Engel’s Cowboy Point of view for making Zucchini Bread have asked for a simple recipe without the prose. Here it is. Enjoy. PrintZucchini Bread Prep Time: 15 minutesCook Time: 1 hour, 30 minutesTotal Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Yield: […]
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What To Do With Leftover Peaches? Every summer there seems to be a glut of delicious fresh local peaches but what to do with them all. How about some peach pecan bread? PrintPeach Pecan Bread Prep Time: 30 minutesCook Time: 45 minutesTotal Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes Yield: 1 loaf Ingredients1 1/2 cups, peeled and […]
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My daughter Maddie is learning how to cook and now learning how to blog about it too. She’s only 11 years old and doesn’t let her cerebral palsy get in her way. She’s an amazing kid and I hope she continues to experience the enjoyment of cooking and writing about it. – RG My Daughter’s […]
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How to Make Soft Pretzels at Home by Chef Jenni Field After reading Chef Vogel’s contemplation of the pretzel, I decided that I wanted to get into the act, too. I agree that most mass-produced hard pretzels are generally eaten in a fugue state while sipping a beer and watching a game above the bar. […]
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