Bread Beautiful Bread

A new year a fresh start and I am taking that mantra with my bread making! In the past year I have learnt:

1) Fresh yeast is not worth buying, goes off too quickly and is not for me.

2) Sourdough is fun, creative, my husband loves it but is a lot of effort.

3) Old large tubs of fast action yeast is not going to work well.

4) Fresh fast action yeast is indeed amazing.

5) My kitchen aid makes me nervous after two break downs... I will post on this later.

6) Kneading by hand is fun and rewarding but still the kitchen aid is easier.

7) Make sure you have the right size loaf tin... very important to avoid brick like loaves!

So we a renewed sense of purpose I have been researching how to perfect my bread.  Yesterday I made an amazing loaf if I don't say so myself. I made a white loaf with the normal Paul Hollywood tin loaf recipe:

- 400g strong white bread flour

- 8g salt

- 7g fast action yeast

- 25g butter

- 250ml cool water

Now what I did differently was to hold out with my kitchen aid through the grinding noises and the head bouncing and let it knead it fully rather than to finish it off by hand. I also added less water to begin and more to pull i together rather than adding more in. I believe that as I didn't add anything to the dough like extra oil through kneading that is why it tastes so good. It is soft and moist where as lasts week loaf was dry and oily. Don't get me wrong my last load didn't drip with oil, but it had that texture that bread and cakes tend to have when oil has been added, the dry larger hole texture that oil in recipes bring.

I also read about glazes and topping on Gina's blog Home Joys and mixed up an egg (white and yolk with no water) and brushed this onto the bread before going in the oven and scattered on a mix of sesame seeds and black onion seeds. I had also wanted to slash he top to make it bloom in the oven but my knives are all fairly blunt so didn't want to ruin my bread and squish all of the air out of it trying. I think I will purchase a bread blade at some point, perhaps after starting a sour dough again. 

I put a tray of cold water in the bottom of the oven to make the oven steamy as this is meant to improve the shine. If I am honest I am not sure I do notice the difference with this one. Perhaps I need to do one with and one without of the same dough to test it!

Finally I melted some butter (homemade!) in the microwave and brushed this onto the hot bread as I came out of the oven.

Doug and I will eat this at work for lunch with homemade soup, Carrot and Cumin. The recipe for this came from the New Covent Garden Food Co. A Soup For Every Day Book.

New Years Resolutions

So that time of year has arrived where I vow to improve myself this year. Now I am not a breakfast type of person which is strange as I was brought up to eat breakfast every day. So this New Years resolution is to eat breakfast every day! 

My breakfast of choice so far has been Bircher Musili or overnight oats. My mum was given the recipe originally by a friend about a decade ago and I used to make it at Uni to power myself though the exam period. It is yummy, healthy and as low releasing energy but be warned it isn't too cheap. So here it is!!

1) Mix 100g jumbo oats with 200ml milk and a handful or two of frozen raspberries. Mix up and leave to soak overnight or at least an hour in the fridge.

2) In the morning, take the oats out of the fridge and grate an apple into the bowl with the oats (I peel mine too) before hand).

 

Then mix in a handful or two of toasted flaked almonds, about 100ml natural yogurt and a teaspoon of honey to taste. And voila, Bircher Musili!!

I like to put my Musili into washed out jam jars to take to work to eat on the way to work! 

Spelt Roasted Garlic Focaccia

Today I am trying to make a roast garlic focaccia for mum from spelt flour. This is the test run which I will force feed to my other half! If it gets approval from Doug then i'll recreate it for my lovely mum! 

When I first started making it I was dubious as spelt flour has a weaker than normal gluten strands when it has been kneaded. So I added a little more oil and water than called for to increase the development of glutenin in the dough. You can tell this worked as my dough the. Looked more like a pair of my granny's knickers once it was kneaded than bread dough! I also added a little more yeast than necessary as my yeast is not very fresh any more and is a little inactive at time and also to try get some air in what is normally a denser loaf.

It was almost more elastic than my dough is with strong white bread flour!!

So I have greased up a square container and left the dough to rise. I am going let it rise and fall perhaps 3 times over the period of the day to really get some air in the dough which should help the fact that  spelt bread is often dense. Fingers crossed!!

Pandora and chicks!

I have had a pretty rubbish day today... The stress and strains of the past 6 months are finally being released! But on a positive note I did find my favourite pandora charm which my mum gave me. It's a cupcake!! I found it under the bed, I don't know why I didn't look there originally!!





And I also sewed some Easter cards for mum and dad, my aunt and uncle, brother and his gf and my darling husband! I'm quite pleased with them providing I whipped them up at the last minute!!

Graze Box!

Everyone has a guilty pleasure, or so I tell myself! And mine other than loving singing to Glee is snacking on finger food... Olives, popcorn, munch seeds. You get the idea! So as you can imagine the Graze boxes have naturally appealed to me! So my husband came home with a voucher if which there are many. Normally I would dismiss the idea of trying new things where a freebie is offered to entice you but I cracked the other day and dared to be daring! So I went online and orders my graze box. There was loads to choose from, not to much to be overwhelming but enough to offer variety to regulars. I selected what were my favourites (or what I thought would be) and ticked items I wanted to try very soon in hope my box would contain my choices. So when it arrived I was delighted my four favourites were there! I can't wait to try it tomorrow at work. I unfortunately can't keep it going as its just too expensive but if it ever decreases in price I would defiantly do it regularly based on what I have seen never the less tasted!

Photo editing

After finding a blog with beautiful photos I have decided I want to try editing my photos a little more than normal. So here are my first few:

Christmas is on it's way!

Whoop Christmas is on it's way! My colleagues put up the Christmas tree today which was ordered from Homebase and got delivered yesterday. We aren't decorating it until next week, thank goodness! I think I would get bored of Christmas otherwise!

I have found a new website I like:  http://folksy.com/

On Folksy I found lots of nice gifts, decorations and cards I would like to make. Although my only concern is that making these things can often come out being more expensive than buying them!

I love these felt decorations and the heart garland. Felt is so simple to work with and cheap.

I really like the birds and the reindeer!

Also I think this pop up card is cute and fairly simple.

Although how you would neaty cut the crinkles into the bottom I don't kneweven with crinkle sissors!

This card looks more achievable but again small details worry me like how to contro my machine well enough the mak ethe holly or the wiggle lines. I definatly would turn of the feeder.

My favourite decoration from the website however is this reindeer head made from willow!

Ho ho ho!

Only 32 days, 7 hours, 11 mins and 3 seconds until Christmas!