On Bank Holiday we had a bit of an easy day and decided to lots of cooking and baking. We decided to have some friends over as well to have pizza from the earth oven.
I set our Middlest to lighting the fire and getting it going. She was very proud of it, only asking me to help her push it back into the main part of the oven. she maintained it all afternoon as well, stoking it often.
I was making some bread the other day when I noticed that I had half a jar of pest left over in the fridge. It got me thinking about what I could make with it.
In my mind I had an idea of a kind of savoury Chelsea bun.
so with my apprentice baker we pulled the dough out into a flat rectangle and then spread the pesto on it, we then scattered pumpkin seeds and broke up a ball of mozzarella over the whole surface.
Then, just like you would with a Chelsea bun, we rolled it up and cut it into 12 equal segments, we laid these out on some baking parchment and i grated a bit of cheddar cheese on top.
I baked them at around 180 degrees for 20 minutes, until they were cooked through.
A really easy bread to make that tastes great.
I also love it because once it's made it's a great one to keep in the freezer, then when my wife is off to work she can takes a couple of these for her lunch, there's no need to make sandwiches.
What do you think?
Do you make up things that are easy for a packed lunch?
This makes 48 buns so adjust for how many you want!
Thanks to Carl for this recipe.
It's made in two stages:
Stage one - Flying sponge
Water - 750g
Yeast - 38g
Flour - 500g
Mix this first bit up about an hour before you want to get started, this gets the yeast working. Leave it covered somewhere warm.
Stage two - Main Dough
Flour - 2125g
Salt - 50g
Sugar - 338g
Milk - 375g
Egg - 250g
Water - 125g
Stage Three -
Butter - 375g (diced up)
Add all the dry ingredients and mix together in a large bowl (very large bowl if you're doing the whole recipe above), then add in the flying sponge and the other wet ingredients and mix until it starts to pull together but bit form a dough.
At this stage add in the butter then kneed until a clear dough is formed (it can take some work if you're doing the whole lot!)
.
Then leave it to rest for 45 minutes.
After the rest chop the dough into 90g (ish) bits and roll into round balls. Lay them out on a baking tray leaving a good space between them.
weigh out the dough into 90g bits before rolling
If you're planning on freezing some dough then this is the point where I popped them into the freezer on a tray, then once frozen I put them into freezer bags and sealed for another day.
Into the freezer
The use an egg wash to cover the dough and sprinkle sesame seeds on top, covert the dough (but not so it's touching it) and leave to double in size (about an hour or so).
Ready for the next prooving then into the oven!
Then pop into a pre-heated oven at 220 degrees C for 12 - 15 minutes until cooked through - be careful though as I find an egg glaze catches easily. Cool on a wire rack.
Finished buns! Worth the effort!
Then shove in your favourite beef burger dripping with cheese and bacon, giant grilled mushroom stuffed with feta cheese, fried halloumi with courgette, minted lamb burger or anything else that you fancy, make sure it's big enough that you struggle to get your jaws around it and fill your face when no one is watching!
My daughter was so pleased with her packed lunch today and so were her teachers at nursery, they both asked for a piggy roll as well!
I got shown how to make this shaped bread on the bread course and I knew straight away that my daughters would love it (the boy is still too young but will happily shove it in his face). They didn't all turn out perfect, some were painfully disfigured uttering the words "eat me..." as they came out the oven but the rest look like a pig so I'll take that as a win!
What other shaped rolls could I make for my children (and me!).
Do you mess around with the shape you make your bread?
On Thursday we were confined to the house really. The weather was rubbish and my eldest was poorly.
So I decided to keep my middle one entertained we'd make some rolls. After a trip to an amazing burger joint a few weeks ago I'd got a hankering for some brioche buns to make some epic burgers and I'd been given a recipe I wanted to try.
I did make one fairly large mistake at the beginning. I didn't pay attention to the amount I was making. I made the flying sponge (the bit that gets the yeast working early on) and thought, wow that's quite a bit to make.
Turns out when I started to look at the other ingredients I was looking at bakery quantities. Turns out I made enough for 4 dozen rolls!
Never mind.
My biggest problem was not having a mixing bowl big enough! In the end we used my big preserving pan. You can see in the video above how near to the top that was. It makes me laugh when parents set out "messy activities" for their kids, just make them work for their food, they'll get messy in the process!
So after an hour we added the flying sponge to all the other ingredients and luckily for me I had a really good little helper who was keen to mix the mixture and then knead the dough.
I gave her about 1/5 of the dough and she kneaded right through to where it needed to be, I didn't help her at all but you could tell she'd done it enough because the dough started to look smooth and just felt right.
I was impressed with her because she's only three and she stuck at it for well over half an hour and didn't moan once .
I split the dough into two big bits and worked it at the same time. Sometimes I'd slap it down on her hands and she's laugh her head off!
I rolled these out and set them on baking trays. Most went into the freezer like this and were then put into freezer bags to be enjoyed at a BBQ in the near future (hopefully!).
I kept eight back for tea, covered them with an egg glaze and sesame seeds before leaving them to prove and cooking them.
They looked amazing when cooked!
So we couldn't have homemade buns with out homemade burgers so we got some beef I minced last year out of the freezer and made up 1/4 lb patties with a burger mould I've got. My little girls didn't mind this at all and was straight in there making them all for us! Just beef in the patties and seasoned before I cooked them in a hot pan.
I cooked them medium so they were still juicy and I have to blow my own trumpet and say they were amazing. I'm not normally a fan of something sweet with savoury but these buns are only ever so slightly sweet and really work with the meat.
Can't wait to have a BBQ now - we've got a few rolls to get through, only another 40 in the freezer - good job we liked them (I also made 8 other rolls from another batch of dough that day so 56 made in total!)
Anyone else make burger buns like these?
Anyone ever started a recipe and realised that the quantities were huge and made far too many?
At Christmas I was completely spoilt by my brother and his wife as they paid for me to go on a bread making workshop.
They know I love making bread, but it was after I came home from the two hour bread demonstration by Peter Cook a few months ago and I was really impressed by what he did that they decided to get it for me.
I was glad they did!
The selection of bread we came home with
From left to right, clockwise, rye loaf topped with sesame seeds, half a ledbury loaf, basic white loaf, local ale and walnut loaf, a local ale and walnut roll, stoneground wholemeal loaf, soda bread and a few slices of ciabatta
The course ran from 10 until about 4.30, it was really well structured and although Peter himself didn't run it Carl, the baker who took the course, really knew his stuff with over 40 years in the trade. He was also assisted by Ruth who was also very knowledgeable on the subject and she also kept everything running smoothly and provided us with drinks and snacks throughout the day.
There was six of us on the course and it seemed a good number, we could (and did) ask questions at any time. during the day we made five different types of bread, with proving times and mixing times working well to keep us doing something the whole time.
100% rye bread which was very sticky to mix!
The loaves we made were a basic white loaf (although it didn't seem very basic compared to mine!), 100% rye bread, Stoneground wholemeal, local ale & walnut and a oaty soda bread.
Soda bread read to go in the oven
What I really enjoyed was the hands on demonstrations then getting to try yourself, I think my kneading technique has improved no end, the way I'll roll my rolls from now on has changed forever! This is the kind of thing you won't get from a book. Also I ask many (many) questions through the day so hopefully my own bread will improve loads now as well!
Folding in walnuts in a walnut and local ale loaf
Ruth feeding their sour dough starters ready for the week ahead
They put on an amazing lunch for us, the best I've ever had on a course. It's not very often that I'll fill up before the food runs out but by the end we were all stuffed and there was still more to go at! I think there was six or seven loaves for us to try, three massive chunks of cheese, a tray of cured meats and a salad, far more than we could eat and it was all delicious!
Simply an amazing lunch!
It was also really interesting being in a traditional commercial bakery and seeing some of the equipment they use and how they were set up, with charts on the wall to record times of when things were started and when the next stage was going to happen.
I came away from the day with a huge box of bread that I had made (see the top picture) and a recipe book containing the recipes for those loaves, I'm really looking forward to making some of them again.
A brilliant day and one I'd 100% recommend to anyone interested in making bread, his courses can be found here if anyone is interested.
(and I'm in no way affiliated but I am a big fan of his bread and what they're doing)
I'm very fortunate to live in an area that seems to have a lot of people who care passionately about food. Locally there are people that make cider, cheese, grow good livestock and a great butchers in the village. The butchers also sells fresh bread.
Now I bake bread most days but I still think it's great that there is fresh bread available just a mile from my door, when I have bought some it's been lovely and very different to what I bake; sour doughs, cider crumb, rye breads, ciabatta, etc.
Kneading techniques
I saw on Facebook that the hotel in the village was having a 2 hour demonstration by Peter Cook, the man that bakes the bread and sells it to local shops around the area. He has quite a following in the village and everyone raves about his bread (rightly so) so I thought I'd go.
Showing some focciaca dough
It was just £5 for 2 hours and I picked up so many tips and learnt that I'm doing quite a few things differently to him (some might say wrong but I still make good bread!). He made, but didn't cook, some Chelsea buns, a focciata and talked about his sour dough loaves. I'm planning on making some Chelsea buns for the school bake sale on Friday so hopefully I should make them even better this time round!
Rolled up ready to be cut into pieces to make Chelsea buns
What really came across was this mans passion about what he did and that he believes in good local real food and real bread. His loaves are all made by hand and some of them are three days in the making, he even says that some gluten intolerant people can eat his loaves just due to the fermentation times that the yeasts have to work. He could name all his suppliers and even collected spring water from the Malverns to use in his sour doughs.
I think I might have to book on one of his day courses and do some more learning.
I have fond memories of Chelsea buns from when I was a child (they're kind of like an American cinnamon roll), my aunty owns a pub and her daughter, my cousin, used to bake them, and I remember eating them greedily.
Good way to spend a rainy afternoon
On Monday I got back from playgroup ready to divide up some dough to make some rolls but when I opened the machine I saw that I'd done my favourite trick of forgetting the yeast. Bugger I thought. That's wrecked lunch. Luckily we had some wraps in the cupboard so then my mind wondered over what to do with the spare dough.
I could have just added the yeast and made some rolls like I had planned to, but I had sweeter things on my mind (and a three year old to entertain), so not only did I add the yeast I also added currants, eggs, and more flour. This I then set to mix again before getting the dough out onto the side.
A good helper
My daughter loved this bit, we then got to roll out the dough before adding a spread made up of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon, with more currant for good measure.
We rolled the dough up and cut it into 1 inch thick pieces, laying them onto a baking tray.
Dough proving
We then had to go and do the school run, I think we were gone a bit too long as they had risen a bit more than they should of, but they cooked fine. With any dough I normally have the oven on full blast and then as soon as I put anything in I turn it down to 200 degrees.
Cooked, two did catch a little bit!
Some of the bigger ones did catch a little bit, but it made no difference to the taste - They tasted amazing!
They are rather lovely!
My eldest was pleased with her snack when she got home from school, in fact I had them all begging me for more once they finished their third of one!
Not bad really when you consider the ingredients probably came to less than a pound!
What do you like to bake using dough other than bread?
I was saying to my mum today that my house might be messy, but I get a lot done, we're all very happy and we eat really well!
I've been making a lot more "free formed" bread lately.
I was getting fed up of making a loaf in the bread maker and only eating 3/4 of it, instead if I make a batch of rolls I can pop what ever isn't eaten into the freezer for another time. Much better use of flour and electric.
I've also messed about with other types of loaves, my friend was talking about fougasses and I thought they sounded like a great idea to add to the freezer as a lunch that my wife could just grab on her way to work. Each loaf has cheese, salami and sun dried tomatoes in and is then topped with finely chopped rosemary and see salt with an egg glaze.
I also mixed up a batch of dough the other day and took it on a play date with me, a great way to get kids interested in what they're eating (although mine don't normally need much encouragement!)
My little baker making a loaf
Next year I'm going to make a real effort to grow some more poppies, they are simply my favourite thing to add to bread, as a topping or in the dough, they add such a great, subtle, flavour.
I have some great plans in the extension to make a "prooving cupboard" above the new fireplace (but accessed behind it) so I have somewhere warm to keep my bread while it increases in size. Has anyone else done this?
Someone I know had shared a great little video of someone making camp bread in a zip lock bag (a clever idea really) but with the following caption:
Screen shot from my Facebook
People commenting and posting things without doing any research is one things that really winds me up.
I don't need to tell many of you, but a little sugar is often needed in bread, for the yeast to activate, for the crust and for the taste. Now American bread is certainly sweeter than English but most of us add sugar, I know some french breads and sour dough's don't.
When I pointed this out he then started to tell me that sugar is just "empty calories" with "no nutritional value".
I think this idea of blaming sugar is wrong.
What's wrong is people's inertia. If you're sat on your ass all day then it's easy to blame sugar for your increased girth.
There's no such thing as empty calories, it's all fuel for the fire. If you've ever sat on a roof in the middle of a cold January with rain beating down on you for 9 hours a day, you will understand that that chocolate bar you ate at lunch is giving you the energy to get back out there and keep earning your living. Or that night your lambing and been up for hours, that sugary breakfast helps you get the kids ready for school.
People love to tell us what is good and bad for us when they don't know what our bodies are going through. My whole body is adapted to my lifestyle, I eat a lot because I burn a lot of fuel, some of that happens to be sugar, I eat many other things that provide the other essentials for life, but sometimes I just need a bit of extra energy.
The other day dad and I were working when I saw my wife loading the kids into the car,
"what's up?" I asked.
"Something wrong with your bread I need to go buy some for lunch."
I went in and saw my "loaf", I knew what had happened, as I was putting it all in the bread maker one of the girls had asked me a question and I forgot to put the yeast in.
An unleaven loaf.
Although it was a annoying it was quite funny as I think you could knock someone out with that loaf. It reminded me of the time I forgot to put the paddle in for stirring, so when I came to eat my lunch there was just a bowl of burn flour!
So it got me wondering if anyone reading his has any stories of bread failing to do what it's meant to or doing something unexpected? I'd love to here your stories!
My wife got me a bread maker for my birthday last week and she followed the advice of the commentators on this blog and bought me a Panasonic SD- ZB2502. I'd like to say thank you to everyone who commented and left advice on the post where I asked about breadmakers last month, most people recommended a Panasonic and I can confirm I'm really impressed with it!
Although we've only had it a week, so far every loaf has been amazing. Today's in particular was superb, a sun dried tomato and parmesan mix, only butter was needed for lunch and it was as much as I could do to stop myself from devouring the whole loaf!
I'm looking forward to trying out lots of different recipes in it. Dawn from Doing It For Ourselves has kindly sent me a recipe book for bread makers, so over the next few weeks we'll be trying anything that takes our fancy, from onion breads to making pizza dough.
Hopefully this will be something we regularly use for a long time. It's stopped us having to have bread in the freezer, we can have fresh bread when ever we want it (not dependant on whether I have time to bake it or not), the bread is cheaper and I get to control what goes into it. Who knows if I buy a grain mill I might even start growing some wheat to bake with!
Now who has a good recipe for me to try in the machine?
Last week I decided to make a project just for me in the evenings. I've been making lots of bread on my bread stone lately (sorry to keep going on about it) and I really fancied having a little "peel" to slip the dough onto the stone rather than plop it on with my hands.
It didn't need to be a massive one for a proper bread oven, just a board with a handle really for our standard oven, if I ever build a outdoor bread/pizza oven I'll just make another!
The project started with my brother and me looking through some of his timber he's got milled. He picked up a short oak board that he'd obviously sawn freehand with the chainsaw. It also had a huge knot in it and a lot of sap wood. Not much usable wood in it, but just enough for what I had planned.
Rough board
I got the board into the workshop and went at it with the handheld electric plane to see what was under all the dust and to try and level it out. Luckily this board was pretty much quarter sawn so it will be nice and stable when it's finished.
Starting to see the grain
Once I could see where all the knots, sap wood and splits were I then planned out how I wanted the board. I could see by the way the grain went in the board that the handle would have to slope away otherwise there would be short grain and the handle might snap off.
Drawing out the board
I then got the jig saw and cut it out, the shape kind of presented itself so I just went with it, shaping the handle around the knot and following the grain.
Rough shape cut out with the jig saw
An almost quarter sawn board meaning that it should be much more stable. Put simply the lines in the wood above won't try and straighten out quite so much.
I then planed and sanded it until I was happy with the finish and it felt right to the touch. The whole thing tapers to the end as well.
I treated it with a food safe oil and left it to dry.
The finished board
I'm really pleased with this for a simple project and hopefully it'll get quite a bit of use. It's a really tactile piece and it made me laugh when I brought it into the house as the girls kept rubbing it with their hands!
I'll put this into action next week and let you know how I get on with it.
Anyone else have a bakers/bread makers peel that they use?
