Tag Archives: Dan Lepard

Dan Lepard’s Semolina Barbecue Buns

Hot from the oven

Made these wonderful rectangular semolina buns and a batch of Dan Lepard’s legendary soft white baps today for our back lane BBQ! (Click on the links for the recipes)

Was a bit flummoxed about getting the softish dough onto the tray, but realised that the best thing was to roll the dough out on to the paper to start with, then pick the paper up together with the dough and plop it on the tray. I also made a bit of a mess of marking and scoring the bread but it mattered not a bit. Every last one was eaten and enjoyed by all accounts!

Soft white baps and semolina buns on the way to the party..

We had some very fine Italian spicy sausages full of fennel seeds and chile with ours.

If you don’t know it, Dan Lepard writes a great baking column each week in the Guardian newspaper, usually with ingredients that are easily available and fairly straightforward techniques for the home baker to follow.

Edit:

Celia has made these and partnered them with some fabulous burgers in chilly Sydney. Have a look here! And here are Di’s, which look very professional indeed. And Ulrike’s very smart buns. And C has made a loaf of it here, which I think is a smart move which would give you that lovely bread without all the hassle of shaping it into buns! I think Dan has created another winner here!

They seem really popular with kids, here are Christine’s, look at that scoring! and here are Heidiannie‘s too being enjoyed by her family and every time I see them I feel hungry all over again and think about making another batch…. oh look I did… Click here!

A Bee and a Plum Pudding

The bees that visit adore these drumstick alliums

This is my pic. I try to plant alliums and purple geraniums for the bees as they love them and the bees need all the help they can get these days. These (allium sphaerocepahlon or round headed leek) flower later than the big ones that we have in the Spring. We get visited by bees with many different coloured bottoms; red, white, yellow and orange, we get small honey bees, large bumble bees, solitary bees. I think there must be lots of bee keepers in Bristol. Sometimes they fall asleep on the alliums and I find them there in the morning waiting for the sun to warm them up.

Brian came out to see if he could take a better shot and the bee flew behind his glasses. He closed his eyes and waited politely till the bee left. He needed pudding though to compensate…

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Rant, rave, rant

Skip this post if you don’t want to read a grumbly rant….or just check the pictures and move on…..

Too hot for Zeb

One of the biggest challenges for home bakers in this ‘connected age’ is trying to figure out whether the recipe they read on a website on the other side of the world will actually work out translated to their own kitchen. I know some of you out there are brilliant at adapting recipes, but it is not my strong point I will freely admit.

Translating technique and methods are relatively easy, but types of flour, sugars, flavourings, not to mention cuts of rye grain, salts, butters and other fats, vary so much that it gives rise to a lot of discussion. All the forums are full of posts on this subject. Hunting around on the internet for someone who supplies einkorn is a harmless way to spend an evening and I suppose it is educational to try and work out just what is the difference between farro and spelt and pondering the mysteries of OO flour. Is it soft, is it hard, are there different sorts. I suspect there are….

And then a lovely visit to one of these restored mills where you buy a bag of their flour, get it home and realise there is no info at all on the bag to give you a clue about its composition, does this strike a familiar chord?

So I salute home bakers everywhere, who struggle to overcome these obstacles and I offer my heart felt encouragement to those who are just starting out. It does get easier, and most people manage to make a damn good loaf by their second or third go. Keep the faith. Like learning to dance, everyone gets better with practice, and bread is no different.

In breadmaking it seems as if each country has not only different names for their flours, but also different ways of describing them, ash content in Germany, protein levels in England, W and P in Italy (no idea at all what that refers to) and for the most part, the aspiring home baker has to make their best guess, scour the internet for advice, and then close their eyes and just jump in.

Bread though is relatively forgiving; unlike cake. This brings me to my rant:

I’ve just been testing some cake recipes for an American baking book, and realise that I am far from being a professional tester and that I don’t really like doing it. Hmmm.

I have managed to produce, with one exception, rather horrible looking, oversweet and dense cakes, some of which I have turned into crumbs; the rest sliced up and shoved in the freezer, vaguely thinking that I can use them for trifle or something, one day in the future. I could blame the recipe writer but that’s a bit too easy.

One reason for my failure is I don’t have cake flour, special American bleached low protein stuff.

And before you comment that it is possible to make cake flour in the microwave, or substitute cornflour for part of the flour, I have read all that too, and, Dear Reader, I don’t want to play.

I realise what I really want is recipes written for me, here where I live, using ingredients that are easily available and preferably already in my cupboard. I might go across town to get some seasonal mangoes, or to a specialist butcher for marsh-raised lamb, but I am not spending hours with flour exploding in my oven, nor do I want to feel deflated when cakes emerge from the oven and look as if an invisible imp has sat on them ten minutes later. There, got that off my chest!

I also have to learn to look at a recipe more critically before I even start and say, 130% sugar to flour – no way is that going to make me happy. My teeth are furring up just at the memory of that particular cake.

Roll on Dan Lepard’s British Baking book, I hope it’s full of wonderful, overlooked and neglected British breads, cakes and buns. And Mick Hartley‘s first book too! I can’t wait to read the recipes for his awesome flatbreads and other extraordinary creations. Breads with a hint of spice, redolent with fruits, studded with chocolate, a twisted shape here, a glistening crust there, a splodge of jam, savoury, oats, barley, and rye, full of beer, I don’t care – bring them on – I’m waiting!

In the meantime here, with many thanks to Suelle and all the other kind people who made suggestions, is my alternative Battenburg. The chocolate part sank a little and the pistachio part is a bit crumbly and I guess the recipe needs some fine tuning way beyond my capabilities, as I am not going to make the same cake over and over.