The Dough Blade for the Food Processor: A Real Time-Saver

You may recognize these 2 kitchen tools. But if you don't -- they are food processor blades. The silver one to the left is the regular chop/puree blade. I use this tool most often in my food processor. The plastic tool to the right is the bread dough blade. It's for mixing and kneading yeast bread dough.

I find this blade to be most helpful when I need to get a loaf of bread made quickly, with minimal time spent on my part. I add the ingredients to my food processor bowl, then mix and knead with this blade. I allow the dough to rise right in the processor. Once it has risen one time, I pulse the processor to punch down the dough. Again, I let the dough rest in the processor while I grease my baking sheet.

The only actual hands-on work that I need to perform with this blade is forming the loaf. French bread is the easiest and fastest bread in my baking repertoire, so I mostly make this variety when I'm using my fp.

The other day, I saw that we were running low on sandwich and toast bread, a staple for those taking their lunches with them during the day. I also knew that I had to leave the house in just over 2 hours (and get ready to go in that same time frame). That's not enough time for me to make whole wheat sandwich bread. However, with my fp and the dough blade, I was able to make a loaf of French bread, from start to finish, in almost exactly 2 hours, using a slightly warm oven to raise the formed loaf before baking. I was also able to do many tasks around the house and get myself ready during that same time period.

I just wanted to share this bit of information about the dough blade because I've had friends say they never knew what that one tool was for. If you don't have a bread machine, but do have a fp with a blade like this, you can bake bread, with minimal hands-on time.

Nutty Rhubarb Coleslaw

I've been mulling over the idea of using rhubarb in non-desserts for the past couple of weeks. As I have so much tender, young rhubarb right now, I wanted to offset some of the other ingredients that I have to purchase by adding rhubarb in their place. The idea of coleslaw sounded promising, and I still have a couple of heads of cabbage from my purchase in mid-March. I tried it for my own lunch and was so impressed that I decided to make a large batch for our family dinner. This salad received a huge thumbs up from my family members.

A few things to keep in mind:

• use tender, crisp young stalks. Thin stalks seemed to work well for me. Older, thicker stalks may be too stringy to slice thin.
• I used the slicing blade on my food processor. A mandolin would also work very well. Basically, you want very thin slices. With my food processor, I had less of a stringy mess at the end if I didn't use the pusher that forces the stalks through the feed tube. I just allowed the stalks to "fall" through the tube, then picked out the larger chunks after slicing.
• Which brings me to this, you'll want to pick out any large pieces that didn't slice into nice thin bit. You can chop this and freeze to add to a batch of rhubarb sauce, or just compost it if you have plenty of rhubarb growing right now.

Ingredients:

thinly sliced spring rhubarb

chopped, toasted almonds

shredded cabbage

dressing:

mayonnaise

vinegar

salt

sugar

Now this is as close to a recipe as I have, for now. Use about 1 part rhubarb, 2/3 part chopped, toasted almonds, 5 to 6 parts shredded cabbage. Toss with a dressing of mayonnaise mixed with a dash of vinegar, pinch of salt, and one or two spoonfuls of granulated sugar. This should be a sweet, creamy dressing.

Rhubarb and ginger are natural a natural pair. A bit of diced, crystallized ginger would be a wonderful addition to this salad.