Tag Archives: baking

Cheese and Onion Crispy Soft Rolls

4th July 2013

I used to be completely obsessed with cheese and onion crisps and I suspect I am not alone in this. So you are in for a rambling old post today with a recipe at the end if you keep reading. Golden Wonder were the brand of my childhood, now overtaken by Walkers I believe, who have coloured their cheese and onion packets blue which confuses me utterly, because in my mind cheese and onion will always be green. The power of the brand is strong in my mental map.

I ate these every day on the 716 Green Line Bus that swooped down into Hammersmith Broadway on its cross-capital journey (from Welwyn Garden City to Chertsey and Hitchin) and away to Kingston on Thames after a long school day. Continue reading →

Raisin Goats Milk Kefir Bread (no 3)

Raisin Kefir Bread Cooling Copyright Zeb Bakes

This is the third time I have made bread using kefir inspired by Celi @ thekitchensgarden.com.

My first attempt I made the bread in tinned form and encouraged by the enthusiasm with which they were received I have had a couple more goes.

I have switched to feeding my kefir grains with goats milk as I prefer the smooth results I get with this and I can make a simple cheese with it too.

Room temp 67.6 º F 19.8º C (new thing, I am going to try and always note the temperature of the room if I can when baking) as it makes a huge difference to how fast or slow the processes go.

Stage 1

Make a pre-ferment with

150 g room temperature water
200 g freshly fermented bubbly kefir (made with semi skimmed St Helens goats’ milk)
150 g very strong flour (Canadian 15% protein from Waitrose)
2 dessertspoons Glastonbury honey

Mix the above ingredients together well till they form a smooth mixture.

Leave in a covered bowl for 15 hours at about 19º C, it will ferment quicker or slower depending on your ambient room temperature.

If you make a note of the temperature and the times each time you bake then you will get an idea of how it works where you live and in your season.

Stage 2

Put the pre-ferment in a bowl

and add

350 g very strong flour (high gluten 15% protein)
350 g Stanway Mill (all purpose culinary white stonemilled flour)
14 g salt
185 g water room temperature
40 g light olive oil or softened butter if you prefer butter

You will also need :

A big handful of large raisins or whatever fruit you have available

Mix all the above ingredients (except the raisins) together well to form a dough. I am currently mixing in a stand mixer and it takes about 3-4 minutes to get a good dough which leaves the sides of the bowl by the time it is ready. Be prepared to adjust the water (or, heresy I know add more flour if the dough is not to your liking),

Leave to prove for 2 – 3 hours in a lightly oiled and covered bowl until you can see that there are bubbles forming in the dough and it feels alive under your fingers. It should have risen by maybe a third to a half.

Divide the dough into two parts and make one part as a plain boule and the other as raisin bread.

I used some very large raisins to do this. I wasn’t happy the last time I tried this. I had added the raisins at the mixing stage and they broke up and smeared inside the dough and I couldn’t control their distribution very well, so this time I did it differently.

I patted the dough out into a very rough rectangle and placed my raisins over one third of the rectangle. I then folded this over the centre part and placed more raisins on top of the fold and so on, always keeping the raisins inside the dough. I then patted it out again and repeated. I then gently shaped the folded parcel into a boule and tucked it seam side up into a well floured banneton and popped the usual shower caps on top to cover the bannetons. As you can see in the final photo it came out a little tight at the bottom but none of these huge raisins were on the outside burning and I was pleased with the distribution inside.

Kefir Bread Proving Zeb Bakes Copyright The second prove was a leisurely five hours in length and could probably have gone for another hour I suspect.

The loaves were baked at 220 C (conventional electric top bottom heat on a kiln shelf) for the first twenty minutes with steam in a tray and then the oven temperature was lowered to to 200C for another twenty five minutes. I put the loaves back in the oven once I had turned it off for another ten minutes as they felt a bit soft.

So I reckon you could bake them for at least 50 – 55 minutes if I make them again.

This bread is soft and mild and full of good calcium for old bones like mine and it has been a hit with everyone who has tried it. I have experimented with mixing the kefir with some white sourdough starter and it produced a much more sour flavour to the bread. It still rose but we prefer this mild and delicate taste.

A couple of other lovely bakers making kefir bread with their tweaks and variations are:-

Carl Legge and ofbreadandquinces both of whom have good experiences with doing this and I suspect there are many other quiet kefir bakers around the world. Real bread – but made a different way from the normal sourdough.

Oh and Zeb likes it too, but he likes most things apart from pickles…

And after all that I completely forgot (birdbrain that I am) to show you Kefir Levain no 2.

I have the minutest video clip of Brian cutting the finished bread in half on my Flickr Photos

listen to that crunchy honey scented crust!

What’s for Tea? Lemon Madeira Cake

Madeira Cake Pam Corbin Cakes

I make a cake maybe once a month or so – I try not to eat all the cake myself but share it with people. We had a very nice coffee and walnut cake last time which took me forever to make as I cracked a whole bag of walnuts to do it, as the prepacked ones in the shops always look and smell rancid to me and today for tea we had a lemony Madeira cake from Pam Corbin’s Cake book.

I used a narrow based high sided Matfer tin, the one I use mostly for making high rye tinned breads which holds a litre of water, so I hoped that is what Pam Corbin meant by a litre tin. Most mysterious.

This produces a nice slim cake, with the possibility of lots of small slices.

I adapted the recipe to use a proportion of Light at Heart stevia sweetened sugar and, oh horror of horrors, some Stork margarine, curious to see if I could taste either if I only used a bit of each. Well I can’t taste either of them in these proportions. So I can hear you thinking, what next? Is she going to go all processed food on us? Is she going to start making cakes with coconut oil and icecream from cauliflower? Who knows? I might, but I think it is fairly unlikely.

I don’t like Stork and I don’t like margarine but I know lots of people who prefer the taste of both to butter. Cake is cake and infinitely adaptable.

So for my version of this cake, perfect for a lunch box or just for carving small slices off at random and as necessary

Lemon Madeira cake adapted from Pam Corbin’s recipe in Cakes

200g of self-raising flour
100 g unsalted butter
50g Stork margarine
One large lemon finely zested
1/2 tsp of Sicilian Limone essence from Bakery Bits
4 large eggs
100 g of organic granulated sugar
25 g of Light at Heart
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

For the icing

100 g icing sugar
lemon juice as needed and a bit more Sicilian Limone essence

And then it is the usual thing of beating softened butter with sugar till light and fluffly, mine always looks wet and fluffy, not sure why and mixing in the zest and limone essence.

At some point I give up and get to the nitty gritty of the affair. I advance towards the hurdles of adding the eggs one at a time with a few teaspoons of flour with each one, Very similar to hurdles at which I was rubbish at school I may add. I warm the eggs first and wish very hard that they don’t curdle. I am getting better at it slowly, but my heart is always in my mouth and my brow furrowed slightly while I do this.

Usually somewhere just after the first egg has gone in, I remember the tin, in fact I have a minor tin panic attack and rush around pulling tins out and staring at them as if I hope they will speak to me and say ‘Me, me, pick me’ but they never do. Remember to turn the oven to 180 C (conventional electric not fan) /Gas Mark 4 if I am on a winning streak at this point.

I went for my old Matfer tin, greased it with butter, and popped a symbolic piece of baking parchment in the bottom. Turned the oven to 180 C/Gas 4. Did I mention nothing has ever stuck to this tin so far. The silver lining of my sometimes dark and thunderous cake making attempts is this tin and a couple of others. If you have a tin that won’t let go of your cakes, let go of the tin, you won’t regret it, I promise. Sorry where were we?

Oh yes fold in the rest of the flour. Add a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, Wince a bit more, waiting for the cake mixture to scream and separate. Feel slightly disappointed when it doesn’t curdle for once.

Plop the mixture in the tin, set the oven time for 40 minutes, long narrow tin bakes quicker than a more traditional low slung loaf tin. Leave to bake, test with wooden stickie thing. Take out. Leave to cool in tin for ten minutes. Tip out onto cooling rack…

Next day.. mix up 100 g of icing sugar with a little lemon juice and plop it on the top. Go out in the garden and in a homage to the seriously good cake makers out there, pick some primroses, violets and geranium flowers and stick them on the top. Don’t they look fancy?

To those of you who have read this blog for a while a big apology that I still have mild panic attacks about making cakes, I think it is something to do with knowing that the ingredients are much more costly than for making bread and therefore there is more pressure on me to get it right, also there is in my eyes at least more that can go wrong. I don’t trust that the process will replicate itself each time I do it and while a slightly misshapen loaf is charming and rustic, a sunken cake that has left a big chunk of itself in the tin is just sad.

Find a pretty spot in the garden to take a photo and test at teatime. Well, it’s cake innit? Mine all mine, and even with those suspicious ingredients, still far nicer than most cake you can buy in the regular shops. And you can’t buy fresh flowers in a packet…

PS As there is a little bit of interest in the Matfer tin I used, judging by the comments, here it is:

They aren’t cheap, but it has lasted and looks almost as good as when I bought it. It measures 10” x 3.5” (250 mm x 85 mm) around the top, narrowing by half an inch at the base. It is 3.25 “ deep and is deceptive in that it holds around 750-800g dough / a litre of water. It has a rolled edge and sharp clean corners. I also have the smaller sized one of these which holds approximately 400g dough.

Matfer Loaf Tin