Simple Pot Roast & Scottish Toasting Bread

Simple Pot Roast right out of the oven

Today I made Simple Pot Roast in my new Dutch oven.  It turned out very well.  The beef was very tender and broke apart  easily.  The recipe did not call for potatoes, but since my family prefers lots of carrots and potatoes in a pot roast I added a few quartered potatoes to the Dutch oven for the last hour of cooking.  The recipe also only called for 1 sprig of thyme, I increased that to about 2 1/2 sprigs and removed the leaves from the stem.  The cookbook also suggested an optional technique (which I wish I would've paid more attention to sooner) to tie the roast with twine so it wouldn't fall apart during the cooking process.  When the beef was finished cooking it was very tender and nearly fell apart when removing it from the Dutch oven.  It's no big deal, but will definitely remember the twine for the next time.

Reducing sauce in Dutch oven after roast and veggies came out

In addition to the Simple Pot Roast I decided to make a loaf of bread.  This bread is not out of the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, but a prepared mix that I had from King Arthur's Flour Bakery.  The bread was called Scottish Toasting Bread and it was delicious with it's large chucks of toasted oats in it.  The bread complimented the roast very well.  Normally I make bread in my bread machine, however the last time I made a prepared mix in the bread machine it did not rise probably.  So this time I made it by hand.  Fortunately, this particular bread did not require kneading only mixing (which I did in my mixer), rising, and baking.  The bread was excellent.  My husband and son practically ate the entire loaf.

Scottish Toasting Bread

On the menu for tomorrow is:

Crunchy Baked Pork Chops
Roasted Green beans