MESSY BAKER

 What I love about rye breads is the huge variety you get from different parts of the world – there are dark spicy loves from Easter Europe that remind me of my childhood, there are wholesome German breads tightly packed with grans, there are crusty French loaves full of flavour and there is the famous Pastrami on Rye sandwiches that you can find in New York. I’ve developed this recipe for a bread class I ran a few years back, taking a bit from all different cultures to create a dark bread, full of flavour and yes with a light crumb that can be eaten as it is or toasted for a crispier finish. New York Rye Bread 150 ml water 150 ml orange juice 1 tsp (10g) molasses 100g rye starter (100% hydration) 150g dark rye flour 220g white bread flour 30g roasted barley malt flour 1 tsp (10g) salt 1 ½ tsp fennel seeds ½ tsp ground cumin ½ tsp ground coriander -     -  This is the mix of spices I love, but feel free to adjust the quantities Whole cori...

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 ...

I felt like another enriched dough, I’ve need looking at challah recipes for a while and decided to give that a go. I’ve tried making it twice before - once following Rose Levy Beranbanm traditional challah recipe from her site and once from Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery book . Rose’s version turned out really nice, lovely and buttery and light, amazing tear-y texture., but a bit bland on the taste front The one from Nancy’s book was a disaster, didn’t rise much, and the flavour was quite bad, I ended up throwing most of it out. I must have cocked something up, because normally Nancy’s recipes work really well for me. So, this time I’ve decided to do a bit of a mix of both recipes - vanilla and saffron challah, using just sourdough, with no commercial yeast. Saffron Challah 118g water 10 strands of saffron 100g white starter (100% hydration) 425g white flour 10g salt 3 eggs 60g honey 70g unsalter butter, softened 1 vanilla bean 2 Tbsp poppy seeds (optional) 1 tsp ...

Any hope on a lie in went out of the window when Mr Ranty remembered that he is meeting up friends to go go-karting this morning – at 9 am in Slough. 9 am!!! 9 am shouldn’t even exist on a Saturday morning. Alarm goes off at 7, Mr Ranty out of the door at 7:30 and I’ve managed to get another hour of sleep, before the kitties decided that its time to me to get up and feed them – oh well, might as well make myself useful. While my corn loaf is baking (see previous post), I am gonna make up a fruit loaf. This is another one of my own recipes, I made it up a couple of months ago, and the results have been really good so far, but as usual, I am gonna try and mess up the recipe even more :) I love the smell of fruity, spicy toast in the morning, slathered with butter with a cup of hot coffee. I haven’t managed to find a bread spicy and fruity enough, so I’ve decided to make my own. Spicy and Fruity Loaf 250 g starter (100% hydration) 260 g water 40 g whiskey / cognac / brandy 300 g white fou...