starting again

final prove

I haven't baked bread for six months - moved to a temporary house with a bad oven., then moved to new house with no oven. At last, new oven has arrived and a new starter is being put into production. These are my first loaves for six months, and the dough is not quite right I don't think ... Perhaps it's my baking mojo and perhaps I need a little time to get it back. I am looking forward to testing my new oven and baking some really delicious-looking breads from Bourke Street Bakery.

Whilst waiting for these loaves to prove, I've been re-reading Bourke Street Bakery and realised I have been repeatedly making mistakes in the past. I've used strong white bread flour instead of organic stoneground and I haven't been dissolving the yeast in some warm water before making the sourdough dough. After today, when I start the new starter, I'll use organic stoneground flour which is what they suggest and as they say in the book, if one is going to go to the trouble of making a sourdough starter, then getting hold of the best possible flour is logical.

Today's flour used is a strong white bread flour from Allinson and it's been fine in the past.

In the meantime, this bread will probably be quite OK. The recipe is for a semi-sourdough which uses yeast as well as starter and plain flour. And my old nemesis of not reading a recipe properly has come back to bite me again. Up until now, I have thrown the dry active yeast, salt and water in with the flour and starter. I really should have been putting the yeast in 10% of warmed water first.

But having proved and baked my semi-sourdough, it rose much more than I expected -

merger

It'll be interesting to see this cut tomorrow. But at least I now have proper bread. Honestly, I vow to NEVER have that commercial crap in my house again.

And the new oven is great. It is gas and I could not be happier. I have always had to cook with an electric oven, fan-forced or not, and I have to say that I never want to cook with electricity again.

From now on, things are looking up.

lunch today

quickest tastiest lunch

This is a great combo.

Sourdough toast, toasted rye bread, toasted bagel, Ryvita, Krispy roll, any crispbread etc.
half a mashed avocado
sliced tomato
finely sliced red onion or spring onion
torn basil leaves
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper


Looks boring, tastes fantastic.

Try it.

Hot cross buns for Good Friday.

Despite the date above, today is Holy Thursday (17 April ), the day of The Last Supper, and I made Hot Cross Buns for tomorrow.

When I was growing up we only ever had hot cross buns on Good Friday. This was in remembrance of Jesus who died on the cross that day, was buried and who then rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Good Friday was a sacred feast day, and the only day we ever ate hot cross buns in our house. They were ordered about a week before, then had to be bought from the bakery on Holy Thursday because not one shop was ever open on Good Friday. No one worked on that day.

Leonardo da Vinci's, The Last Supper. on Holy Thursday

Making your own Hot Cross Buns really is far, far better than anything you can buy at the supermarket or even your local bakery. You also have the added satisfaction of creating a sweet bread dough, watching it prove and smelling the heavenly aroma of yeast and cinnamon whilst they bake, only to devour them hot out of the oven with 'lashings of butter' as the great Clarissa Dickson Wright would say ... oh how can you resist??

To start off, you probably have most of the ingredients already in your cupboard anyway, with the addition of orange zest, one apple, some sultanas and mixed peel. I bought Italian lemon peel and it was a very good addition.

Basically, milk is warmed and then taken off the heat to cool. Strong white bread flour, yeast, and butter are mixed in then the warm milk added to form a stiff, sticky dough.

Then the sultanas, chopped apple (mine was a bit too big), and peel are incorporated into the dough to form a cohesive lump, which should then be kneaded for approximately five minutes.

After this, the dough should rest for one hour.

having proved for one hour, the dough rises

After an hour, divide the dough into twelve balls making sure the dough is smooth on top by gathering it underneath, thereby stretching the dough on top. Leave these on a baking tray lined with parchment paper for another hour of proving.

After another hour, the buns need to be finished off with a cross (to represent the cross of Christ), for Good Friday. Form a smooth paste of flour and some water and put into a piping bag with a fine nozzle tip for piping

flour and water paste, piped into crosses on the buns

Once piped, they're ready for the oven. 350 deg C for approx 30-35 mins.

buns ready for baking

Then out of the oven, brush with a glaze of warm sieved apricot jam.

straight from the oven

Now all we have to do is wait until tomorrow to eat them. But this is no problem because they freeze well and reheat beautifully.

See if you can give this a go for Good Friday. Absolutely worth the time, and a pleasure to make too.

Recipe from Paul Hollywood, The Great British Bake Off, 2013, BBC Food.

Ingredients:
300ml whole milk
500g strong white flour
75g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
50g butter
1 egg beaten
150g sultanas
80g mixed peel
1 apple, cored & chopped SMALL (not like mine, too big)
2 oranges, zest only
2 tsp ground cinnamon

For Cross:
75g plain flour + extra for dusting

For Glaze:
3 tbsp apricot jam, warmed and sieved.

sticky nougat

I adore nougat, never buy it for myself and after heavy hinting at Christmas and birthdays, I only ever get Callard & Bowser's nougat (because that's the one I love and it comes in lovely blue and white packaging) about once a year. But I digress.

To make my very own nougat I stuck to what flavours I like so I used toasted almonds and some dried cranberries. And I mistakingly departed from the recipe and put vanilla seeds into the sugar syrup mixture instead of using a whole vanilla pod which has to be fished out after the mixture boils. No matter, I loved the end taste result.


Here are the ingredients I used:

These are the stages:
1. toast whole almonds (not shown) in oven.

2. heat honey.

3. heat & boil sugar, vanilla pod, golden syrup, water.

4. add warm honey to boiled syrup mixture.
5. have egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar on high whisk and slowly pour hot syrup mixture onto whipping
    whites.
6. marvel at the volume of the mixture!

when done,
7. add warm almonds and cranberries.

8. spread mixture into tin.

9. cover with baking paper and flatten out.

10. cut before mixture goes cold.

but this is the best I could do. As you can see, the nougat had not set sufficiently to cut into clean squares and I put this down to the temperature and humidity of the kitchen ...

This is only a rental house and the heating/moisture in the house is awful. It is cold and damp.

So I will try the recipe again in my new house (yay!) and see if I can't make perfect nougat.

I absolutely loved this challenge and hope to try another flavour combo.

Thank you Rebecca of BakeNQuilt for hosting this challenge.

Blog-checking lines: The March 2014 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Rebecca of BakeNQuilt. She challenged us to learn to make classic nougat and to make it our own with our choice of flavors and add-ins.

Happy Valentine's day

If it's Valentine's Day, then it has to be red. And if it's red, it has to be Red Velvet Cake.

This rich and luscious cake was made for love, so what better excuse did I need?

The buttercream, the cocoa in the sponge, the utter indulgence of three layers of cake!

Need I say more?

Tibetan steamed dumplings

Tibetan steamed dumplings
Rick Stein's India, In search Of The Perfect Curry
Recipes From My Indian Odyssey

Rick Stein's cookbooks are good value, every time. His enthusiasm for the country he is in as well as the food he discovers and recreates in the books, makes them part-fascinating travelogue along with the added bonus of tempting recipes galore.

Lucky us. We may not be able to travel to India but we surely get a taste of Rick's travels there.




Tibetan dumplings, ready for steaming (I think these somehow look like little monks all huddled together).

These dumplings were delicious. Easy as pie to make (actually easier than pie), they are really wonderful with the Tibetan chilli dipping sauce, also quick to knock up.

The dough is perfectly straight-forward and takes no longer than three minutes to make. While it rests for ten minutes, lamb mince, onion and ginger are combined in a bowl and when the dough is cut into 16 pieces and rolled out, the lamb is placed into the half-circle middle and the dough edges are pinched together, rather like ravioli.





dough is rolled out, lamb mince placed inside and made into dumplings

The only thing needed to make them divine to eat (and it was the Tibetan monks with whom Rick ate these) was a quick and fiery Tibetan dipping sauce made using chillies, garlic, rice wine-vinegar and oil. You can see it on the right, above.

Unfortunately, these dumplings are rather like making pancakes ... make sure you don't tell anyone you're making them until you've finished cooking. Like making pancakes, you might find they get eaten as soon as you lift them out of the pan, which means you can't make them fast enough to sit down and enjoy them with everyone else!

Tibetan steamed dumplings
Rick Stein's India, In Search of the Perfect Curry, Recipes from my Indian Odyssey
Rick Stein, BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, Random House Group, 2013

Scones

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was to re-make or make-anew a recipe from one of the many previous challenges. I chose the scones from January 2012, never having made them for a Daring  challenge before.

A deceptively simple recipe, scones do not always readily come out as the light and fluffy versions that I remember my grandmothers and mother used to make. And each batch I've ever made seems to be a bit different.

Plain flour, baking powder, salt, cold butter and cold milk are mixed lightly together to meld into a dough. The least amount of mixing and handling with your hands, the better.

The dough is gently patted out flat so that the scone cutter can be used to make clean-edged scone shapes which helps them rise.

These are put onto a well greased baking sheet or parchment paper and cooked for 20 minutes or until golden.

hot out of the oven ...

The best part is breaking apart the warm, steaming scones and then covering the with lashings of cream and sweet strawberry jam - the simplest yet most elegant of accompaniments. 

And of course, a scone without a proper cup of tea is not a proper scone!

To be eaten smothered in jam and cream