A two post day!
Nothing original about love, but like freshly made toast, a little goes a long way.
To make this loaf or something similar, use full cream milk and any dairy products you like in with your regular bread flour and you will get a light and fluffy loaf that makes great toast.
320 ml of liquids to 500 grams of flour, 10 grams of salt, 2 tsps of yeast, 2 dessertspoons of light spraymalt.
Azélia of Azeilas Kitchen really made me laugh recently on Twitter, she was talking about wholesome breads and wearing stick-on beards and socks and sandals and I thought about the bread I had just made and it fits that category to perfection.
I haven’t worn facial hair since I rode a pushbike through the streets in a Groucho Marx mask one night from one party to another, but I have had the pleasure at least and I urge you to do it one day if you haven’t.
I started with what I had in the kitchen; sprouted pulses and some walnuts left over from Christmas. I have dug out my sprouting jar recently, thanks to the reminder from the 52 week salad challenge so I thought I would post this as my February contribution, as the frost has got hold of the last of the wintering vegetables and herbs in the garden this month. Edit: I have just found the round up page on VP’s blog for the last one. Have a look and join in. Lots of wonderful info on growing micro greens that I am going to read up on right now….
I wonder if children do sprouting in schools now as we did? Even if you don’t take much interest in growing your own food in your teenage and young adult years, if you have had these experiences as a child, they are something to draw upon later in life when maybe you have more time to garden and participate in the great elemental joy of growing some of your own food.
This loaf used sweet walnut pieces, our home grown sprouts, thick yoghurt, water, Felin Ganol flours, yeast and seasalt. I need to make it again before I can be sure I have got the numbers right, I scribbled them down on a piece of paper and they looked a bit odd when I came to write them up here.
We had slices of this soft and nutty bread with cottage cheese, some mung bean sprouts and a sprinkling of za’atar, a mix of thyme, sumac, salt and sesame seeds. Can’t get much nicer than that in my book and in fact it’s all gone now, every last little bit!
Sprouted grains are lovely too just dressed with a simple dressing of lemon, oil and mustard as part of a salad with a toasted bun. I think they have a great affinity with nuts, so mix them up with pine nuts, or walnuts or whatever you have around.
Mitchdafish has just tweeted me this picture….(she had a chunk of this loaf to try at home) …. hee hee!
Here are some brilliant flatbreads filled with spicy dal rolled out with my magic Turkish rolling pin for Short and Tweet over this last weekend. This recipe is by Dan Lepard (P.73 of Short & Sweet, Lentil Filled Flatbreads) with the help of Franka Philip. Check out Franka Philip’s photos of making these with Dan; she kindly gave us advice on Twitter on how to seal the little pockets of dough around the filling before rolling them out. Twitter is a funny place, I would never have thought I could ask a cook book writer I had never met for help directly but all the ones I have had contact with are extraordinarily kind and positive. Thank you once again Franka!
This dough was really interesting in that the dough is made without yeast or sourdough and is left to age in the fridge. Pooh pooh you might say, what difference would that make? Well, the flat breads rolled out really easily after their long chill, puffed up in the pan and were incredibly tender to eat, light and just yummy. If I compare them to these quick flatbreads that I made recently these Trinidadian style roti are way superior in terms of their tenderness and flavour.
I had every conceivable colour of dal in a scruffy box in the cupboard, waiting for me to make dal with, except I only had half the quantity of the red dal I needed for this recipe, so I added some uri dal in, thinking that would be OK. It was in the end, but whereas the red dal cooks fast and goes quite mushy, the uri dal stayed resolutely uncooked for ages and retained its shape, so when you look at the photos you can see the pattern the uri dal made. Still it wasn’t a disaster by any means!
I found it quite fascinating how the spiced and garlicky filling started off dark yellow and then as it cooked again within the confines of the roti turned a wonderful rich amber-red colour. I don’t know quite why it did that, the combination of spice, salt and lentils?
We used our flatbreads to scoop up a spicy pork mince dish that I made up with some ancient freezer aged mince, garlic, ginger, fresh garam marsala, a mild chilli and a tin of tomatoes (the sort of thing I made as a student, only a bit better than my cooking abilities then) and a little dark green fresh spinach on the side. All eaten before I thought to take a photo, oops.
I rolled like a demon, a rather slow demon, and B flipped the breads in the pan. The recipe made loads, so we paused half way through our roti making, ate far too much and then I made the last few balls up and put them in the fridge for a further night.
Incidentally, I also learnt that a Tequila Sunrise made with blood orange juice is called a Tequila O Positive. Dad gave me this beautiful glass when I visited him last year, he told me he bought it when he was a student so it has survived a long time.
I slept well after all that hard work, concentrating on the delicate rolling out of these breads. We watched the season finale of Borgen, best thing on TV the last month, and shared a plate of atmospheric (dark and gloomy Copenhagen) lemon cardamom (no baking powder this time!) madeleines made from Thane Prince’s recipe here.
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Edit: Another oops, I forgot to add this picture in!
Back to the tale of the Tender Ones – The following morning I pulled the remaining balls out of the fridge (36 hours after the dough was originally mixed) and rolled them out in the early morning sunshine and we had them for breakfast topped with egg and bacon and a squirt of tomato ketchup and took sunshine filled photos to share with you. I was so pleased the sun came out!
Last year we made some alloo parathas (left) with Mellow Bakers, but they weren’t a patch on these! I will definitely make today’s recipe again. We are going to investigate making thin rolling pins from dowel as I really think it makes it much easier to roll these little quite frail balls of dough out and I would like one that is a bit shorter so I don’t hit stuff off the worktop when I am rolling.
I am getting on much better with this skinny pin than I do with my big rolling pin, or else it is just practice.
PPS Here’s Evidence Matters’s super round up post for this week’s baking. Have a peek and discover some new blogs to read and if you want to join in it’s very easy and all explained over on her blog.
What have you been up to this weekend?
Zeb Bakes 