Saturday Night Chicken

I've been wanting to make a roast chicken for a while. I pre-salted Zuni style, you can read the Zuni Roast chicken recipe here. My Mom has made this roast chicken many times and is the most requested birthday meal by my brothers and me. I salted it the day before I made it, as well as stuffing thyme and sage under the skin. The salting makes the chicken very moist. I think it works the same way as brining a turkey. The herbs under the skin make the breast meat very flavourful.

After consultation with my Mom, I decided to cook it at 375, instead of 450. She says the chicken smokes a lot if you cook it at 450 and the oven is a mess afterwards. She also thought my whole apt would smell like chicken.
I didn't have a roasting pan. But I was very clever and make a rack out the carrots - okay, I saw it on tv. It took about 1.5 hours to cook. Off to the side are some simple roast potatoes with thyme.

Delicious - and Easy - Mushroon Sauce

This is almost too easy to post. But it was so delicious. I served it as sauce to go with some simple roasted chicken breasts and some egg noodles.

Mushroom Sauce

1 tbsp vegetable oil (I used a canola-olive oil blend)
1.5 cups of sliced mushrooms
2 tbsp flour
1/2 chicken stock
1 tsp thyme
salt and pepper

1. Fry mushrooms in oil until they get start releasing moisture.
2. Add flour and cook for another 2 mins.
3. Add chicken stock and thyme and reduce. (Basically, boil it a bit until it doesn't seem to soupy.) Taste sauce and add salt and pepper as you like.

I found that since the chicken stock is pretty salty already and I reduced it I had to add hardly any salt.

More bread

I mixed things up with the no-knead bread this weekend. I used 2 cups all purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat. I found I had to use less water - about 1 1/4 cups - and that my boule was also smaller.

My technique has been to mix the dough with my hands and add the first cup of water all at once. I then add the remaining 1/2 cup of water gradually, until I get the consistency from the video. This is how I figured out how much water to use for the whole wheat loaf.

And, just because I think this one turned out super pretty: