Mixed Seed Loaf with Honey

Darker days see me wanting more comforting food. Nothing beats good bread for comfort food; whether it’s still warm from baking alongside a bowl of soup or a thickly buttered doorstep topped with home-made jam, it’s food for the soul as well as the stomach. This loaf isn’t quite as rich as my Honey and Walnut Loaf but it’s still good autumn fare.

As usual the instructions are for a bread machine, my hands and kneading bread don’t mix well. 

For a medium loaf

• ¾ teaspoon dried yeast
• 4 oz barley flour
• 10 oz strong wholewheat flour
• ½ oz butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon heather honey (it really is worth using heather honey if you can get it)
• 4 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 300ml water
• 3 tablespoons sunflower seeds
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds

Put all the ingredients except the sunflower and pumpkin seeds in your bread pan, in the order recommended by the manufacturer.

Select the Whole Wheat Raisin setting.

Add the sunflower and pumpkin seeds at the raisin beep.

Bread machine honey and walnut loaf

I haven’t baked quite as much this year as last but I have tried to stick to my goal of a different loaf each time I bake. This loaf was an experiment which turned out so nicely I may find myself having to repeat it before the year is out. With a warm, rich flavour from the heather honey I used, this is a comforting loaf for cold, damp days.

To make a medium loaf

• ¾ teaspoon dried yeast
• 10oz strong wholemeal flour
• 4oz strong white flour
• ½oz butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 280ml water
• 3oz walnut pieces

Add all the ingredients except the walnuts to the bread pan of your bread machine, in the order specified by the manufacturer.

Select the Whole Wheat Raisin setting.

Add the walnuts at the raisin beep.

Enjoy the aroma that fills your kitchen as the bread bakes, try not to eat it all in one go!

Walnut, garlic and basil bread

The baking experimentation continues; May has seen three loaves baked (so far), with at least one more likely before I summarise them all at the end of the month. This loaf though was so good it deserves it’s own post, and as it was one I dreamt up for myself I can share the recipe.

This was one of those ideas born of what I had in the kitchen and felt I should try throwing together, baking without needing to shop first. I had some walnut pieces I felt needed using up, and walnuts are always good in bread, so that was my starting point. There was a pot of basil on the windowsill, sadly needing replacing now after being eaten by a ginger cat, and I felt that would go well with walnuts. From deciding to use basil it was a short step to pulling the jar of garlic purée out of the fridge, as the two go so well together. Initially I was going to make this a wholemeal loaf but realised I was lacked wholemeal flour so had to use white instead; I think this was a happy accident as I don’t think the finished loaf could be improved on. 

Almost a meal in itself this was a good bread for any non-sweet purpose. Mushroom pate or cheese and salad sandwiches were deliciously satisfying and I’ve never made such tasty eggy-bread before. So, without further ado, here’s the recipe…

For a medium loaf

• ¾ teaspoon easy bake yeast
• 14oz strong white flour
• ½oz butter (use 1 tablespoon sunflower oil for a vegan loaf)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon crushed garlic or garlic purée
• Approx 12 fresh basil leaves, roughly shredded
• 280ml water
• 1½oz walnut pieces

Using the Basic Raisin setting on your bread machine, put all the ingredients except the walnuts into the machine in the order specified by the manufacturer (mine is dry ingredients first, water last but I know some makes reverse this). Add the walnuts at the raisin bleep.

The tricky bit is allowing the bread to cool before tucking into it as it smells so delicious!

April baking

Having failed to try a new recipe or bake any bread in March I was delighted that April turned into reasonable month of baking.

I started the month with Parsnip and Nutmeg bread, a recipe from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking. The smell of this baking had The Railway Modeller thinking I was making some comforting pudding, I think he was disappointed to learn the truth. To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to eat this bread with, it was tasty but didn’t lend itself easily to sandwiches or toast; eventually I found it’s perfect partner, a hearty root vegetable soup. Slicing was also a challenge, it was just too soft and springy. I’m glad I tried it but to be honest it’s not a loaf I’m likely to bake again.

My next loaf was more experimental. I read through a few different recipes for loaves using the Italian bread setting on my machine but nothing jumped out at me saying “bake me next”. So I took the ratios of basic ingredients, added some extras of my own choosing and baked a sun-dried tomato and garden herb loaf. As well as chopped sun-dried tomatoes I included two generous teaspoons of sun-dried tomato cream giving me a richly orange loaf which was as beautiful as it was tasty.

Loaf three of the month was just a quick white loaf, as I’d forgotten to buy sandwich bread for The Railway Modeller. This didn’t quite scupper my plan of making a different loaf every time I bake this year, as I hadn’t baked this since late last year, but it came close.

We’ve hit the time of year when the yoghurt I like for my breakfast becomes temporarily unavailable, so loaf four was baked with toast in mind. Half strong white flour and half wholemeal spelt, this was a three seed loaf with sesame, pumpkin and sunflower. I borrowed the seed quantities from a recipe in the bread machine’s handbook for a seeded wholemeal loaf, I should have used more. This was a loaf which started to stale quite quickly, but being destined for toast that didn’t matter too much.

The wickedly indulgent creation in the photograph was my last bit of April baking. Perhaps not the most neatly presented Black Forest Gateaux, I discovered my spatula had a split in it so did my best to spread cream with the back of a spoon and a butter knife (I also discovered that grating chocolate makes more mess than I could have ever imagined), but lovingly made as a birthday cake for someone who once told me that their two favourite puddings are Lemon Meringue Pie and Black Forest Gateaux. This was my ‘new’ recipe for the month but I did deviate a little from the recipe as written. I only made two of the three cake layers and used half the recommended cream as I felt that it would be a lot of cake for two of us to eat quickly enough if I made it full sized, even my small version was generous for two people to eat in four days. I also used frozen cherries instead of tinned, simply because they taste fresher.

February Baking

I’ve just finished a cross-stitch project I really want to write a bit about, but I’d best not yet as it still needs to reach its destination. Instead I’m going to try and re-ignite the baking inspiration which has gone into hibernation this month. Last month I tried plenty of new loaf recipes, this month I don’t seem to be quite organised enough.

Spelt and Bulgur Wheat Bread

From The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking, which is becoming a well thumbed volume, this used a combination of white wheat and wholemeal spelt flours with the interesting addition of bulgur. This made a tasty loaf and the bulgur gave an interesting crunch to it. It was definitely best fresh though, as it dried out quite quickly; if I make it again I’ll use the dough setting on the bread machine and bake it in the oven as rolls, which should keep a little better.

Raspberry and Almond Teabread

From the same recipe book, not a bread at all but a cake for sharing. Not too sweet but beautifully moist and very easy to eat. I should feel guilty about out of season raspberries but sometimes you just need a treat, especially if you have a friend visiting who also deserves treating. Cake is good!

The Panasonic instruction and recipe booklet which came with the bread maker provided the rest of February’ bread recipes, and a good pizza base.

Apricot and Almond Loaf

If you have this recipe and haven’t tried it you need to do so! A higher protein bread, thanks to the ground almonds, this was wonderfully filling as a breakfast loaf. Toasted with butter and honey it was a real indulgence and I wish I’d had some marmalade to try it with. It was also surprisingly good with a hard, mild goats’ cheese. This loaf may cause me to stray from my aim of baking a different loaf every time I bake this year, just writing about it I want a slice.

Honey, Sunflower and Spelt Loaf

Another very indulgent baked offering. This should have been 50/50 white and wholemeal wheat flours but I didn’t have wholemeal wheat so used wholemeal spelt instead. A delicious and versatile bread I’d be happy to eat every day.

Pizza Bread

Being vegetarian I skipped the pepperoni the recipe called for, I know I could have used a vegetarian version but I’m not really a fan of fake meat, otherwise I followed the recipe as written. What a treat! The olives I used were stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes but I’d like to try it again with a mix of those and garlic stuffed ones. Probably not a loaf I’d want daily but it was tasty and made fantastic fake pizza, like cheese on toast but with tomato purée spread between the bread and the cheese.

Now to decide what to try baking next.

Tidying up 2014’s goals, starting 2015’s

Ending my recipe challenge with a flurry of treats

I may not have found time to write about doing so but I did find time to keep trying new recipes throughout December. My final three efforts of 2014 were Turkish Delight, French Chocolate Cake, and Beer and Mustard Bread.

I’ve been wanting to try making the Turkish Delight since being given Gifts From The Kitchen a few years ago, it just took me a while to brave my first attempt. This was a mixed success, it tasted good but I definitely didn’t have the texture right; boiling for longer at the final stage is obviously required but it had reached the point that I was struggling to stir it and was getting blisters. The recipe was reasonably easy to follow and although it is time consuming and wasn’t a great first attempt I probably will try again some time as I do love Turkish Delight. 

The French Chocolate Cake, from the simply titled Chocolate, was a greater success; just as well as I was baking this as a gift. It was more complicated than my usual ‘throw all the ingredients in the food processor then chuck the mix in a sponge tin’ approach to cakes, but the recipe was well written and easy to follow and the results were (so I’m told) good.

Beer and Mustard Bread, from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking, was very easy to make; using the bread machine still feels a bit like cheating but it’s a nice sort of cheating. I baked this as part of a Boxing Day buffet and I think it’s fair to say it was good as I’ve never seen a loaf disappear so rapidly. Possibly the perfect bread to eat with cheese.

Which leads into

2015 Goals

1. Try a new recipe from one of my cookery books each month.
2. Try a different bread recipe every time I bake.
3. Learn something new with each knitting project I do (the two projects I’m carrying over from last year are exempt from this).

January saw me start all three of these goals!

The recipe I tried was Broccoli and Cauliflower Gratin from Vegetarian Classics. I cheated and used a bag of broccoli and cauliflower florets rather than chopping my own, this was a mistake as they weren’t well enough matched in size so I had to choose between extra firm cauliflower or soggy broccoli. I wasn’t particularly keen on the yoghurt and cheese mix used a a sauce either, I think I would have preferred simple grated cheese or a more classic cheese sauce, the yoghurt flavour dominated. Not one I’m going to be making again.

The bread was far more successful than the supper dish. Chickpea and Peppercorn Bread from the same lovely book as the Beer and Mustard Bread. This doesn’t use gram flour (which you might expect) but combines white flour with tinned chickpeas. The chickpeas blend into the dough and create a rich bread with a moist, slightly heavier crumb. It’s delicious and filling; it also seems slow to go stale, I baked it on Saturday and it hasn’t started to dry out yet (maybe that’s partly thanks to the bread bin I was given for Christmas). I will bake this again but will probably omit the peppercorns to give myself more choice what I eat with it.

The knitting was the first of a string of selfish projects, a hat for myself.

The pattern is Sandra Dee’s Nymandus Draculea and the yarn is King Cole Galaxy. King Cole seems quite a fine DK so I used 4mm needles, not the 6mm called for in the pattern, and put in an extra pattern repeat. The new, to me, technique was cabling; little, baby cables where just one stitch crosses another, but there were quite a lot of them. The cables don’t show as well as they might in a slightly heavier and plainer yarn, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing! I know that I was a bit clumsy with my cables at first, though they got neater as I became more used to doing them, so having a yarn that distracts from the slight unevenness of my cabling isn’t such a bad thing. It took me about ten evenings to knit, I might have finished a little faster but I decided not to work on it when I was tired as I didn’t want to risk too many mistakes (feline assistance led three or four dropped stitches I needed to rescue without adding sleepiness into the equation). I’m happy with my hat, I might even knit it again in slightly chunkier yarn, and, having bought more yarn than I needed, I have the next project queued to start using galaxy; the Railway Modeller will just have to get used to me in stripes!

Cake to keep and cake to eat

Cake to keep (for two or three weeks)

For at least the last 10 years I’ve been using the same Christmas cake recipe, with the only variation being whether I soak the dried mango and pineapple in spiced rum or spiced mead. It’s a nice cake, but this year I felt like a change. We’d enjoyed the Simnel cake recipe I’d baked from Vegetarian Cooking Through The Year so last week I decided to give the Christmas cake recipe from the same volume a try.

My first challenge was finding dried pears; I couldn’t get them anywhere within walking distance of home! I thought about the rest of the fruit in the cake, currants, sultanas, raisins and apricots, then looked at what we had on the shelf at work and decided that dried sweet cherries would do nicely.

The next challenge was to find a vegetarian sherry. I eventually found an amontillado (how suitably Poe), a nip of which will also make a nice companion to cooking Christmas dinner. At this time of year my drinks cupboard gets a bit scary; sherry for the cake, brandy for the mincemeat, rum for stollen, and possibly some kirsch still to add for a dessert I want to make for Christmas Eve or New Year… I might be making up some jars of boozy fruit in readiness for next Christmas.

Making the cake was nice and simple. It smelt lovely getting home the day I’d left the fruit and chopped almonds infusing in the sherry, ready to bake in the evening. Cheating a bit, as usual, I mixed the flour, spices, ground nuts, fat and eggs, in the food processor then stirred the mix through the fruit by hand. It all looked right going into the tin and tasted right when I cleaned the bowl out before washing it; I’m afraid when it comes to cake mix I do take my chance with raw egg. Two hours into the baking time, when I went to check on the progress of the cake, I realised I’d missed an ingredient or two; there on the side was the still sealed jar of molasses with the honey alongside it, too late to do anything about it I shrugged my shoulders and concluded that since the mix had seemed right, and the cake smelt and looked good, the lack couldn’t be too serious.

Now of course it’s waiting time.  The cake is wrapped in baking parchment, securely in it’s tub, being unwrapped to be fed a tablespoon of sherry about every 4 days; the recipe doesn’t actually mention feeding the cake but it’s a Christmas cake, of course it needs feeding! In two weeks time I’ll add marzipan and icing. I’m looking forward to seeing if it tastes as good as it smells.

4.5 out of 5 for well written instructions and ease of baking 

I can’t really grade the tastiness just yet!

And a cake to eat (now)

Having made a cake which wasn’t for immediate consumption I thought perhaps I should make another cake this week. I’d been given a glut of ripe bananas so a banana cake of some description was the obvious choice.  I picked up the Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking and thumbed my way to the chapter on teabreads and cakes. Banana and Pecan Teabread looked nicely tempting.

I had most of the ingredients in the cupboards but I did need to buy shelled pecans. Again, using the food processor to mix everything, this was a doddle to make. When I’m mixing a fruity cake in the food processor I mix everything except the fruit, then use the pulse option to mix the dried fruit in so as to keep as much of the fruit whole as possible. The only thing I would disagree completely with the recipe about is the cooking time; the recipe suggested an hour’s baking for the size I was making, with perhaps a few minutes more; I ended up giving my cake an extra half hour, which to me is more than a few minutes. Minor grumble aside, the cake is moist, tasty, and moreish; I’m likely to bake it again.

4 out of 5 for ease of baking and well written instructions

4.5 out of 5 for tastiness

My idea of a lazy day

Normally if I have a day at home on my own there seem to be a never ending procession of chores that I need to catch up with, sometimes though I get a day when all I need to do is whatever I want to do; yesterday was one of the latter. I’ve been wanting to make more use of the mint from the garden so I started the day by finding a recipe for apple and mint jelly, simmering the fruit with a bunch of mint and leaving it to strain for several hours while I did other things.

Next on the to do list was setting the bread maker to work. I only needed to bake for me this week so I decided to indulge myself with Carrot and Fennel Bread from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking. First grate your carrots! Then decide on a couple of tweaks to the recipe; I don’t have skimmed milk powder (or even almond milk powder at the moment) and I’ve not been keen on the texture of other loaves I’ve used sunflower oil in, so I replaced the oil with goats’ butter and ignored the powdered milk altogether. Then it was a case of letting the machine do it’s thing. Four hours later this loaf was the deliciously scented and rather tasty result:

Coffee was my next priority and, as the kitten was sleeping, I decided to spend an hour knitting while I indulged in my caffeine habit. I’ve a couple of projects on the needles to choose from but I’d rather like to have the current scarf project finished to give as a birthday present later this month, though realistically it might end up as a Christmas present. I’m enjoying the slightly crazy yarn I’m working with even though I’m experiencing a touch of mid-point tedium with the project itself. I suspect it’s the type of yarn you either love or hate, I’m fairly confident the intended recipient will love it. 

From the sofa back to the kitchen to make bath melts. I came up with the basic recipe for these several months ago, and have enjoyed some myself and gifted others. As I was finishing my coffee prior to making yesterday’s batch I received a hint from the last person I made some for that they might like some for Christmas, I think this is a recipe I should be writing up!

After making the bath melts and putting them aside to set I stopped for a late lunch before doing the dishes. It’s amazing how much easier washing up is when you’re doing it to create the space to do something fun rather than just because it needs to be done! A bit more knitting and some play time with the cats had to be fitted in, then it was time to make the jelly.  Chopping the mint that was going to be mixed in at the end took quite some time but eventually I was happy that I had enough and that it was fine enough. Jars went into the oven and jelly making proper began. This was a slightly experimental jelly in that I was using my sugar thermometer to tell me when it was at setting point; normally I test for set using the chilled plate technique but, since it was a relatively small batch and I would have time in the week to reboil it if needs be, I thought it a worthwhile experiment. Initially it did seem quite liquid in but today it looks like it has set properly, obviously the true test will come when we sample it. I have to say, I think it looks rather pretty in the jars, hopefully it will taste as good as it looks.

First shell your pecans

This week was one of those weeks where I was trying as much as possible to cook from the larder and freezer and avoid shopping, it was also a week when the Railway Modeller needed packed lunches every day. Given the choice between flapjack and cake, cake was requested so my challenge was to find a cake recipe I hadn’t used before that I had all the ingredients for. The only one I could find which answered the challenge and which I could eat, I wasn’t going to miss out on cake if I was baking, was the Coffee and Pecan Nut Cake in the recipe booklet which came with my breadmaker. 

The only catch was that the pecans, left over from last Christmas, were still in their shells. It took about an hour but I eventually had my three ounces of pecans, it’s just as well the recipe wanted them chopped though as they were nowhere near whole. Using a loaf tin liner to line the breadmaker, no more messing about and making a mess with greaseproof paper, and the food processor to do the mixing all other aspects of baking were a doddle.

I found the pecans a little oily but do like their flavour, maybe pre-shelled ones would be better. In this cake’s favour ground coffee brewed in the percolator gave a much nicer flavour than instant coffee as used in the American Coffee Bread I wrote about in this-bread-is-a-cake. The Railway Modeller said he found the cake slightly dry, I think the texture of the Coffee Bread would probably be more to his taste. Neither of us disliked it but I don’t think either of us would say this was the best cake I’d ever baked. I have ideas though; Turkish Coffee and Hazelnut Cake might be the first recipe of my own devising I try in the breadmaker.

Coffee and pecan cake gets 5 out of 5 for clear instructions and ease of making (most people wouldn’t be idiotic enough to start with pecans in the shell).

It gets 4 out of 5 for flavour but it was let down by the texture.

This bread is a cake

A new favourite gadget

A few weeks ago I was given a bread maker, a very generous and gratefully received early birthday present. Since then we’ve been happily testing the different bread recipes from the leaflet accompanying the bread maker. The Railway Modeller likes the white sandwich loaf because it’s soft, though I find that hard to slice evenly, the tastiest loaf I think I’ve baked was 2/3 wholemeal spelt to 1/3 wholemeal wheat flour, but our joint favourite (so far) is the white French style loaf. There are plenty more recipes still to try and I’ve a few ideas of my own to experiment with, so it’s safe to say my bread maker is going to stay a busy machine. I was interested to see that I can also bake cakes in the bread maker so last week I gave that a try.

American Coffee Bread

I’ve been given The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking, to encourage me to make the most of my wonderful new gadget, so many tasty breads and cakes to try. I wanted to bake a birthday cake for someone who likes their coffee almost as much as I do so this looked a perfect recipe. As I didn’t have pecans in the cupboard and was using almond milk as the milk, I substituted chopped almonds for the chopped pecans called for in the recipe which worked perfectly well. I think I need to practice lining the bread pan with greaseproof paper, I ended up with a few creases which the cake tried to stick to, or track down some bread pan liners; but that’s a minor niggle and didn’t impair the flavour of the cake in anyway. The cake went down well and I’m looking forward to baking the next one.

5 out of 5 for a well written recipe and ease of making

4 out of 5 for flavour (I’d up the coffee content a little if I bake it again)