Category Archives: Bread

Mellow Bakers Grissini

Nearly forgot the grissini, everyone said they were so easy so I left them.  I don’t think I would win any prizes for consistency in rolling out.  But here are the best of the bunch!

Made with grated parmesan, the dough for these is full of fat, olive oil and butter and I think I prefer the drier more hollow sort of bread stick to these substantial beasties.  But I know a poodle who would kill for any of the mis-shapes to fall his way!

Last of the May breads for Mellow Bakers, roll on June and the beer bread, Vermont sourdough and pizza – all from Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman.  Join in anytime if you are reading this, it’s all for fun, there are no prizes, and you can make as many or as few of the recipes as you fancy.

Bristol Sourdough

I made this one for my sister, who likes her sourdough good and sour.  Just as well as it had a long, long final prove. It’s an organic white sourdough with small amounts of rye and wholegrain flours and a little olive oil made with the original white starter I made when I began baking bread two years ago.

Bristol Sourdough with mixed flours

225g mature white leaven
180g water
210g strong white bread flour
75g wholegrain flour of choice
40g rye flour or other wholegrain flour
6g salt
11g ev olive oil

Total dough weight approx 750 g

Mix flours in bowl together.
Mix starter with water in a separate bowl.
Add the mixed flours to the starter and water mixture and mix till the flour is all incorporated.
Leave for 30 minutes.
Then add the salt in to the rough dough and knead for a minute or two, follow this with the olive oil.
Wash your mixing bowl with hot water and oil it lightly.
Return the dough to the bowl, pop a cover over it, I use disposable shower caps or clingfilm and leave until well aerated and has risen by 50 – 75 percent,  giving the dough two or three light turns during this period. Time approx 4 – 6 hours in a room at 20 ° C.

Shape the dough into a boule. Allow to rest on the bench for 20 minutes. Then reshape and place in a floured and lined banneton. At this point you can retard the dough overnight or leave for a final prove until the dough has almost doubled in height, another 3 – 6 hours. This particular loaf was mixed at 8 am and baked at about 7 pm, 11 hours later.

Preheat oven to 220° C or 240° C if you want a very dark crusty loaf and bake with steam for 20 minutes, dropping the temperature by 20 degrees for another 30 minutes after that.

Cool on a wire rack completely before cutting. This bread keeps for several days.

Some other breads from the same day, can’t put the oven on just for one loaf!

Cardamom and cinammon owl-faced buns

From a recipe by Tessa Kiros in her lovely book Falling Cloudberries

250 ml  warmish milk
100 g golden or white caster sugar
25 g fresh yeast or 2 sachets of easy dried
1 lightly beaten egg
125g soft butter
2 tsp ground cardamom seed
1 tsp salt
650 grams of plain flour or a mixture of brown and white. I used some fine emmer flour in mine about 50 grams

For the filling

2 tsp. ground cinammon
50g grams caster sugar
80 grams of soft spreadable butter, divided in to 4 lots of 20 grams
Egg for eggwash and sugar to sprinkle on top.

Mix dough.  If you use fresh yeast then mix in with the milk and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients, butter, egg, spices and salt and finally add the flour to that. If you are using dried active yeast then you can add that with the flour.  Leave for a 2 hour rise.
This makes a quite soft but not too sticky dough that is something like the density of pastry.

The filling, mix the cinammon and sugar together. Keep the butter separate.

Divide the dough into portions of about 300 grams each. You should have 4 portions.

The tricky part:

Roll each one out to an oblong as if you were doing pastry. about 20 x 25 cms and 3 ml thick.  With a palette knife, spread the butter evenly over the dough. Sprinkle 1/4 of the cinammon sugar mix over this.  Roll the dough up longways to make a long roll. Repeat for the other portions.
You can cut this as straight slices and put on tray to bake or you can cut the slices at an angle so you get fat truncated triangles. You cut the slices on the diagonal, alternating the direction to get this.

Hopefully this rather rubbish drawing will give you a further clue ! Drawing bit of my wp programme is a bit basic.

Then you put each triangle down on its fat or bottom edge,

this is what it will look like. A lot like an owl!

and press it down quite flattish, squash it down really well, almost further than you think you should.  Repeat with the rest.  See the bottom of this post for a link to Celia’s post and more photos on how this works. Celia’s present to me!  I got about 24 little buns from this. Leave to rise on a baking paper lined tray for about half an hour while you put the oven on to 180 C conventional or 170 C fan.  Eggwash and sprinkle sugar on top.

Cook for about 10 – 12 minutes till golden. They will feel quite soft when you take them out of the oven, but keep a good eye on them and don’t overcook them.

My variations:

Vanilla sugar and vanilla essence in the buns and choc chips or small chunks either rolled in or mixed in the dough, but easier to roll in in the layers.  Or you could use crystallised ginger and lemon zest,  the traditional taste is cardamom though. Makes you think of Stockholm in winter…. this alternative photo might give you more clues as to how they work… I will take some early stage photos next time I make them, unless someone beats me to it :)

To print this out together with how to do the shaping by Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial click here

OWL BUNS IN SYDNEY…. STOP PRESS….

****EDIT***** The extraordinary food writer Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial has kindly had a go at these and taken some fabulous photos which reveal the mysteries of the cutting and squashing.  It will all make sense once you read her post ! Click here

And when you’ve done that… (This is an untidy post, sorry everyone!) … you can print this pdf file owl rolls which has the recipe and Celia’s photos so it should all be clear finally. Phew! Bet you wish I had done that in the first place! I had a busy week last week :)

PPS  Recently found the original recipe reproduced here with measurements in cups so hope this helps. No drawings and photos though :)

******

Sept 2010: This old post seems to be attracting vast quantities of spam comments, if you want to ask me anything about it please use the contact form (in the menu bar at the top)  as I have switched comments off.