In a large heavy bottomed pot (like a dutch oven), melt butter over medium-high heat.
Add onion, carrots and celery. Cook for 5 minutes, until vegetables being to wilt. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
Add flour and stir to combine. Cook for 1 minute. Add evaporated milk and chicken stock and quickly stir to combine.
Bring to a boil and add chicken, thyme, black pepper and salt. Let soup simmer, uncovered, while you make dumplings.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, pepper, salt and thyme. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the milk and butter into the center of it.
Using a wooden spoon (or rubber spatula), stir together until dough ball forms. If your dough seems too dry, you can add an extra tablespoon of milk.
Using a large** sized cookie scoop, scoop dough and drop directly into the simmering soup. Place them around the pot, not all in the same place.
Once all dumplings have been added, gently press them down so the soup runs over just the tops of them.
Place the lid on your pot and lower the heat a little to a low simmer (you don’t want the bottom of the soup to burn but also want the soup to still be simmering to cook the dumplings).
Cook for 15 minutes, gently stir the soup/dumplings and then cut one dumpling in half to make sure they are cooked through.
If the dumplings are cooked through, serve hot! If not, cook an additional 2-3 minutes and check again.
Prep Time 5 min Cook Time 15 min Total Time 20 min Servings 4 Calories 306 kcal
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 1/2 lbs flank steak, very thinly sliced across the grain
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, finely chopped
4 green onions, thinly sliced
4 cups broccoli florets, about 2 small crowns
2 tbsp arrowroot starch
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp coconut sugar
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Instructions
Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the beef and cook until well-browned, about 6-8 minutes. Once well-browned, remove from pan and set aside.
In the same pan, add garlic, shallot and green onions to the beef drippings. Cook one minute, stirring frequently. Add broccoli and cover for 5 minutes.
In a small mixing bowl, combine water and arrowroot starch and mix until no longer lumpy. Combine soy sauce, coconut sugar, ginger and red pepper flakes in a medium bowl. Add arrowroot starch mixture and stir to combine. Set aside.
Remove cover from pan and add sauce. Cook until sauce starts to thicken, about 3-5 minutes. Add beef and stir to combine, cooking an additional 2-3 minutes.
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt, to taste
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, measured by the scoop-and-sweep
Cornmeal, for dusting (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Make the dough
Warm the 3 cups water just a little so that it feels just slightly warmer than body temperature. That should put it at about 100°F (40°C).
In the large bowl of a standing mixer or a 6-quart container with a lid, mix the yeast, warm water, and salt. Don’t worry about getting the yeast to dissolve.
Add the flour to the yeast mixture all at once, then use a spoon or stand mixer to mix until the flour is completely incorporated and you have a blobby dough. (If you’re hand-mixing the dough and it becomes too difficult to incorporate all the flour with the spoon, just use very wet hands to press the mixture together.) Don’t knead the dough! It’s not necessary. You just want the dough to be uniformly wet and loose enough to conform to the shape of its container. All you need to do is be certain that there are no dry patches of flour.
Loosely cover the container and let the dough hang out at room temperature until it begins to rise and collapse or at least flatten a little on the top, about 2 hours. (Relax. It’s bread dough, not a newborn. You don’t need to monitor it constantly. And don’t worry about the dough being precisely double or triple its original volume as you would with a traditional bread recipe. Just walk away, go about your business, and come back in 2 hours. Seriously.)
Stash the dough in the fridge
After 2 hours, stash the container of dough in the fridge. That’s it. (If your container isn’t vented, you want to ensure the gases can escape by leaving the cover open a crack for the first couple days in the fridge; after that, you can seal it.)
You can use the dough anytime after the initial 2-hour rise, although the refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and easier to work with than dough at room temperature, so it’s best to refrigerate the dough overnight before handling it. Once refrigerated, the dough will seem to have shrunk back upon itself as though it will never rise again—that’s normal. Whatever you do, do not punch down this dough. You’re trying to retain as much gas in the dough as possible, and punching it down knocks gas out and results in denser loaves. Just be certain to use the dough at some point within 14 days.
Shape the dough into a loaf
When you want to bake a loaf of artisan bread, dust a pizza peel or a baking sheet turned upside down with cornmeal or line it with parchment paper.
Grab a hunk of the dough and use a serrated knife or scissors to cut off about a 1-pound piece of dough. Hold the dough in your hands and, if necessary, add just enough flour so the dough doesn’t stick to your hands. (What you’re trying to do is surround the surface of the dough with flour so that it can be handled. You’re not trying to incorporate more flour into the dough, so for the love of all things good, resist the temptation to get rid of all the dough’s inherent and lovely stickiness by working the flour into the dough.)
Gently stretch the surface of the dough, tucking the ends underneath the ball and rotating it a quarter turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off, and that’s okay, because as we just said, it’s not intended to be incorporated into the dough. The bottom of the ball of dough may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will flatten out and adhere during resting and baking. The rest of your round loaf should be smooth and cohesive, and the entire shaping process should take no more than 20 to 40 seconds—don’t work the dough any longer or your loaves may be dense.
Place the shaped ball of dough on the prepared pizza peel and let it rest for about 40minutes. It doesn’t need to be covered. (You may not see much rise during this period, but don’t fret. It will rise much more during baking.)
Bake that gorgeous-looking loaf
Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C) for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Preheat a baking stone (or an upside-down cast-iron skillet) on a middle rack for at least 20 to 30 minutes. Place an empty metal broiler tray on any rack that won’t interfere with the rising bread. (Do not use a glass pan as it could shatter.)
Dust the top of the raised loaf generously with flour and, using a serrated bread knife, slash a 1/2-inch-deep cross or a couple gashes or a tic-tac-toe pattern in the top. There’s no need to dust the flour off the loaf.
Place the far edge of the peel or the upside-down baking sheet in the oven on the baking stone a few inches beyond where you want the bread to land. Give the peel or baking sheet a couple quick back-and-forth jiggles and then abruptly pull it out from under the loaf. The loaf should land on the baking stone with very little drama.
Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup hot water into the broiler tray and immediately shut the oven door to trap the steam. Bake the bread for a total of 20 to 35 minutes, until the crust is richly browned and firm to the touch. Because the dough is so wet, there’s very little risk of it becoming dry despite how dark the crust may become.
Remove the bread from the oven and let the loaf cool completely, preferably on a wire rack for the best flavor, texture, and slicing. (Crazily enough, a perfectly baked loaf will audibly crackle, or “sing,” when initially exposed to room temperature.) The crust may initially soften but will firm when cooled.
