My Sunday Photo, 22nd November 2015

Baking Blind or The Easiest Bread

Since I wear contact lenses most of the time, most people don't realise that I have very bad eyesight. I have -7.50 dioptres in each eye, putting me in the high myopia category. But I am stubborn and don't like to be limited in what I do by something as ridiculous as being able to see. I regularly get up, make coffee in the morning, shower and make breakfast for the children without my glasses on or my contacts in. In my own house, I know where everything is, so pottering around in the morning isn't a problem.

This morning I made bread. The easiest and best tasting bread there is. If I can bake it, half blind, then anyone can bake it. It really is that easy. Early this year I read a recipe for perfect but simple bread in Living At Home magazine, a German interiors magazine I sometimes buy. Then I saw that the brilliant Helen from The Busy Mamas had posted the same kind of recipe years earlier. Both breads looked amazing and the recipes were very similar, baking the bread in a cast iron pot. But one thing was stopping me from baking them. I do not own a cast iron pot. Despite countless hints that I love Le Creuset, I have never been given a present of one of their pots and unfortunately I am very, very bag at self-gifting. 

A week ago I decided to have a go at baking this bread anyway, using my heavy-bottomed stainless steel pot. It has stainless steel handles and a stainless steel lid, so I knew it could take the heat of the oven. I just wasn't sure how the bread would be. Luckily, it worked. Now all five of us are hooked on this bread and my neighbour is asking for the recipe too. We have made plain wheat bread, we have made a rye-wheat version and we have added walnuts to one loaf. All of them turned out perfectly - crusty, airy and flavoursome. 

My verson of the recipe goes like this:
500g strong flour (wheat (type 1050) or 175g rye (type (1150) and 325g type 1050
15g fresh yeast
11g sea salt
340ml lukewarm water
Optional: seeds, walnuts, herbs

Add the flour, salt and yeast (cumbled, if using freah yeast) to a large bowl and stir. If you are adding nuts, seeds, etc., add them at this point. Pour in the lukewarm water and swiftly mix the ingredients to a dough, as if you were making a scone dough. Cover the bowl well with clingfilm and leave to prove for anywhere between 12 and 25 hours. I have generally left it for 16 to 18 hours.

The dough when mixed

The dough after 16 hours

When you are ready to proceed with making the bread, set the oven to 230°C (without the fan on) and place the empty pot and lid into the oven to heat up. The pot acts as an oven within the oven, with the steam from the dough being trapped by the lid. That is what gives gives the loaf a good crust. 

Remove the dough from the bowl. Don't worry if it is quite wet. Place it on a floured surface (I use a chopping board) and form it into a round loaf. Cover it with clingfilm and leave it for half an hour. 

Our Walnut Loaf

After half an hour has passed, remove the pot from the oven. Be very careful. It will be extremely hot. Remove the lid from the pot using oven gloves. Lift the dough and plop it into the pot. Put the lid back on and put the whole lot back into the oven, still at 230°C. After half an hour baking, remove the lid. Bake for a further 30 minutes then remove the pot from the oven. You should be able to just turn the bread out of the pot. It doesn't stick. Leave to cool on a wire tray.  

Delicious Danish Pastries a 4 Year Old Can Bake

Recently I made blueberry lemon danishes and posted the recipe on my cookery blog, My Kitchen Notebook. They were  big hit with The Bavarian, but since the boys don't like lemon they turned up their noses at them. I was sure that if I changed the flavouring they would love them. So I did, and it turns out I was right. They might as well have inhaled them, they were gone so quickly. It also helped that it was Number Two rather than me who did the baking. It is often said but quite true that when children make something themselves, they are more likely to eat it. 

Number Two was home from Kindergarten for lunch and I was planning to get him to help me bake. In the end though he made them completely on his own. I only had to do the dangerous bits (sharp knives, oven, etc.). From start to finish it took us just over half an hour, including 20 minutes baking time. 

So here's the recipe:

150g cream cheese
3 dsps icing sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tin of croissant pasty (ours was 250g and usually makes 6 croissants)
50g dark cholcolate, cut into small chunks
25g flaked almonds
An extra 50g icing sugar for the icing

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C (fan). Combine the cream cheese, icing sugar and cinnamon and beat with a spoon until smooth. 

2. Open the can of croissants and unroll the pastry onto the work surface. Number Two was speechless when the pastry burst out of the tin as he pulled the wrapper off. 

3. Pinch the perforated edges together to close up all the holes and prevent the filling leaking out.

4. Spread with the cream cheese mixture, making sure to spread it right out to the edges. Then sprinkle it with the chocolate chunks and the nuts.

5. Roll up the pastry loosely like a swiss roll. Then cut into slices about 2cm thick. Our roll made eight slices. Lay the slices into a greased tin, leaving some space between them for the pastry to expand as it bakes.

6. Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes.

7. While the danishes are in the oven, mix a thick white icing with lemon juice or water and 50g icing sugar.

8. When the danishes are finished, remove them from the oven but leave in the tin. Drizzle with the icing immediately. Leave to cool for at least 15 minutes before eating. 

Child's play!