Monday was the last day of the holidays before the children went back to school.
I had planned to work in the workshop, we'd had a busy few weeks and the children deserved a "chillout" day to take it easy before the madness of schools, scouts and swimming starts again.
But our Middlest got up early and started to make focaccia by hand, she then shouted up to me to ask if she could light the fire - she was worried the house wasn't warm enough to prove her bread.
As a family there is a few programmes we watch together, one of these is The Great British Bake Off. The kids just love it and are always inspired by it.
All of this year they've been playing "Play-dough Bake Off" at every opportunity. They get their play dough out, we set them a theme and then they get to it. My youngest will run round shouting "3 minutes left!" and the girls will panic to finish at the end - just like the program.
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)
