My bread making addiction is not going away. I scarified my sleep to make bread all night last night...with a few naps here and there through out the process! This is one of the things I really enjoy doing and it keeps me going...

I really enjoyed reading Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's "How to make bread". One of his recipes using beer to replace the water as an biding agent. I thought, if we can use milk, water or beer as a binding agent in bread making..surely (why not) using other liquids such as orange juice (or may be not?) would be ok too! I thought the orange juice would give the bread some orange-y flavour! It is a crazy idea worth trying, for fun!

This orange juice bread is just your usual simple wholemeal bread, instead of using of water, I used orange juice as a replacement. Warm the juice a little before pouring it to the dried yeast. 

For some reasons, the dough rises very slowly for this bread. It took at least 8 hours to get the dough to rise to its double in volume. (Perhaps my flat is a bit colder than normal household!) The end result is a bread with a little sour note from the orange juice. Unfortunately, It doesn't have the orange flavour I was hoping for. It tastes a bit like a sourdough bread actually! 

This pear cider bread is inspired by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's "Beer Bread". Instead of nettle ale in the recipe book, I thought I prefer the smell of the pear cider! I used wholemeal flour instead of malthouse flour and skipped the flour sifting process (a bit lazy), and arranged the doughs into different configuration! Other than that, I followed his recipe to the letter. 

The end result...the bread has ONLY VERY subtle scent of the pear cider (maybe beer would produce stronger flavour?). but it is a good bread nonetheless! Now I have to think what I can do with this breads!

NOTE: I do not get any commissions from him to promote or review his book (unfortunately!). I think it is a good bread making book to have on your shelf! 

My bread making addiction is back again! I have been making, or may be more about playing, with different ingredients and processes of bread making. I thought, If one can use beetroot in bread, why can I not use other root vegetables like parsnip to replace the beetroot?! I love the sweet scented freshly grated parsnip. It infuses the bread with very subtle scent of parsnip.

Same process and ingredients as the beetroot bread, but I replaced the 160g beetroot with 200g of parsnip. But I think I might have got the parsnip proportion slight wrong in this bread. It seemed a little too moist for the bread, but may be that contribute to the softness of the bread. Lovely crisp bread skin though!

Great for savoury dishes...but also good with sweet jams...

I noticed that the food I cooked recently were quite boring in colours...dominantly brown with the hint of orange (carrot) or green (herbs)! Although they are still tasty, but I really like to see more natural colour combinations in a balanced meal.

This beetroot bread is really lovely to look at, and tasty too to the taste buds. There is a hint of sweetness from the beetroot. I think it would go well with some goat's cheese toppings...

This bread is inspired by the beetroot sourdough recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's "How To Make Bread". Part of the processes were mistakes on my side! I was trying to adapt the sourdough recipe to a normal dried yeast version. I think the sourdough starter has more liquid in it than a normal dried yeast version. At the beginning of the making, the dough was quite dry and hard! But I managed to save it from falling! 

I was also trying to follow the sourdough recipe by proofing the bread in a heavily flour-dusted bowl for 6hrs...(It was proofed more than 6 hours...Because I fall asleep while waiting!) When I was trying to turn the dough out from the bowl...They just won't come out and sticked tightly to the bowl..When they eventually come out, the dough collapse badly! So at the end, I have to let it rise again until it is double in volume in the baking sheet!

But the result is still quite good, visually as well as the taste of the bread...So I quite very happy with it! 

These sourdough making processes really excites me at the moment. I can not help but obsessively checking the raise and fall of the dough during the last 24 hours. 

Compare to the first loaf of sourdough bread from the same starter, this second loaf looks and tastes a lot better! It raised quicker, the texture is very good with a lot of air holes in the bread, it is half the weight of the first loaf. 

So pleased with myself for experimenting making the bread. A new cookery skill acquired!

Nothing beats a freshly bake slice of bread with some fresh lightly seasoned avocado and tomato toppings...yummm...

My Italian boss bought me a piece of good quality parmesan cheese from Italy, and It has been a precious little thing for my pasta dishes lately. All good things must come to an end, instead of grating the last bit of the cheese to pasta, I want to give it a special end...A patch of savoury cheese scones topped with cayenne pepper powder.

Ingredients:

1. 50-75g grated parmesan cheese (keep 1-2 tbsp for topping)
2. 225g Self-rising flour (sifted) (extra to flour the rolling pin and surface)
3. 50g Butter (at room temperature)
4. 2 tbsp Sugar
5. A good pinch of salt and cayenne pepper powder
6. 1 tsp Baking powder
7. 3-4 tbsp Soy milk
8. 1 Egg

The Process

Preheat the oven to 180'C. Grease the baking sheet with butter.

Mix all dry ingredients together, and rub in the butter until it resembles a fine bread crumbs consistency.

Mix the egg to the dry ingredients, stir in the soy milk, and mix until the dough is well combined. (around  2 -3 minutes). If it is too sticky, add a little bit more flour to the dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough, and use a cookies cutter to cut out the shape, and arrange the scones on the baking tray. Brush the scones with some milk, top it with cheese and cayenne pepper.

Bake for around 15 minutes or until it is nicely risen (with some horizontal cracks at the middle of the scones) and the skin is crisp and  lightly golden.

Delicious...

Nowadays, if you labelled any food products with a specific region or area of production, wild or organic ingredients, people will thick they are good product and willing pay a bit more for it....

A loaf of bread using natural wild yeasts from Westcliff(on-sea) sounds rather authentic! The amount of days I spent to make this loaf is another special selling points for this bread - slow-raised home-made natural wild yeasts sourdough bread...:) JUST total 6 days from making of the starter to the final bake to make JUST ONE loaf, time well spent!

But basically, this is just a loaf of bread naturally fermented without package yeast. Yeasts naturally present in the air.
The process of making just one loaf of the bread is very slow, 3 days for the starter to ferment, half a day for the second stage and another half a day for the final stage and then the final bake...It is quite satisfying though to make food with just few simple basic ingredients - flour, water, salt and "the air"!

I always thought to make sourdough bread required a lot of bread making skills and it must be very difficult...But now that I have "successfully" (I think!) made a loaf of sourdough bread, I think it is not at all daunting if you break the process down to stages, and there isn't really skill required but a lot of patience and obsessively checking...

This recipe is based on a recipe from my baking bible - The Complete Bread & Baking Book by Linda Collister and Antony Blake. The original recipe is French sourdough loaf. But since it is made in Westcliff-on-sea, Essex, It is no longer a French sourdough, but Westcliff! 

In the book, the author said, "This is my version of the delicious, thick-crusted, chewy loaf made popular by the Poilane family in Paris"  I think, the loaf I made fitted the description rather well..thick -hard -crusted, chewy...So I must did the right thing!

The following is my simplified version of the process of making the sourdough...

Stage 1 - Starter

Ingredients:

1. 230g whole wheat bread flour
   
2. 1 cup lukewarm water
   

Mix together the ingredients in a large bowl to make a very thick batter. Cover with damp cloth and let it stand at room temperature, away from drafts, for three days. Note: I read, it shouldn't be covered with cling film. At day 3 the mixture should be smelly (yeasty), slightly bubbly. Your room will smell yeasty too (in a nice way!)

Stage 2 - Sponge

Ingredients:

1.  2/3 cup lukewarm water
   
2. 20g grounded sea salt (This is alarmingly a lot of salt if you compare to the volume of the Starter!)
3. 230g strong white bread flour

Add the water and salt in the bowl with the Starter, stir to dissolve any lumps in the Starter. Then add flour and beat with your hand for about 1 minute to make a thick batter. Cover with damp cloths and set aside to let stand at room temperature for 24 to 36 hours. The mixture will be spongy and slightly bubbly after 24 hours. The longer you left it, the more pronounced the sour taste it will be.

The room will still smell yeasty - maybe a bit like the smell of some soaking wet news papers!

Stage 3 - Dough
(OOPS! I just realised while writing down the recipe that I shoudn't have put the salt at the stage 2, the salt should be added at stage 3 instead as stated in the original recipe from the book!!)

So officially, this is MY original version then! I think the bread is still very similar to the original recipe..so I guess may be it doesn't really matter!

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup lukewarm water
2. 230g strong white bread flour (extra if the dough is too soft and sticky)

Beat down the sponge and add in the water, and mix to combine the water with sponge. Then mix in the flour, a handful at a time, to make a soft, but not sticky dough.

Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and knead it for 10 minutes until firm, smooth and elastic. Add more flour as needed. (if the dough is too soft, it will not retain the shape while raising in the baking sheet. It will be a big flat disk!). Return the dough to the same bowl (no need to wash or oil). Cover it with damp cloth and let rise at room temperature until almost doubled in size for about 8-12 hours.

Punch down the dough, and keep about 1 cup of the dough for making the next starter. Shape the dough into a ball and put in on a greased baking sheet. Dust the top of the dough with generous amount of flour, to prevent the dough from sticking to the damp cloth. Cover it with damp cloth and let rise at room temperature until almost doubled in size for about 8 hours.

Stage 4 - Bake

Preheat the oven to around 220"c. 

Using a sharp knife, slash the top of the dough 4 times (to make a square configuration). Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, and then lower the oven to 190'C and bake for further 35mins or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Transfer the loaf to a wire rack and set aside to let it cool completely.

To keep the starter, in the recipe book, it stated the followings:
Put the reserved 1 cup portion of dough into a greased plastic bag and store in the refrigerator for up to three days. Or place the dough in a small bowl, covered with damp dish towel, and let stand at room temperature, away from drafts, for up to two days. To use for making a loaf, start at the sponging stage and beat in a little lukewarm water to make a thick batter. Proceed with the recipe.

Very happy that I learnt something new this week! Bread making with machine sounds so boring now...:)

If you don't know what to do, make a list....

But I would suggest that, "if you can not sleep, make a loaf of bread!" So I did exactly that one early morning at 3.30am. It felts like a master baker working at the dawn of the day!!

I have been thinking (as well as reading) a lot about bread making for a long time. I do have a bread making machine and used it for various occasions. But it is getting boring to have not much involvement in the process of making a loaf! So I decided to give the bread machine away and make breads with my own hands instead! It is a skill that I really want to master, I have been thinking, maybe one day I will have a small cafe selling some fresh home-made breads...

The result...I enjoyed it immensely! I made one loaf of poppy seeds braided bread, an assorted country grain breads with sesame and pumpkin seed toppings. This is my favourite bread recipe, quite easy to follow...

Ingredients: (Make one medium loaf or be divided to make several smaller loafs)

1. 225g strong bread flour ( to make different types bread, you could experiment with different types of flour)
2. 1 tbsp salt
3. 175 lukewarm milk
4. 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
5. 1 tbsp dried yeast
6. 2 tbsp vegetable oil
7. 5 tbsp poppy seeds (for the poppy seed braided bread) (or for the topping)
8. Sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds for various toppings

The Process:

Sift flour (Ignore this step if you are using country grain from Allinson flour) and salt into a bowl, make a well. Add the yeast in the well and gently pour the milk and oil in the centre. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together.

Add poppy seeds (or any other seeds) and stir until fully combined. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 mins. Add flour if needed to make a smooth and elastic dough.

Brush a clean bowl with some oil. Shape the dough into a ball, and put it in the bowl. Cover and leave it to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or so (or until it double in volume).

Oil a baking tray/sheet. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knock back and knead for 1 to 2 minutes.

To make a braided bread. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions and shape each into a rope of  ± 20mm long. Place the ropes side by side and press together at one end. Plait the dough and pinch the other end together and tuck underneath.

You could also experiment with various other shapes (click to read more) and toppings.

Put the loaf on the prepared baking sheet, cover and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 200'C.

For topping: Beat 1 egg yolk with 1 tbsp milk and sugar each. Use various seeds for topping.

Bake the loaf in the oven for 30 minutes until golden brown. Tap the bottom of the loaf, if it sounds hollow, the bread it ready to be removed from the oven. (for smaller loaf, reduce the time of baking)

Transfer the bread to a wire rack and leave to cool.

Seriously, nothing beat a loaf of fresh home-made bread with some home-made jam!