Spicy garlic bread

I had a little bread baking to do, and was after something a little spicy or punchy. I found this spicy garlic bread which is baked in a Dutch oven (i.e., a big pot with a lid, but make sure it doesn’t have a plastic handle!!) Never having done bread in a Dutch oven before, this seemed like a perfect one to try. Although I didn’t have any garlic, but garlic granules from the cupboard would be just fine.

1 cup warm water
1 tsap active dry yeast
pinch of sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes, plus additional for sprinkling
3 cloves garlic, minced 
4 cups strong white bread flour
2 tsp salt
5tbsp olive oil, divided
course sea salt for sprinkling

Combine warm water, yeast and a pinch of sugar in a medium measuring glass. Let sit for 5-10 minutes.
In a small saucepan, melt butter. Reduce heat to lowest setting, add herbs, seasonings and garlic. Stir and let sit for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat. Set aside.

Add flour to a bowl. Add salt. Pour in yeast and butter mixtures. Gently knead for approximately 10 minutes until smooth. The dough should not be sticky.

Form into a smooth ball. Add to a large greased bowl. Cover and let sit in a warm location until doubled in size or roughly 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 210 degrees.
Coat the bottom of a Dutch oven with 2 tbsp olive oil. Knead dough for 1-2 minutes, then add to your pot. Make 2 large slices in the top of your dough, forming an X. Drizzle with 3 tbsp olive oil, sprinkle with course sea salt and additional red pepper flakes.

Cover and bake for 30 minutes. 

Reduce heat to 180 degrees. Uncover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Remove from oven. Let sit for 5-10 minutes before carefully transferring loaf to a cooling rack. Let sit for additional 10-15 minutes before slicing.

It smells amazing. It looks amazing. The texture is a little crumbly, the light kneading doesn’t develop a chewy texture, but the flavour is great. Not very garlicky though, probably could have done with fresh….

 

Brown sugar and oat rolls

It was fondue time again this week, and I decided to find a nice brown bread recipe to dunk in the cheese as well as my favourite ciabatta. I fancied the idea of oats too, and came across this one from breadworld.com which is also sweet and enriched. Perfect.
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2-1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour, divided
3/4 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
15g / 3 teaspoons dried yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs

TOPPING
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons old fashioned oats, optional

Combine whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, oats, brown sugar, undissolved yeast and salt in a large mixer bowl. Heat milk and butter until very warm (120° to 130°F). Add to flour mixture. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Add eggs and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour; beat 2 minutes at high speed. Stir in enough remaining all-purpose flour to make a soft dough. Knead on lightly floured surface (or in mixer using dough hook) until smooth and elastic, about 5 to 7 minutes. Cover; let rest 10 minutes.

Divide dough into 32 pieces. Form into smooth balls. Place on large greased baking sheet or greased baking pan. Brush tops with melted butter; sprinkle with oats if desired. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Bake in preheated 350°F (180°C) oven for 15 to 25 minutes, until golden brown. (If baking rolls on baking sheet with sides not touching, bake 15 to 20 minutes; if baking in pan with sides touching, bake 20 to 25 minutes.)

TIP: Bake rolls ahead of time and freeze. To serve, thaw and rewarm in 250°F oven for 10 to 15 minutes. These rolls also make great mini sandwiches.

Ok so if like me you use dried active yeast, activate this first in the milk. Heat the milk to lukewarm, any warmer and it will kill the yeast, but the warmth will help get it going which is useful as the fats in milk restrict the activation. Then just melt the butter so that you can add it with the wet ingredients.

The recipe says to use all purpose white flour, but I always use strong for bread making so go for that if you have it. Measure out the flour a cupful at a time as per the directions otherwise you’ll lose track of how much you need, ending with 1-1 1\2 cups to add at the end. The size of your eggs will mean you may need more or less flour, I didn’t need that final half cup as it was a beautiful smooth dough by that point and I didn’t want it too heavy.

Dividing into 32 does make quite small rolls, don’t be afraid to make them bigger. Enriched doughs do take a long time to rise because the fats get in the way of the yeast working, so personally I think one hour to double in size is rather optimistic. After about four hours I still wouldn’t say they’d doubled,  but they had risen a little.

Verdict:

Yummy! Sweet, quite dense, goes beautifully with cheese (although doesn’t everything?) When making sandwiches with the leftovers the next day though they did rather remind me of miniature appetisers. I’d definitely make them bigger next time.

 

 

Boller

‘Hygge’ on a plate. Boller are sweet Norwegian spiced currant buns. They are the taste of my childhood and until recently it must have been over a decade since I last had one. The taste brought it all back, and I got the recipe from my mum’s old cookbook, tweaked for easy blend yeast and modern ovens and mixers.

500g plain flour
15g easy blend dried yeast
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
90g sugar
100g butter or margarine
350ml milk
45g currants or raisins

Mix together the flour, yeast, cardamom and sugar in a bowl. Melt the butter and add to the mixture with the milk. Mix to form a soft dough. Mix using dough hooks on a mixer until smooth, and add the currants.

Leave to rise.

Using a spoon scoop the mixture onto a greased baking tray and shape into small round buns. Leave to rise again.

Bake at 200C for 10-15 minutes until lightly golden.

Best eaten fresh.

I gave these minimal rise as I was in a rush, so I didn’t get as many buns out of the mixture as I should have, although my mum’s cookbook suggested 36-40 which does seem a little ambitious. I got 16. The reference to 36-40 did also cause me some confusion as I thought that was the baking time. I reread the instructions after 20 minutes and dashed to grab them out of the oven. They were browner and crustier than they should have been but not burnt. They were a little heavier than they should have been due to the lack of rise, but the taste, they just taste of Norway. Think I need to make more tomorrow.

Wholemeal chocolate chip hot cross buns

It’s Easter time again, so time for hot cross buns! I got this recipe from the lovely Bread Angels so thought it was worth a go!

150 g whole wheat flour
300 g plain white wheat flour
2 g instant/4.5 g active dry/9 g fresh yeast
50 g sugar
280 g milk that you have heated up to boiling point and allowed to cool completely
1 egg
9 g salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ginger
1/2 teaspoon clove
1/2 all spice
50 g butter
250 g chocolate chips

For the crossing mix:

50 g white flour
pinch of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of vegetable oil of your choice
50 g cold water

Measure the flours in a big mixing bowl make a well. Sprinkle in the yeast and the sugar. Pour over the milk. Flick a thin layer of flour over the milk to close the well and leave it for one hour.

After an hour, add the egg, salt, and spices and gather the dough together into a ball. Turn it out on the counter and knead well for 10 minutes. Add the butter and continue to knead for 10 minutes. The mixture will be sticky but don’t let that stop you and please don’t add more flour.

Pop it back in the bowl, cover it with a tea towel and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Squish in the chocolate chips to make sure they are distrubuted evenly. Don’t worry about the dough, it will recover. Pop the dough back into the bowl, cover it and let it rest for 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.

Pull the dough out gently on to a non floury surface. The dough is quite soft and sticky and that is normal. You need a non floury surface because you need “stick” in order to shape the buns firmly so they keep their shape. Divide the dough into blobs about 75 grams in weight.

Place these buns about 5 cm apart on a baking tray that is lined with non stick baking parchment. Flour the tops lightly, cover them with a tea towel and let them rise for 45 minutes or so.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

While they are rising, make the crossing mixture by whisking all the ingredients together in a little bowl. When the buns have doubled in size, scrape the crossing mixture into a piping bag or into a little plastic bag and cut a tiny hole in one corner.

Squeeze the piping or plastic bag gently to get all the mixture gathered near the hole and then carefully pipe crosses on each bun.

Pop them in the oven and bake them for 18-20 minutes. In an ideal world this results in a brown bun and a white cross. Take them out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack that is sitting on top of some greaseproof paper. Brush the buns immediately with liquid honey, golden syrup or the glaze of your choice.

I started making these quite late in the day so rushed some elements, didn’t knead for 20 minutes as suggested, but just long enough to get the stretchy and smooth dough. This dough is very sticky, I used my dough scraper, but a food mixer and dough hook would probably be very useful here!

The recipe asks for 9g of salt which I thought seemed quite a lot, so I put in just one teaspoon. Also didn’t have any cloves or all spice so I just skipped those.

I got these out of the oven just before bed, didn’t notice the bit about adding a glaze, wrapped them in a tea towel to cool, and left them until morning. I tried one for breakfast but didn’t have time to do it properly so just ate it as it was. Nice, slightly healthy tasting with the wholemeal flour, but good texture and nice big chunks of chocolate. The hubby did it properly for his breakfast though; toasted, buttered, and he says they’re a little bit awesome. So now you know. Go bake!

Brioche – quick method

I had a mission today: to make the bread pudding recipe I had picked up in waitrose last week. Only problem was, it called specifically for brioche. I suppose I could have bought some, but that isn’t really my style! So, a quick brioche recipe was needed, as typically a brioche needs a long, slow rise, which if I wanted pudding today was not going to work. I found this one, and after an initial panic about no water being added with which I could dissolve my yeast, I decided to adapt and go with it….

250g plain flour
100g butter
2 rounded tbsp caster sugar
7g sachet fast-action yeast (plus 3 tbsp water if using dried active yeast)
3 eggs
beaten egg yolk, to glaze
2-3 sugar cubes, lightly crushed

Activate the yeast if using dried active in the water with a teaspoon of the sugar.

Tip the flour into a food processor fitted with a plastic kneading blade and add the butter. Process until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the caster sugar, a good pinch of salt and the yeast.

Add the eggs and mix to a soft dough, then knead in the machine for 2 mins. Butter a brioche mould or 2 pt loaf tin. Sprinkle a layer of flour onto a work surface and tip the dough onto it. With floured hands, knead very briefly to form a ball, then drop the dough into the tin, smooth side up. Cover with cling film and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 2 hrs in a warm place.

Heat oven to 200C. Brush the top of the brioche with egg yolk, then sprinkle over crushed sugar and bake for 20-25 mins, until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Tip out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

No food processor? Simply rub the butter into the flour by hand, stir in the sugar, salt and yeast, then add the eggs and mix to a soft dough. Cover and chill for 20 mins (this makes it easier to handle), then knead on a floured surface for 5 mins. Drop into the tin and carry on as recipe.

I have a food processor, but prefer to work my bread by hand. If adding the water to the yeast this really is a sticky mixture so add a good couple of handfuls of extra flour to the work surface, roll up your sleeves and grab a dough scraper or spatula!

As I was just intending for this to go straight into a pudding I didn’t bother with the egg glaze or crushed sugar on top.

If you want to make sure it’s a quick brioche it will benefit from a nice warm location to get things going because all that butter slows the rise down. I have a nice deep radiator so I put the tin on top of that and left it until it was just ove doubled in size and reaching the top of the sides of the tin.

If it comes out the oven very browned, don’t worry! It’s just dark because of all the lovely butter inside.

Oooh, it did look lovely! Right, on to the pudding. Slice and butter about 3/4 of the loaf, depending on how big a pudding you want! Cut the slices into triangles and arrange about half of them on the base of a large baking dish. Slice up a banana and scatter over. Add another layer of bread and another layer of banana. Lightly mix 3 eggs with 80g of Demerara sugar, and then add a tin of coconut milk and 200ml of whole milk. Mix well and then pour over the pudding. Leave to soak for 10 mins before sprinkling over two tablespoons of Demerara sugar and enough desiccated coconut to cover (I didn’t have any coconut so missed this out) and place the whole dish into a large roasting tin half filled with boiling water. Bake at 180c for 40-45 mins until golden brown and set.

Verdict

I had a taste of the brioche on its own and it was so gorgeously fluffy and flavoursome. In the pudding it was just the right balance of richness and added a delicious sweet flavour I find sometimes lacking in bread pudding. I could have done with more banana, and I reckon the coconut on top would have been the perfect finishing touch. Next time I’ll make sure I have some!

Ciabatta – quick recipe

I promised to have a lovely friend over this weekend for ciabatta and cheese, ciabatta being one of her favourite breads. So I pulled out the recipe I’ve done for this blog before, only to realise it needed a starter to sit overnight for 12 hours. I had five hours. Quick google search and Paul Hollywood’s recipe popped up, no starter, couple of hours prep, perfect.

500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
10g salt
10g instant yeast
40ml olive oil
400 ml tepid water
Fine semolina for dusting (optional)

Lightly oil a 2-3 litre square plastic container. (It’s important to use a square tub as it helps shape the dough).

Put the flour, salt and yeast into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook (don’t put the salt directly on top of the yeast). Add the olive oil and three-quarters of the water and begin mixing on a slow speed. As the dough starts to come together, slowly add the remaining water. Then mix for a further 5-8 minutes on a medium speed until the dough is smooth and stretchy.

Tip the dough into the prepared tub, cover with a tea towel and leave until at least doubled, even trebled in size – 1-2 hours or longer.

Heat your oven to 220°C and line 2 baking trays with baking parchment or silicone paper.

Dust your work surface heavily with flour – add some semolina too, if you have some. Carefully tip out the dough (it will be very wet) onto the work surface, trying to retain a rough square shape. Rather than knocking it back, handle it gently so you can keep as much air in the dough as possible. Coat the top of the dough with more flour and/or semolina. Cut the dough in half lengthways and divide each half lengthways into 2 strips. You should now have 4 pieces of dough. Stretch each piece of dough lengthways a little and place on prepared baking trays.

Leave the ciabatta dough to rest for a further 10 minutes, then bake for 25 minutes, or until the loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the base. Cool on a wire rack.

I made a double portion so doubled up all the quantities, except the yeast which I did about 15g of rather than 20g. Yeast grows so you don’t need to increase it as much as the rest of the ingredients, if you do it can taste a bit too yeasty.

I also always use the dried active yeast so this had to be activated in the water first.

Couldn’t be bothered with the whole oiled square tub thing. Didn’t have a square tub, and I can never be bothered to oil it. You do risk knocking the air out, when you remove from the bowl, but I used my dough scraper to divide the dough and scoop it out onto the floured surface. It doesn’t need to be a perfect shape so just taking your blob of dough and stretching it into the slipper shape requires minimal handling really and the air bubbles stayed put.

My oven is a bit rubbish, these needed about 5 mins more. Just keep an eye on them, you want them nice and golden but the crust will still be nice and soft.

Verdict:

I whipped up a fondue to dunk this in as well as some nice hard cheese. The crust was a good and soft, and easy to tear and dunk in the cheese. It seemed to be a great success among the lovely friends! It lacks the slight tang you get with the ciabatta made using a starter, but I have no complaints about this quick and easy version!

After all that cheese, bring on the crazy dreams!

Chocolate Babka

This gallery contains 2 photos.

I hadn’t planned anything to bake today, then as I sat in Waitrose with my cup of tea, flicking through the waitrose kitchen magazine, and this jumped out at me. Chocolate babka. It looked shiny, golden, chocolatey, layered and beautiful. … Continue reading →

New Zealand Kiwi Bread

I always say it’s not that difficult to find time to make a bit of homemade bread. And it’s true, I always make sure I have some nice wholemeal stocked up in the freezer. Finding time to make different and special breads in addition though can be harder, and something I have struggled with recently. So, after a period of just normal bread, I am easing myself back in to the fancy breads gently with this kiwi bread recipe (chosen to use up all the ripe kiwis sitting in my fruit bowl). It’s a quickbread, a cake really, no yeast, and perfect to go with a cup of tea.

6-7 medium ripe kiwi
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 cup powdered sugar
6-8 teaspoons lemon juice

Cut the kiwis in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Chop up enough to make 1 1/2 cups. Place chopped fruit in a pan, add sugar and lemon zest. Bring to a boil, stirring until fruit loses some of its colour. Allow to cool.

Beat eggs and oil well. Blend together flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the baking soda to cooked kiwi mixture. Stir until bubbles form. Add this to the egg mixture and then add flour mixture to it. Stir until dry ingredients are moistened.

Spoon mixture into a well greased loaf pan. Bake at 180 degrees about 55 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes and turn out onto wire rack.

Mix icing sugar and lemon juice, and spoon over the loaf.

I used seven kiwis for this, but don’t worry about being exact on this part. Riper kiwis are better as they will be sweeter.

If you do what I did and misread the recipe and add the flour to the egg mixture before the kiwi mixture, don’t panic, it doesn’t really make a difference.

The kiwis loose a lot of their tartness when they’re cooked, so the flavour isn’t too strong either, so if you’re not a huge fan of kiwis then don’t let this recipe put you off! Basically what you have is a lovely, moist cake with a citrus tang from the icing. And apart from scooping out all the kiwis, it’s really quick to prepare. Recommended any time you’ve gone overboard with kiwis!

Tear and share – parsley and cheese

I’ve done very little baking recently what with holidays, recovering from holidays and catching up with everything that didn’t get done while on holiday. I’m still a little behind on my To Do list so I looked for something quick and simple to go with dinner. I found a recipe for a single proving tear and share bread which I adapted as follows to what I had in the cupboard.

Parsley and cheese tear and share bread

1 1/2 teaspoons dried active yeast
400ml lukewarm water
600g strong plain white flour
1 tsp caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp garlic granules
75g strong cheese, cut into small cubes

Activate the yeast in the water with the sugar.
Put the flour, salt, parsley and garlic granules in to a bowl. Add the liquid and bring together to form a dough.
Knead for 5 to 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
Divide into 8 pieces and knead the cheese in to each piece.
Shape into a ball and place on a greased baking tray, side by side.
Leave to prove for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Bake the bread for 30-35 minutes until golden brown.
Enjoy while still warm.

This makes a soft and spongy dough which smooths out relatively quickly. The 8 pieces are all rather large, especially once risen, so possible could be half the size for nice bite size pieces.

Although texture wise these were perfect. Unfortunately they were considerably lacking in flavour. The parsley does not come through at all (the original recipe said fresh parsley which would probably be more successful) and the garlic was very faint too (again, the original recipe said to slice fresh garlic). It could also have done with another teaspoon of salt. I don’t think the cheese was ideal either, I used some Emmental that needed eating. It didn’t give the nice melted cheese texture and is probably too mild to add much flavour. Needs work. They won’t keep well because of no fat being added, but on the plus side because they’re not overly herby or cheesey they’ll probably work ok as sandwich bread.

Millet loaf

A work colleague said to me the other week, “Have you tried making anything with millet flour?” I had not, so I promised to look in to it. First off I searched for a nice simple recipe, which was actually quite hard to come by. Millet is gluten free which makes it an ideal ingredient in gluten free baking. Usually though, as a replacement for wheat flour you have to use a whole host of other unusual ingredients, and not wanting to fill my cupboards with arrowroot starch, tapioca flour and quinoa which I would be likely to struggle to use up (xantham gum however is a must for gluten free baking, helps get rid of the powdery, chalky texture), I found one with the least unusual ingredients, made a substitution or two, and went shopping. Millet flour turned out to be unusually difficult to find. I couldn’t find it in my regular supermarket, nor could I find it in a Chinese supermarket or two different health food shops. The second health food shop recommended finding an Indian supermarket which normally stock it under the name of Bajra flour. And what do you know, it did. Quite reasonably priced too, £1.79 for 1kg.

1 1/3 cups rice flour
1/2 cup oat flour (you can put regular oats in a food processor to make oat flour)
3/4 cup millet flour
1/2 cup soya flour
1/3 cup cornflour
1/4 cup flax seed (aka linseed), plus extra for sprinkling on top
1 Tablespoon xanthan gum
3 eggs
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon dried active yeast
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon treacle
3 Tablespoons soft brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup warm water, plus an extra 1/4 cup.

Add the yeast and granulated sugar to the warm water and leave until frothy.

Put the dry ingredients, the flours (it’s a good idea to sieve these), flax seed, xanthan gum, brown sugar and salt, in to a bowl and mix. Put the eggs, melted butter, vinegar and treacle in to another bowl and mix. Pour the egg mixture into the flour along with the yeast mixture. Stir to combine, and add enough of the water to make a thick batter like mixture.

Using the dough hooks on a food blender, mix for about 5 minutes until smooth.

Pour into a greased loaf tin and leave to prove for about an hour and a half.

Place in a preheated oven at 180 C for 40 minutes. Remove from the tin and cool on a wire wrack.

As I said, I made a couple of substitutions for ingredients so I wasn’t sure what effect this would have on the mixture as some flours absorb more water than other. The dough was probably more doughy than batter like so I could have added more water, but I left it as written for this first attempt.

As this is gluten free, there is no need to knead, mixing with the dough hooks is purely to get a smooth dough and iron out any lumps, but if you have sieved your flour it should be pretty smooth already.

When Mr WeekendBread tasted it, he immediately said he wasn’t keen. Flavour wise good, but texture wise a bit crumbly. I said, for a gluten free loaf I thought the texture was pretty good, but he hadn’t realised that’s what it was, so gave it another taste. Considering no wheat flour, really good he says. I think the flavour of the treacle is a little strong, I would possible miss it out and add another tablespoon of sugar instead as the sweetness is quite nice. The flax seeds add a bit of texture (and are good for fibre) but no flavour. I’m not sure what I’m looking for with the millet flour so I couldn’t pick out a specific flavour from the grains, but combined they actually seemed to make for a very pleasant, very bread like taste. The texture was soft, light and a little crumbly, actually not dissimilar to a fruit cake, but a vast improvement on any other gluten free things I’ve tried (definitely thanks to the xanthan gum). I’m not sure I’d choose it over regular bread, but if you need a wheat free option then I’d definitely go for this one.