Chocolate Biscuits

I've been obsessed with the idea of chocolate biscuits all last week. Its not that I even like chocolate (I know, I know, I am weird in that way), but the idea of making biscuits with little Ms Rantlet got stuck in my head and it wouldn't go away. 

So on Friday I got my weekly grocery delivery with everything that one would need for making biscuits, so all was left to do is find a recipe I like. A friend from Oz sent me a recipe from Edmonds, a classic - but it required condense milk, one thing that I did forget to order, so it was back to the drawing board. I've been following Jo Whatley on Twitter for a while and her recipes always look very inspiring, I am even considering buying her book - A Passion for Baking. I found her recipe for Chocolate Chip cookies online and decided to follow it (with a few variations) before making a final decision on the book


Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from "A Passion for Baking"

100 g unsalted butter at room temperature
100 g dark brown sugar
70 g caster sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
200 g plain flour, sifted 
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp white vinegar
a pinch of salt
100 g dark chocolate drops

Preheat the oven to 150C in a fan oven or 170C in a conventional oven. 

Cream the butter and sugars in a bowl until light and fluffy - I used electric hand mixer for the job. Add eggs and vanilla and beat again until all the egg's been incorporated. 

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and vinegar. Normally recipes never mention vinegar, but I find if you add soda without "activating" it, the taste of soda comes through too strong. Place the soda in a teaspoon, and poor vinegar over it to "activate" it - it will fuzz away. 

Mix everything on slow speed until the dough resembles cookie dough - won't take a minute. Add chocolate drops and mix in with a spoon until all the chocolate is evenly distributed. 

Hand-roll the dough into little balls - about the size of a small apricot. Line cookie tray with parchment paper and place the cookie balls on the tray - leave plenty of space between the balls, they spread quite a bit. I did three rows of four balls on each baking tray. 

You might want to use two cookie trays, so you can pre-roll next batch one while one is baking it. Not essential, but speeds things up a bit.

Bake the cookies in batches on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and sharply bang the baking tray on the work surface a couple of times to deflate the cookies, then return to the oven for a further 8 minutes until light golden colour.
Allow the cookies to cool on the tray before transferring them onto a plate.

I think I got about 60 - 65 biscuits from this recipe, hard to say cause Ms Rantlet kept stealing them off the plate. She wasn't that interested in helping me make them, much more interested in tasting them. She has a particular technique of taking a bite of a cookie, dropping it on the floor and reaching for another one, while the cats are swooshing in to pick up her left overs. As you can tell, baking is fun in our household ...

Well, what can I say, the cookies turned out okay, but I am not wild about them. Firstly, they are waaaay too sweet for my taste, and I was after a different texture completely. I was craving something more shortbread-like with some melted chocolate chunks, but what this recipe produces is a light crunchy, snappy biscuit. 
Don't get me wrong, the recipe still makes nice biscuits and they are incredibly easy to make, however I will carry on searching for that chocolate biscuit of my dreams

Books Review - Bread: baking by hand of bread machine

One would think that a new house bigger house would also mean more space, more space for cookbooks. Apparently it means more space to unpack all the boxes we had sitting in storage for years and years. And unsurprisingly most of these boxes contain cookbooks that Mr Ranty and I have collected over the last decade or so.
Our cook books are very much split into “his” and “hers”, with not much cross over in the middle :
- anything to do with spice (Thai, Mexican, Georgian), anything weird (Molecular and Methodical) or Kiwi is in “his” pile
- anything to do with bread and preserving is in “hers” pile
And to be honest, Mr Ranty has been experiencing with some spicy and odd combinations preserves, so that is slowly migrating into “his” pile, and all I have left is bread - which suits me just fine.
 
So, I am going to do a review of some/all books I have, starting from easy, beginner style books to more advanced sourdough books, with some cakes and cupcakes thrown in for entertainment purposes.
 
First on the list is “Bread:baking by hand of bread machine” by Eric Treuille.
 
This is a DK book, and I must say I absolutely love DK cooking series – find their travel guides a waste of time, but they have really nailed it with the cook books.
If you are an absolute novice, you will love this book, I can guarantee it. But even if you have been baking for a while you may still find the book very interesting.
 
Section 1 – Gallery of Breads
Really, its bread porn under a different name. Nice, if a little bit old-fashion photographs, they will definitely get you going/drooling – great ideas for breads for all occasions
 
Section 2 – Baking Essentials
A punchy chapter, covering different types of flours in a very non-technical way with plenty of pictures to show what different flour looks like and what is brings to the table. Also includes other ingredients – yeast, liquids, salt, sugar, enrichments and a couple of pages on basic equipment you will need for bread making.
 
Section 3 – Basic Techniques
This is proper for dummies section, but I remember reading it religiously when I just started baking, and still like to flick through it now and then.
It even includes a sourdough starter page, and a small “old dough” section – something I am yet to try.
Kneading covers hand kneading, mixer kneading and food processor kneading – I must say I would only use food processor for pasty, but each to their own.
A few pages are dedicated to shaping, and as I mentioned, some really good basic techniques.
Glazing and Toppings are my favourites, as they give you a really good idea on different ways of finishing off your bread.
It also has a page on bread machines, but honestly, if you are using a bread machine, you don’t need this book
 
Now, the exciting part Recipes (Section 4)
 
It starts off nice and easy with Basic Breads, covering Pain Ordinaire, Country Oatmeal, Victorian, Baguette, Bagels and a few other English and European traditional breads. The beauty of this book is that it has at least a couple of variations at the end of each recipe, which gives you many more recipes that are listed in the book and makes you look like a baking pro from the work go.
For example a recipe for Baguette also tells you how to make Pain d’Epi (Ear of Wheat), which just looks super cool.
Plus, once you have mastered the basic recipes I encourage you to experiment with the mix of flours in the recipes – try making a Wholemeal Baguette of White with a bit of Rye Baguette, or White Baguette with Sesame or Poppy coating. Same simple recipe, but a lot of different versions you can try out.
 
Next recipe area is Sourdough or Breads Using Starter.
Now, they are saying “starter”, but what they really mean is yeasted “poolish” – don’t worry if you don’t get the difference. Pretty much I would only call “starter” something that has started from “wild yeast” – no actual yeast, just a combination of flour and water. Anything that has started as four, water AND yeast (even a tiny amount) in my head in not a “proper” starter, and I would refer to it as “poolish”. But that’s probably more to do with me being arsy about definitions rather than the book. If this is the first time you are making a sourdough bread from this book and it turns out half-decent, you should give yourself a pat on the back, and stick to fingers in my direction :)
The very first recipe in this area is Pain de Campagne and it is still one of my favourite recipes, also this is the first time I saw dough proving in a basket – crazy I thought at the time, now I have no less than 5 bannetons (a fancy basket) and am still looking to buy more.
San Francisco sourdough is an absolute classic, and a recipe that I am yet to master even after years of baking – sometimes it turns out okay, sometimes less so, but I will keep on trying.
I have had 100% success with the Ciabatta recipe, its one of the most satisfying and also one of the hardest to make if you haven’t got a standing mixer. I remember Mr Ranty going mental with a bowl of dough and a wooden spoon for nearly half an hour – his arm was dead after that. However, once the bread was ready and we dipped it in a rather large bowl of grassy olive oil with some balsamic vinegar, it was all worth it. Man, just the memory of that makes me salivate and makes me want to make a batch of Ciabatta.
The section also includes a few more European sourdough breads which I haven’t had a chance to try but do look quite tasty.
 
Flavoured Breads come next.
Assuming that you feel comfortable with the basic recipes, this is just a nice to have from my point of view, but still makes a good idea-generation section of you get bored with your every day breads. I recommend you experiment with the basic breads before you move into flavoured breads – use 50/50 milk and water, or juice and water as see what it does to bread’s flavour and texture first.
Pumpkin Bread, Pain aux Noix (Walnut Bread) and Dark Chocolate Bread look particularly appetising. Focacia Farcita (Filled Italian Hearth Bread) is not for faint-hearted – it’s a vision of goodness, willed with blue cheese and herbs!!
You will find a lot of inspiration in this area of how to make your breads look and taste better.
 
Once you are comfortable adding flavours to your bread, Enriched Breads is the next step for you – requires you to have more confidence in handing wetter, more complex dough. Brioche, the first one in this section is a classic, and I do love it, I prefer it baked as a loaf, lightly toasted, with lots of pate on top. These are a few other breads that look very interesting – Pane Di Ramerino (Rosemary Raisin Bread), Zopf (Swiss Plaited Loaf, a bit like Challah), PartyBrot (German Party Bread – you gotta love it just for the name :)
I had great success with Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and Prune & Chocolate Bread – really nice toasted, with chunks of chocolate melting slowly.
 
Flat Breads is probably my least favourite section, as I find small flat breads tend to get dry quickly and lack in flavour. I did try make Naan, Ekmek (Turkish Country Bread), Pain Tunisien (Tunisian Semolina and Olive Oil Bred) , Pide (Turkish Seeded Bread Pouch) and they make a very nice quick-ish afternoon snack or accompaniment to dinner.
 
Quick breads is the smallest and probably the least explored part of this book for me, I just didn’t find it particularly exciting. But it does have some classics – Irish Soda Bread, Muffins, Classic Corn Bread, and Yoghurt Bread and some others.
 
I like the Festive Breads section, it is very pretty and full of possibilities, but I must confess that I only tested a couple of recipes from this chapter. Christmas Stollen is a traditional, but I find it too sweet for my taste. I do want to try making Fougasse one day after seeing a whole pile of then at a French market. Personally I like Challah, but Mr Ranty is not a fan, so I don’t make it as often as I like. You will find  nice looking recipe for Panettone here as well, but I much prefer flavour of sourdough Panettone, its much lighter and keeps better.
 
Recipes Using Bread is a nice addition, with a few good ideas on how to get rid of slightly stale bread – Bread & Butter Pudding is a personal favourite
 
 
All in all it’s a great book, if you are looking for a book to guide you through your first bread baking experience, look no further!
 

Sunday morning Bagels

Mr Ranty has been boasting on Twitter about my bagel making abilities, shaming me into admitting that I haven’t made them for over a year.

Now that I have a shiny new oven and boxes full of flour and chillies, I have no excuse, so this weekend seemed perfect for bagel baking. Yes, chilies, you read that right, I have boxes and boxes of the stuff, thanks to Mr Ranty who is prepping for a Chile Cook Off event, but that’s a subject for another post.

 
I was debating which recipe to go for – I’ve only ever tried Julia Child (with Lauren Groveman) bagel recipe, after getting inspired by her video, but the last couple of times I used that recipe the bagels turned out a bit dry. So I researched bagel recipes and settled on Sophisticated Gourmet and A Beautiful Mess recipes – which a pretty much identical. The flour to water ratio in the recipes made sense and it was fairly close to what I was used to with Julia’s recipe.

When it comes to the flavour of the bagels, I would really love to be more adventurous, but I normally stick to either plain white with lots of different toppings, or jalapeno and cheddar bagels, as it is Mr Ranty’s absolute favourite flavour.

What I would really love to do one day is Everything Bagels – not just the topping, but the proper mix of different flavours of dough inside a bagel, and I would love to know how to make proper American Pumpernickel Bagel, and Honey Wholemeal Bagel, and Blueberry Bagel, and Chocolate Chip Bagel, and, and, and …

So this time around I settled on two flavours – Jalapeno and Cheddar (of course) and Cinnamon and Raisin …

 

Jalapeno and Cheddar Bagel

Makes 8

350 ml water, warm

1 (7g) pack of active dry yeast
1 ½ Tbsp caster sugar
500g very strong white flour
1 ½ tsp salt
20g cheddar, grated on the finest grater you can find
1-2 Jalapeno pepper (fresh or dried), finely chopped

Topping

Cheddar cheese, grated
Egg white

Cinnamon and Raisin Bagel

Makes 8

350 ml milk, warm

1 (7g) pack of active dry yeast
2 Tbsp soft brown sugar
500g very strong white flour
1 ½ tsp salt
20g butter
80g raisins
2-3 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla (optional)

Topping

Soft brown sugar
Cinnamon
Egg white (you will only need one egg white for both lots of bagels)

For boiling

¼ cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda

This is a two-day recipe, so start on Friday evening for Saturday morning/afternoon bagels or Saturday evening for Sunday morning bagels.

As always, I use a standing mixer with a dough hook attachment for my dough recipes, but this dough is very easy to make by hand.

Place warm water (milk), yeast and sugar in a standing mixer, and leave for about 5 minutes to activate the yeast. Add flour and salt and mix for about 5 minutes on speed 1, until the dough comes together and wraps itself around the hook. Add grated cheese and chopped jalapenos (or raisins, cinnamon, soft butter and vanilla) and mix for another 3 minutes on speed 2.

 

For jalapeno and cheddar bagels, use any jalapeno you like – fresh, frozen, dried, etc. Mr Ranty buys his from Cool Chile Co, and asked me to use Chile Chipotle (Meco) variety to see what flavour it adds to the bagel. I chickened out and only used one chile, but it can easily takes two or maybe even three, so add as much as you like. Don’t use too much cheddar in the actual bagels themselves, as too much cheese would impact the texture of the bagels, better to add more on top later when you bake them.

For cinnamon raisin bagels, I’d say 80g of fruit is about right, but it could take up to 100g if you prefer your bagels more fruity. After years of not liking cinnamon, I finally made my peace with that spice, and now I am a big fan of it. Always use more cinnamon than you think you need, the dough can take it. I wasn’t sure about vanilla, so I added a little bit of it – haven’t really made that much difference to be honest. Oh, plus when I started mixing the dough, I discovered that what I thought was a bag of raisins is in fact a bag of currants, but I figured – same same, right?

Mix the dough until its reasonably soft in consistency, soft but not too sticky, the dough should come away from your hands and/or counter reasonably well. Try not to add too much flour, its better to err on the soft side, total amount of flour used shouldn’t be more than 530g.

You will notice that I am using cheese/butter in my recipes unlike most of the bagel recipes you find online. I do feel that Julia has is right – that extra bit of shortening – whether its cheese or butter – adds to the flavour and structure of bagels. I might stick with water from now on, I think milk tends to make bagels a bit too much bun-like.

 

Anywho, grease a large bowl (or two in my case, one for each flavour) with melted butter, cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for a couple of hours, until the dough has doubled in volume. Its not terribly warm in London at the moment, so I came up with a little trick for proving – place the bowl with dough in the oven and turn the light on, without turning the temperature on. The little light provides enough heat to warm up inside of the oven, and makes a perfect temperature for proving.

 

Once the dough has doubled in size, knock it back, and place it covered in the fridge overnight. In here again I deviate from most of bagel recipes and follow Julia’s approach. First, cause you just don’t mess with Julia, do you? And secondly cause it fits my schedule better.

Next morning – take the dough out of the fridge and leave at room temperature for 1-2 hours till it warms up a little bit, but it doesn’t have to be room temperature or anything.

Turn the oven on at 220C and place a large pot of water on the stove to boil while you are prepping your bagels

Divide each dough in 8 equal parts and shape them into tight little balls – cover with a tea towel and leave for about 10-15 minutes.

Shape the bagels – cover with a tea towel and leave for another 10-15 minutes. There are two schools of thought on shaping the bagels – what I call “sausage and join” or “hole and stretch”. Either roll each ball in a sausage and join to ends to make a bagel, or poke a hole in the ball, and use two index fingers to stretch it to make a bagel. I prefer the later, as I think it makes a fluffier, more even bagel shape, plus the join method one sometimes come apart during the boil. Always make the hole in the middle much later than you think it should be, the dough strings back A LOT during the boil and the bake, otherwise you end up with a bun rather than a bagel.

 Once the water came to boil, add sugar and soda to it, and turn the heat down (to medium) so the water is just simmering. Place 2-3 bagels in the water (depends how wide your pot is) at a time – they shouldn’t sink to the bottom, but rather float on top. Boil for a minute or so before flipping over and boiling for a minute on another side. Take the bagels out with a slotted spoon, and place them on a baking tray lined with parchment. Pat the tops of bagels lightly with paper towels to take off any excess moisture.

Put an egg white through a strainer, to remove any stringy bits – it seems like a lot of faff, and you end up with bugger all egg white, but it really is worth it. I tried it once with egg white as it is, as the tops turned out too egg-y.
Brush the tops of bagels with the egg white and sprinkle with desired topping – cheese for jalapeno and cheddar or sugar and cinnamon for cinnamon and raisin bagels.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the bagels are golden-brown and the bottoms sound hollow when tapped. Try not to over-bake them, and they will go too dry. Leave bagels to cool on a cooling rack, covered with a kitchen towel.

Eat them plain or toasted, with plenty of butter/cream cheese/jam/whatever your heart desires

Non-Traditional Focaccia

In our households we don’t do hints – we use loud direction or loud swearing. One of these things must have worked, as Mr Ranty got fed up with me and have ordered me a shiny new oven to replace a rubbish gas one that came with our new house. The house is Victorian, and I am pretty sure the oven was near-Victorian as well – a split level gas oven that managed to burn everything on top while keeping bottom completely raw. Anyway, you get the picture, and now, thanks to my lovely Ranty Man I have a shiny new Smeg oven – massive gas burners and a large electricity powered oven. I am in love, that’s all I can say.
 
To test the new oven I wanted to do nice and simple bread – focaccia seemed like a good option. I must admit that most of the focaccia recipes I see online I am not impressed with. I have a book by Mr Silver Fox, aka Mr Great British Bake Off, aka Paul Hollywood, but his focaccia looks quite thin with tight crust. What I look for in focaccia is fluffy, textured dough with steaks of olive oil running through. I know its not “proper” focaccia, as an Italian friend of mine pointed out to me, you now what? I don’t care, I like it, so there!
 
THE best focaccia I have ever tried and I take my inspiration from is from Lupa restaurant in New York. I swear, I must have demolished an entire loaf of it while I was waiting for my food to arrive. And it in no way indicates the speed of their service, but rather the quality of their food in general and especially their breads (and perhaps exposes me as Ms Greedy Guts).
I have tried begging and bribing the chef to let me have his recipe, but the only secret he was prepared to reveal is that he makes his dough very wet, so wet in fact that he has to pour it into a tin.
 
With that in mind, here is my recipe
 
Lupa Focaccia
280ml water
70ml olive oil
500g white bread flour
1 pack (7g) dried yeast
1 tsp sea salt
 
Topping
Fresh rosemary
Sea salt
Olive oil
 
Place water, oil, flour and yeast in a standing mixer and mix on low speed (speed 1 on KitchenAid) with a dough hook for 5 minutes. Cover the bowl with a towel and leave to rest for 20 minutes – the dough will be looking quite wet at this stage – don’t worry about it, that’s the idea. Add salt and mix on medium to high speed (speed 2 on KitchenAid) for further 2 minutes.
The dough is still going to look really wet, you really need to mix it in a mixer as it could be very frustrating doing it by hand.
 
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with cling film (or a clean shower cap in my case) and leave in a warm place for 1½  – 2 hours, until the dough doubles in size. I baked it last Saturday, on a rare sunny day in London, and I just left the dough at room temperature, so use your better judgement, as long as you see it doubling.
 
Rub a bit of oil on a kitchen bench to prevent the dough from sticking; pour the dough out of a bowl and stretch it out in a rectangular shape, about an inch thick. Fold the dough on itself – left side over the middle and right side over the middle to get a thick rectangular shape.
Line a large square or rectangular tin with baking parchment. Place the shaped dough in the tin and press it down, stretch to get to the right shape – to fill the entire tin. Cover the tin with cling film (or place it inside a plastic bag) and leave in a warm place for ¾ - 1 hour, until it has nearly doubled in size and is looking quite puffy.
Oil your fingertips and “dimple” the bread – don’t be shy, you want the “dimples” to be quite deep and make quite a few of them.
If you want to go all fancy, as I did this time, tear off springs of rosemary an push them inside “dimples”.
 
Pre-head the oven to 180C (fan oven) and bake focaccia for 25 minutes, until light-golden on top and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.
Place the focaccia on a cooling rack, with a tray underneath. Pour a generous amount of olive oil all over the top, paying particular attention to the edges. After 15 minutes or so, cover the focaccia with a towel (it will be ruined after this, I keep a separate “bread towel” for this) and leave for another 20-30 minutes before its ready to be slices and served.
 

 

I sliced half of the focaccia in hot dog buns shape and it worked like a dream. The next day the bread still remained fresh and moist, so I guess it keeps well – cant confirmed, it was all gone by Sunday.

 

 

Whiskey Hot Cross Buns

For the last three years I have been using a FreshLoaf recipe for Hot Cross buns (lost the actual recipe now) – my very first year attempt was quite successful, but lately I was getting a bit disappointed with the recipe, the buns were coming out small and quite dense. So, I thought its time to try a new recipe and decided to start trying out recipes well in advance of Easter.

Hot Cross bun is basically a sweet dough with a lot of fruit and spices, and when you are after a sweet dough, you can’t go wrong with The King of sweet dough – Richard Bertinet. I found his recipe for Hot Cross buns online and it looked like a good place to start. You know me, I can’t live a recipe alone, gotta mess with it a bit, otherwise my name wouldn’t be Messy Baker J

Hot Cross Buns

Makes 13

250ml milk, warmed up

1 egg
50ml whiskey
1 pack of instant dried yeast
2 Tbsp (heaped) caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
80g unsalted butter, melted
370g white flour
130g whole-wheat flour
1 tsp salt
40g orange peel, chopped
50g glace cherries, chopped
200g sultanas or currents
1 tsp (heaped) ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
 
Crosses :
100g white flour
1 Tbsp oil

Glaze (optional, but highly recommended) :

100ml water
100g caster sugar
50ml whiskey

Egg wash (optional):

1 egg
Pinch of salt

Start by measuring out your fruit – I used sultanas, chopped orange peel and glace cherries. You can use any combination you like, as long as you make up the required weight. I would have used a lot more of the peel, but I ran out and I had some cherries left over from Christmas, so I figured fruit is fruit, right?
Richard’s recipe calls for mixed spice, but again I ran out of it (you think that I would be better prepared for Easter baking after all this planning, wouldn’t you?) so I used cinnamon and nutmeg. Mixed spice is basically a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. I would have used cloves too, but I guess you figured by now that I ran out of that spice as well. Anyway, back to the recipe – I love cinnamon, so I used quite a lot of it in the recipe and I think it could probably take more – use as much as you like.

Place warm milk, whiskey, egg, yeast, vanilla essence, sugar and butter in a stand mixer. Add flours and salt and mix on slow speed (speed 1 on my KA) for 5 minutes until the dough clears the sides of the bowl. Switch to speed medium speed (speed 2 on my KA) and mix for further 8 minutes. Add dried fruit and spices an mix for 2 minutes on slow speed.

  

The dough turned out quite soft and sticky, but I didn’t mind that, I quite like working with wet dough, as long as it means that the buns are going to turn out nice and soft.

Make sure that the fruit is evenly distributed through the dough, give it a couple of hand turns if it isn’t and place it in a large oiled bowl (I used my stand KA bowl to save up on the washing). Cover the bowl with glad-wrap (or a plastic shower cap in my case – recycling at its best, not that I am an eco-warrior or anything, I just don’t like waste). Leave the dough in a warm place for an hour – an hour and a half, until its nearly doubled in size.

 

Take the dough out of the ball and cut it into even-sized pieces. Richard’s recipe calls them “satsuma-sized” pieced and makes 20 buns. I wanted to make chunky buns, so I’ve made them a big bigger, and no matter what recipe I try I always end up with a baker dozen – 13 buns in total. Again the dough is going to be quite sticky, don’t be tempted to add any flour  - oil your hands and/or workbench with some vegetable oil to make it easier to roll if you like, but I repeat – step away from the flour

 Place the buns (well spaced) on a baking tray lined with parchment, cover it and leave in a warm draft-free place for an hour or so until the buns have nearly doubled in size. Now, I understand that’s covering a baking train can be quite challenging, so here is my trick – get a large rubbish bag (clean, obviously!), lay it flat on a table, slide the tray inside the bag, gather the ends of the bag loosely, quickly blow inside the bag, and tuck the ends of the bag under the tray. What I’ve essentially created is a little hot house for the buns, and that extra blow of air at the end will keep the bag puffed up and away from the surface of the buns.

While the buns are doing their magic, pre-heat the oven to 190C or gas mark 4, now I have a gas oven, I am going to be thinking in gas marks. My oven is VERY temperamental, but that’s a story for another day.
When the buns are ready, wash them with an egg beaten with a pinch of salt – or skip this step if you prefer less shiny bun, that’s all an egg wash does, as well as gives you a nice crust. Actually, just get a damn egg and do it! J

 

Next you need to pipe crosses on top of the buns – yes, post the egg wash, as you want the whole bun to be shiny and the crosses matt. Mix the flour and oil in a small bowl, add enough water to make a reasonably thick paste, about 4-5 Tbsp, but as thick/liquid as you like, thick enough to pipe it out. Now, I do have a piping bag, but I didn’t want to mess it up (it’s a bastard to clean), so I went for a paper cone option – use whatever you have/can use. To make a paper cone bag take a square piece of parchment paper (baking paper), roll it into a cone and spoon the cross mixture inside the cone. Once the cone is filled, cut a small-ish end of the cone to make the piping “nozzle”. Make sure to cut the end AFTER you filled the cone, as the paper will move as you fill the bag, and the mixture WILL leak out if you do it the other way around.

Pipe the crosses on the buns, its easier if the buns are lined up in nice neat lines, that was you can do a couple of long straight lines length-way of the tray, and a few shorter lines across the width-way of the tray. Don’t worry if the lines are a bit wonky of break/overlap in places, it will all turn out fine after they’ve been baked.

Bake the buns for 20-25 minutes, until light-golden on top and baked through (check that the bottom is lovely golden colour too).

 While the buns are baking, make the syrup by placing water, sugar and whiskey in a small pot, bringing it to the boil and then simmering for 10 minutes until all sugar has dissolved and the syrup has turned a very light golden colour.

As soon as the buns come out of the oven, place them on a cooling rack and glaze them with syrup.

Please a piece of baking parchment under the rack to catch any rogue syrup drops.

 

Wait an hour (or half an hour at least if you are really desperate), break a bun, slather is with butter and enjoy.

 I must say, this is the best hot cross buns recipe I have made so far. As mentioned, the buns could take a bit more spice, so I might up it a bit next time I make them. Whiskey flavour comes through really well, mainly due to the glaze rather than the dough – you might want to omit the glaze if you are making the buns for little munchkins, but little Ms Rantlet loves it as it is.

I really like the mix of white and whole-wheat flour, I much prefer it to all-white buns – the balane of the flours is bang on.
The buns are delicious freshly baked, and just as great the next day, toasted with some butter. I am going to eat the rest of them tomorrow for breakfast with some jam – mmmm, yummmm

Slow White Sourdough

I’ve finally been shamed into updating my blog – can’t believe how rubbish I’ve been. Especially as I did promise to improve last time I posted on here. Lesson learnt – don’t make promises, full stop

In my defence, I do have an excuse for the lack of posts, last three months were a bit hectic to say the least, we finally got on the property ladder and now I am officially a co-homeowner! Moving houses a week before Christmas has made the holidays ever so special and stressful.

New house is wonderful, thanks for asking, with lots of room and a lovely garden, but the most important thing – a different oven, and a gas one too.

What I forgot to mention is that the house is a Victorian house, and the oven seems to be near-Victorian one too. I decided to take that as a challenge rather than an obstacle and week 2 in the new house I had made a sourdough. Well…… Its been a while since I had such a disaster – flat (poor shaping), under-proofed (cold Victorian house), under-baked on the bottom and burnt on top (“wonderful” new oven) loaf of bread. If was so bad, it went straight in the bin.

To be honest that experience has put me off bread baking, for a while. Then proper cold days kicked in and I knew that my starter as much chance to survive as ex-Pope Benedict to live through another year,  so I didn’t even bother with it.

I did bake some yeasted breads meanwhile, but I will leave it for another post on quick yeasted breads.

So, finally spring is slowly creeping in and the weather is getting warmer, so I decided to have another go at waking up my starter. White flour did nothing to it, it stayed flat and smelly (a bit like Tracey Emin) so it was time to bring the big guns in, warm water and rye flour did the trick and I had if not bubbling, but at least  a half-awake starter – time to bake!!!

Then came the challenge of fitting bread making into my work schedule – how to plan for sourdough bread when I leave for work first thing in the morning and don’t get home till late at night? That’s where the powers of fridge and cold weather comes in! But I am getting ahead of myself, here is the recipe with all the details

Slow White Sourdough

120g rye starter

305g cold water

450g white bread flour

50g dark rye flout

1 tsp salt

In the evening, around 9 pm :

Place water, starter and flours in a free standing mixer and mix everything on speed 1 for 6 minutes.

Don’t worry if you don’t have rye starter, use any starter you have, but you might want to re-adjust water a little bit if you are using wholemeal or white starter – rye is very thirsty, so it takes a lot of water, the “whiter” your starter is, the less water you will need. I’d say 290g for wholemeal starter and 280g for white starter.

I am a huge fan of Shipton Mill flours, but I ran out if their plain white flour, so I had to go for Hovis White Bread flour. But honestly, you can use any white strong or bread flour, use any brand you like.

I do like Shipton Mill flours and I have a lot, and I mean a lot of different flours from them – rye, Canadian, wholemeal, seeded, sodabread, malt, and a few other ones. – I am still finding bags of flour as we are unpacking last boxes from the move. I also got given a whole selection or “rare” flours from a former neighbour, gluten-free flours that I don’t really know what to do with. Anyway, I have so much flour that Ranty Man has placed me under a flour-buying ban until I use at least some of my current stash. What he doesn’t understand is that even though I have all these bags, I still need, and I mean NEED more flour, cause the one I have is not the right one.

Actually I wonder if I can use the same argument on him – he has a lot of whiskeys and still wants to buy more. I shall place him under a whiskey-buying ban until he drinks more of the ones he has. That’s right, that’ll show him!!

Errrr….hold on, that won’t work ……………….

Anyway, where was I?

Leave the dough coved for 20 minutes. Add salt (just plain table salt variety) and mix on speed 2 for 2 minutes.

Place the dough in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic (or a shower cap in my case) and leave overnight (8-12 hours) at room temperature. My room thermometer is showing about 18-20C at the moment (and I have a huge heating bill to prove it) which I thought might be too warm for overnight proofing. So just to be on the safe side, I have turned all of the radiators off in the kitchen and opened windows too for good measure. Nights are still quite chilly, around 1 to 2C, so I figured that should do the trick.

Next day – morning

Well, I am not sure about the dough, but I did feel the cold when I walked in the kitchen this morning – brrr!!

The dough is looking quite good, at least double the volume and doesn’t look too puffy, which tells me it hasn’t over-proofed.

Flour a banneton generously with rye flour, shape the dough, place it in the banneton, dust the top lightly with more rye flour and cover with plastic again (or shower cap again). Flouring the top will prevent the dough from sticking to plastic, which means that you won’t tear the surface when you take the plastic off.

Place the dough in the fridge for 8-10 hours.

Next day – evening

Take the dough out of the fridge as soon as you get home and place in a warm place – under a radiator is the warmest place in my house – and leave it there for an hour or two, until its well risen.

Preheat the oven to 200-220C for an hour or so before baking, remove plastic from the banneton, flip it out on a baking tray, slash it and bake for 40 minutes, turning the bread around half way through.

Take the bread out and place it on a cooling rack. Cover it with a towel if you prefer a softer crust.

Cool for at least 4 hours (or overnight) before cutting.

So, in summary the schedule for this bread 24 hours in total :

Day 1 evening – mix dough

Day 1 overnight – first proofing

Day 2 morning – shape

Day 2 – second proofing

Day 2 evening – bake

Canadian Pumpkin Pie

Last weekend I made a “Canadian” Pumpkin pie, and if you think that is weird, wait till you hear the reason for the pie. It was to take to a farewell dinner with our lovely neighbours – socialising with neighbours, in London – UNHEARD OF!!! J

Anyway, our neighbours is a lovely Canadian couple and they are going back home, they have invited us for dinner to their house and cooked New Zealand lamb in our honour and I have decided to make a “Canadian” pumpkin pie for them.

Now, I know a few people have a bit of a thing about pumpkin pies - its too sweet, too soft, too bland, too American, whatever. The first time I’ve made it, I followed Humming Bird Bakery cookbook recipe – it turned out looking just like it did in the book, but Mr Ranty wasn’t too impressed, and I was determined to make a pumpkin pie that will woe him.

So, here it is, a Maple, Bourbon, Pecan Pumpkin pie – aka “Canadian” Pumpkin Pie.

The recipe mainly follows “Maple-Bourbon Pie” recipe from MyRecipes with a couple of tweaks.

Canadian Pumpkin Pie with a Crunch

Crust :

100 g plain white flour

150 g strong Canadian flour

110 g butter, cold

1 egg yolk

Filling :

1 x 425 g can of pumpkin pure (I used Libby’s pure, any American store should sell it)

65 g brown sugar

160 g maple syrup

185 g evaporated milk

3 Tbsp of bourbon

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 egg yolks

3 egg whites

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground cloves

Crunch:

40 g pecans, whole

2 Tbsp maple syrup

Optional:

50g cream cheese

1 Tbsp maple syrup

Pulse flour, butter and salt in a food processor until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix the yolk with 2 Tbsp of water and add it slowly to the pastry, until it just comes together. Take care not to over-mix it, the pastry should be quite short around the edges, but looking quite solid in the middle. Flatten the pastry out to round about an inch high, wrap it in cligfilm and place in the fridge for an hour or so. You don’t have to pre-shape it into a round if you don’t want to, I just find that it helps with the rolling out of the pastry later.

After an hour, take the pastry out of the fridge, roll it out to about ¼ inch thick, large enough to fit the pie dish. I roll all my shortcrust pasty on a clingfilm covered bench – makes it much easier to pick it up afterwards. Butter the pie dish generously with butter, and line it with the pastry, pressing the pastry together where it crumbled to create a solid pie shell. Cover the pastry shell with a cling film and place it in the freezer while you are working on the filling.

Preheat oven to 180C (I have a fan oven, you might turn it a bit higher if using a non-fan oven).

In a large bowl, place pumpkin pure, brown sugar and maple syrup.

Add salt and eggs

Add milk, vanilla extract, bourbon and spices

Mix everything well together

 In a separate bowl whisk egg whites until stiff peaks and add the whites to the mixture

Gently fold in egg whites, keep as much air in as you can, but make sure that the whites are distributed evenly

Caramelise pecans with maple syrup in a non-stick pan over medium heat.

Take the pie shell out of the fridge, remove the clingfilm. Scatter the pecans over the base of the shell.

Fill the shell right to the top with the pumpkin filling.

Mix cream cheese and maple syrup into a paste and drop dollops of it all around the edges.

PS: to be honest, I am not convinced on that, I don’t think it adds anything extra and I won’t bother with it next time.

Bake the pie in a pre-heated oven for 50-55 minutes, until the filling feels spongy to touch, but not sticky.

Cool completely before serving. I served it with crème fraiche, but I don’t think it needs anything to be honest.

I must have gone a bit heavy-handed on the cloves, as the flavour was quite strong, but it settled in really well the next day.

I couldn’t fit all of the filling into a single pie dish, so I re-used the scraps of pastry and made a smaller pie tin. Baked the small pie for 25 minutes and it tasted just as good as the big pie.

Well, as for the feedback – Mr Ranty definitely approves, its not too sweet, bourbon and maple syrup bring a very nice flavour and the pecans give it just the right texture.

The Canadian couple want my recipe, a guy who wasn’t “into” pumpkin pies had two helpings – now, that’s what I call a result!!