My best bread ever

Sorry for the absence...a general glut of things to do and a lack of time or inspiration to cook anything interesting are the excuses! But, I'm back!

This weekend I was planning a very quiet one because of the busy week I'd had, and I fancied doing some basic baking. Nothing fancy with icing or creaming of butter and sugar and whatnot, just straight up home basics. I made pikelets, scones (which I've learned I am not good at making!) and two types of bread (mostly because we were out of bread and I didn't relish the thought of going back to the supermarket).
I made a brown seeded loaf which is super easy and tasty, but the true triumph of the weekend was my white bread. I love baking bread and make it quite frequently, but no matter how hard I try, I never quite manage to achieve the lightness of dough that bakery-bought bread has. It's always delicious and pretty damn good, but never perfect. This time, it was! I was so excited about it that I polished off the entire loaf (actually, I held help from the lad), and with each slice marvelled at its brilliance!
Now, unfortunately, I haven't got the faintest of ideas why this loaf was different. I did measure things properly, but I usually do with baking anyway, so that shouldn't have made the difference. I also let it rise a bit longer than normal - most of the day, probably 5 hours at least. But again, I've done that before (in fact I sometimes leave dough to rise overnight in the fridge). Maybe it was the flour, or maybe the warmth of the day which led to the light, fluffy loaf. Who knows. All I know is that the recipe below is the one I used and the final result was grand.

Basic White Bread*

Ingredients

• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 425 ml warm water
• 2.5 tsp dried yeast, or 20g fresh yeast
• 750g strong bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tsp salt
• 40g butter, or 4 tbsp olive oil
• vegetable oil, for greasing
• 1 egg, beaten
• poppy or sesame seeds, for the top of the loaf (optional)

Method

1. In a measuring jug, mix the sugar with 150ml of the warm water and yeast and let stand in a warm place for five minutes, or until frothy. If using fast-acting yeast, there is no need to let the mixture stand.

2. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Rub in the butter and make a well in the centre. (If using olive oil instead of butter, pour the olive oil into the remaining water.) Pour in the yeast mixture and most of the remaining water (and the olive oil, if using). Mix to a loose dough, adding the remaining water if needed, plus extra if necessary.

3. Knead for about ten minutes or until the dough is smooth and springy to the touch. (If kneading in an electric food mixer with a dough hook, five minutes is usually long enough.) Put the dough in a large oiled bowl. Cover the top tightly with cling film and place somewhere warm to rise until doubled in size. This may take up to two or even three hours.

4. Preheat the oven to 220C/gas 7.

5. When the dough has more than doubled in size, knock back and knead again for 2–3 minutes. Leave to relax for ten minutes before you begin to shape the bread.

6. Shape the bread into loaves or rolls (or if you're feeling fancy, plait it like I did! there's still enough for another normal loaf), transfer to a baking tray and cover with a clean tea towel. Allow to rise again in a warm place for 20–30 minutes, until the shaped dough has again doubled in size.

7. Gently (as the bread is full of air at this point and therefore very fragile) brush with egg wash and sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds (if using), or dust lightly with flour for a rustic-looking loaf.

8. Bake in the oven for 10–15 minutes for rolls or 30–45 minutes for a loaf, depending on its size. Turn the heat down to 200C/gas 6 after 15 minutes for the remaining cooking time. When cooked, the bread should sound hollow when tapped on the base. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.


It was a thing of beauty...too pretty to eat, and yet too delicious smelling not to!

*The recipe comes from Rachel Allen's Bake! recipe book.

Peanutty inspiration

After the NY Times link recipe, Kat reminded me of this soup recipe I have which in winter is one of my favourites. It's from Alison Holst who is NZ's answer to America's Julia Child and Britain's Delia Smith - a kitchen doyenne, if you will - and my go-to cookbook author when I'm in doubt about something, and is just lovely. It calls for kumara which is a NZ sweet potato that I'm not sure if you can get elsewhere. I'd substitute golden sweet potato in preference but if you can't find that either then just ordinary orange sweet potato would be fine. Don't put in more sweet potato than the recipe calls for though, or it will be too sweet and will overpower the other flavours.

Kumara, Pumpkin and Peanut Soup
Serves 4-6

1 large onion
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tbsp butter or oil
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp freshly ground coriander seed
1/2 tsp chilli powder, or minced chilli (or more/less to taste)
1 fairly large kumara/sweet potato (about 250g), peeled and chopped into 1 cm cubes
250g pumpkin, peeled and chopped into 1cm cubes
4 cups stock (or water with stock cube added)
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp peanut butter (I only ever use chunky because I don't believe in smooth peanut butter, but if you're one of those odd lovers of smooth peanut butter then by all means use that instead)

Cook onion and garlic in butter/oil on low heat until onion is transparent. Add spices and stir over moderate heat for about a minute. Add kumara and pumpkin to pot with stock and bring to a boil. Simmer about 15 mins or until vege are tender. Add salt then peanut butter (too much peanut butter tends to overpower the other flavours).
Puree the soup, then taste and adjust seasonings to your liking.
Serve topping with a swirl of yoghurt or coconut cream, or with a few finely chopped roasted peanuts.

A deliciously soothing winter warmer!

(P.S: if you are interested - http://www.kumara.co.nz/about.shtml)

Brownie Biscuits

I tend to bake once or twice a week, making various biscuits/muffins/cakes for our lunches and snacks, but I get bored making the same things all the time, so I'm always on the hunt for new ideas. Lately I've also been trying to cut back a bit on the excess fat that we eat (not, I hasten to add, that I'm a fat-hater - far from it...in fact, I subscribe to the belief that societies only really started getting fat when we stopped eating fats that naturally occur like animal fats and started eating scary pharmacy-created fats like hydrogenated vege fats etc. No, this fat restriction effort is simply because we were incidentally eating a bit much crap, and if I can limit it in some areas without feeling the pinch, then it means I can enjoy my creamy pasta sauces etc without feeling any guilt later on!) so I started thinking that if I could make a chocolate biscuit which didn't actually have chocolate chips in it, but rather relied on cocoa powder for its chocolateyness, then I'd have a delicious treat that was much lower in fat (chocolate chips, I've discovered, are very high in really grotty fats). So I did a little hunting and a little experimentation and yesterday I made Chocolate Brownie Cookies which have met with great approval. They are quite delicious - sort of a cross between a brownie, a small cake and a biscuit - and each one is slightly different (which could actually be a result of my own baking inadequacies, but hey, I embrace irregularity!). They're also infinitely easier to make than normal biscuits/cookies because there's none of that pesky creaming of butter and sugar to begin with. I halved the original recipe I found and ended up with 20 pretty decent sized biscuits (I've given the halved quantities below). So you could, if you like them, double this recipe and have loads of bikkies!

Brownie Biscuits
Makes about 20
43g cocoa
200g caster sugar
62.5 ml vegetable oil (I used sunflower but anything pretty tasteless is fine. Olive oil won't work)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
30g icing sugar

Mix together cocoa, sugar and oil. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, b.powder and salt and add to cocoa mix. Mix thoroughly then cover and chill for an hour (the original recipe said 4 hours but who can wait that long for baked goods?!)
Preheat oven to 180degC. Roll tablespoon-sized lumps of dough into balls, roll in the icing sugar and then place on a lined baking sheet. Don't flatten.
Bake 10-12 mins or until firmish. Let cool on tray for a minute before transferring to rack.

Lazy and borrowing from the NY Times

I saw this recipe on the NY Times website today and think it sounds delish...since I haven't done much interesting cooking myself recently, I thought I'd just lazily post this link instead!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/dining/171mrex.html?_r=1&em

I reckon it'd be amazing without the chicken, just as a fabulous vege meal!


While I haven't done a whole lot of cooking lately, the one thing I have done is experiment with meringue recipes. It's the start of the British strawberry season here at the moment and I'm LOVING them! We're eating 2 giant punnets a week at the moment and nothing goes better with sweet, fresh strawberries than crispy, chewy meringues. I promise to post my favourite meringue recipe once I've done a bit more experimenting and have narrowed it down!

Salmon Tikka and Homemade Naan

Who doesn't love a curry?! I've often made Thai fish curries in the past, but until recently had never really considered using salmon (only using white fish in the past) and I'd also never really tried an Indian-style curry instead of the Thai flavours. But my new Jamie Oliver book (Jamie's Ministry of Food) has a great recipe for a quick salmon curry (actually he calls it Salmon Stirfry). The original recipe calls for tandoori paste, and you could by all means use this, but I made it first with tikka masala paste and have found I prefer it that way (incidentally, Jamie recommends using Patak's curry pastes and that's what I use too. I really like the tikka paste although the tandoori one is scarily pink - quite fluro actually - and I'm not really a huge fan of unnatural food colouring in my dinners...)

This recipe can quite easily be served with plain, steamed rice but it's also lovely with naan bread. I've included my favourite naan recipe here too.

Jamie Oliver's Salmon Curry (I'm sure he won't mind me sharing - in the book it asks that you share the recipes with people...)

Serves 2

350g salmon fillet, skin off and bones removed
1 clove of garlic
thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled
1 fresh red chilli
bunch of coriander
oil
1 heaped tbsp Patak's tikka masala (or tandoori) curry paste
1 handful mangetout (or other similarly sized green vege)
1/2 400ml tin coconut milk
handful of beansprouts

Cut salmon into chunks (about 2cm). Finely chop the garlic, ginger and chilli. Remove the stalks from the coriander and finely chop stalks, setting leaves aside for later.
Heat oil in wok or frypan. Add ginger, garlic, most of the chilli and the coriander stalks. Stirfry 30 secs then add the curry paste and stirfry another 30 secs. Add salmon and mangetout, cook for a minute or so and then add the coconut milk. Cook another minute. Taste and season if you think it needs it (I sometimes add a wee touch of sugar and salt).
Serve with rice and/or naan, sprinkled with beansprouts and the remaining chilli and coriander leaves.

Naan Bread
7g active dried yeast (that's how much is in one of those little sachets of instant yeast)
235ml warm water
50g white sugar
45ml milk
1 egg, beaten
10 g salt
615g bread flour (an oddly specific quantity!)
1 clove of crushed garlic (optional)
55g melted butter or ghee

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and let stand (if you are using the instant sachets you don't need to leave it to stand). Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6-8 mins on a lightly floured surface or until smooth. Place dough in well-oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth and set aside to rise. Let rise 1 hour or until it has doubled in size.

Punch dough down, knead in garlic. Pinch off small handfuls of dough about golf-ball sized. Roll into balls, place on tray and allow to rise until doubled in size about 30 mins (I actually don't do this extra rise...or rather, I forgot last time I made them and it was still great!)

Preheat grill to hottest temp with an oven tray underneath (heavy oven tray like a roasting pan)

Roll one ball out into naan shape or circle. Lightly oil or butter dough. Place under grill for 2-3 mins or until puffy and lightly browned. Turn and brush other side with oil/butter/ghee and cook until browned (I sometimes only cook one side because I prefer them softer rather than crunchy, but it's really up to you).

Keep warm in tin foil while cooking the remaining naans.

The dough also freezes well, so if you find it's a huge quantity for 2 people (which it is, although we are usually able to scoff quite a few!) you can freeze the rest for next time.

Enjoy!!

(oh, also, I have never found that naan bread dough - whatever recipe - rises very well. I don't know why, maybe it's too heavy/rich, but it doesn't seem to matter or affect the final product. So don't be peeved if it doesn't rise to double its size)