No Knead Bread

I’m going to make a confession. I really like kneading bread. I don’t understand when people want to do less kneading.

Maybe I LIKE the misery..

So I’ve always ignored these no knead recipes. But I got sucked in the other day, browsing bread recipes in lockdown, as we all are. I saw some pictures of some bread that just had the best crust and looked artisan-bakery perfection.

Can't argue with that crust

It was no knead. I gave it a go.

And it turned out GREAT. The best part is that it takes almost no time to prep the dough, then you can leave it in the fridge for up to 7 days before baking! This means I can have fresh bread in the morning. Don’t underestimate how wonderful that is.

The secret of the crust is the steam generated from cooking it in a pre-heated lidded dish. Magical.

Za'atar Tear and Share Bread

I’ve definitely waxed lyrical about za’atar before – it’s an incredible spice mix that I first had, smeared on fresh flatbread, in Beirut. When I travel, my souvenirs are food related. I love exploring the cuisine of new places and then trying to recreate it at home.

And I love bread. But I find flatbread difficult. Enter, the simple and delicious tear and share loaf, made in a bundt cake tin. Now I’ve mainly seen sweet recipes for this kind of bread (cinnamon, caramel etc) but the savoury one piqued my interest.

The bread kind of got away from the too-small pan

I served it with falafel and some gyros-style chicken but it would be great as a snacky dinner centrepiece with an onion-garlic dip.

Challah Bread

OH this is a good one.

I’m really struggling to make a good basic white loaf. And it’s really, really annoying me. But brioche-like breads have always been my friend so I went back to that so I could stop wasting flour.

I’ve been eyeing up these golden braided Challah loaves for a while now, and now is as good a time as any to get experimenting in the kitchen. Now, people get fancy with it and you can plait more than 3 strands, but I got confused just plaiting three, and I couldn’t follow the video for 6 strands. So three it is!

BONUS – it’s amazing as French toast:

(for the French toast, beat 2 eggs, 100ml semi skimmed milk, 1/2 tsp cinammon and 1 tbsp vanilla sugar. Soak 4 slices of challa bread in this mixture for 2 minutes each side. Heat 2 tbsp butter in a large pan and fry the bread for a few minutes each side. Serve with your faves - fruit, bacon, yogurt..)

Two recipes for the price of one!

Chocolate Hazelnut Banana Loaf

Call me a cliche - isolation baking banana bread

If you’re like me, you might have stocked up on “healthy” foods like bananas, only to look over them for more comforting treats.

I really hate waste, which means I can’t throw out over-ripe fruit. I have to repurpose it into something more delicious – enter, banana bread!

Some very smart person mentioned toasting banana bread and covering it with Nutella and I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of it before. In fact it was such a good idea I just had to make some and try it. And thinking of how well banana bread and Nutella would go together, I wanted to infuse some Nutella flavours into the loaf itself.

Cinnamon Star Bread

Starting the year off correctly with one of my favourite things I’ve ever made! This cinnamon star bread is delicious and super impressive and once you’ve cracked the dough-making, it’s a fairly easy process!

This is the same recipe as my individual kanelbullar but with a different assembly at the end which just turns it into a show stopper. This would make a great centrepiece dessert, sliced up and served with a dollop of ice-cream or custard. 

Serves 8, realistically. But you will find no judgement here if you keep it all to yourself.

Some tips:

• It is really easy to overheat the milk and butter mixture at the start, so I reserve about 60ml of cold milk and add it after heating to quickly bring the temperature down.
• Making a miniature yeast “slurry” with some of the milk mixture and a little sugar boosts the rising. Too much sugar kills yeast, but a little will help feed it.
• A round baking tray makes this a lot easier – for example a pizza tray. Bonus – these are cheap and easy to find
• It’s fine if you don’t roll out perfect circles (I never do), everything kind of comes together ok in the oven.
• Cutting into strips is easiest if you cut into quarters and then cut each quarter again twice to get four strips per quarter, so 16 strips total.

Basil, Mozzarella and Garlic Loaf

Ooooh baby this is a good one.

You’ve got an easy peasy bread recipe, with unlimited filling options, AND it looks super pretty.

I went with nice Italian style flavourings, but this could be delicious with some onion, garlic and sage instead, or ramp up the cheese, and add some sundried tomatoes. Oh, OH or smear with pesto and cover in mozzarella and parmesan.

I will be whipping up variations on this for a long time. I love finding that perfect base recipe to riff off.

Winner!

Cherry Bakewell Loaf

It's the week after a Bank Holiday weekend, so I think we all need a little pick me up to get you through it.

And I have just the thing. This is a delightful little loaf. Perfect for an afternoon tea tray. It’s dense and nutty and not too sweet. I adapted this from a Nigella recipe, and I added a little extra sweetness (as is my wont) by drizzling some icing sugar on top to recreate the Bakewell Tart flavours I wanted.

I adore the individual components in a bakewell tart- the flaky pastry, nutty almonds, zingy cherries and sweet white icing, but they really sing when they’re all together.

But making a tart is kind of time consuming. And making a loaf cake is not. And sometimes you want (NEED!) something quick and sweet, but also homemade and lovely.

Blackberry Swirl Loaf

I really love making things that are beautiful AND taste good. I’m not good with fiddly detail, though. Which is why my food tends to taste better than it looks (promise!). And I’m not great at the aul photo-taking either, the lack of natural  light really makes a difference – I’m not a food blogger who can bake during the day and then artfully lay everything out on the table with a smear of flour and a crisp white napkin and an oversized vintage spoon. You’ll have to take my word for it. Or just come around to mine for a try of it.

Having disparaged my decoration skillz, I will admit to one thing - I’m pretty good at swirling.

So, I am flexing my swirling skills with the next recipe. It’s a light, sweet, fruity, pretty little loaf which would be perfect for a post-lunch snack or eaten with a cuppa after dinner. I’m really pleasantly surprised by how delicious it looks and tastes. I think you could also substitute in raspberries (or do half raspberries, half blackberries!) and that would also make a delicious loaf.

Stollen

Okay, this is the last of my seasonally inappropriate posts (or, maybe not). I don't really stick to what is "seasonal", I think that good food is good food, so if I can source decent ingredients I'll eat strawberry icecream in December, and Stollen in June!

I do not discriminate when it comes to food, I’ll make anything from anywhere as long as it tastes good. I might bastardise it slightly (don’t hate me!) but I do it with love.

This year, in my culinary trip around Europe, I decided to have a go at Stollen, a traditional German yeast-cake, which is characterised by being stuffed full of marzipan, fruit and nuts. I added dark chocolate chips because I couldn’t help myself. It is *technically* a winter/Christmas thing. It lasts a good while, because it is brushed with melted butter which keeps it dense and moist. However, as with most foods, it tastes reeeeally good warm from the oven.

Ingredients

• 450g plain flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 100g caster sugar
• 10g yeast
• 5g salt
• 150g salted butter
• 250ml milk, lukewarm
• Pinch ground nutmeg and cloves
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 55g blanched almonds
• 125g dried cranberries
• 75g chocolate chips (optional!)
• Zest of orange and lemon
• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• 225g marzipan
• To finish:
• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• Icing sugar

Method

Place the flour, sugar and almonds in a large bowl.

Camera had no battery during the preparation process, so this is courtesy of my trusty phone..

Add yeast in one side of the bowl and salt in the other, then add in the salted butter and 200ml of the milk and mix together.

Before the milk

Add the remaining milk, little by little and bring together to form a soft dough.

To a generously floured surface, place the dough on top and kneed 6-7 times.

In a separate bowl, add in the nutmeg, cloves, vanilla sugar, almonds, cranberries, chocolate chips and zests and stir together. 

Place the dough on top of this, and knead until all mixed and incorporated.

Cover with cling and set aside for an hour to two, to rise. When doubled, flatten out the dough and roll out to a rectangle of 45x 35cm.

Brush with melted butter, and roll out the marzipan to 35x15cm. Place in the middle of the rolled out stollen loaf.

Roll up to enclose the marzipan in the middle. Place on a lined baking tray, cover with a teatowel and leave to rise for an hour.

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 190 degrees.

Bake for an hour.

Remove from oven, brush with melted butter and sprinkle over the icing sugar.

Leave to cool on a rack, and slice when cool enough to eat!

Mmmm, fruit and nutty..

Rye Bread

Gluten-free people, look away now..

I really enjoy baking bread. That feeling you get when you uncover the bowl and the dough has risen and looks picture-perfect just cannot be beat. Now, I have tended toward baking white breads, which are fairly easy to work with, but I love the taste of denser, darker breads.

Rye flour is notoriously harder to work with. You don’t get a soft, pliable dough like you do with normal bread flour, but it is by no means impossible to bake a rye loaf, especially if you use half regular white bread flour and half rye. And the flour itself is easy to find, my local supermarket had their “own brand” version, even!

One issue I had with mine was that it actually rose quite a lot quicker than I was expecting, but I continued to leave it to prove, according to the recipe I had used. I think that made for a slightly too malty loaf for my tastes. This loaf doesn’t really need to rise overnight, 4-6 hours in a warm place is plenty.

Lemon and Poppyseed Loaf

Happy Easter! If you're full of chocolate eggs and hankering for something else sweet but not egg shaped, then look no further! I love this recipe.

My mum is a really great cook, and her culinary accomplishments are made even better by their rarity. She doesn’t whip up a storm in the kitchen often, but when she does it is EPIC and I love it. Her shortbread is better than anything I’ve ever done, and I am openly jealous of this.

And this little knockout is a firm family favourite. Now, full disclosure, I am not using her exact recipe for the loaf, because I don’t know what it is (seeecret!), but I’m using her techniques and topping. This makes a very light yet moist cake that isn’t the most robust, so you need a decently thick slice.

Lemon and poppyseed makes the prettiest batter, and a damn tasty cake

This is so nice that I made it one evening and was planning to save a little aside for photographing the next day in daylight, but I took some to work and ATE THE REST BEFORE SUNRISE. It’s that good. So I had to make a second for daytime photographs. It's a tough life.

Sweet Orange Loaf

The boyfriend and I are off on our Easter hols tomorrow! Hopefully I'll still be able to post once or twice, but if the wifi is spotty then this will be the last post for about a week.

And what a post.. I've been saving this humble little cake.

This is one of those little loaf-cakes which looks fairly dull on the plate, but is packed full of flavour and deliciousness. I am compiling a ‘dream afternoon tea’ tray (in my head) and this is on it. I think the reason it is so good is down to the moist texture and sweet, zesty flavour. And it doesn’t hurt that it is pretty simple to whip up!

Again and again I am indebted to Mary Berry for giving me delicious recipes. This is something I never would have thought of making if I didn’t have her book and an orange kicking around to use up, and I am so glad I did. It cuts up into little morsels of happiness!

Banana Bread (with cheeky chocolate chips)

Sliced up and ready to bring to work (with a few slices removed for home)

  

So, I have had two lonely, rapidy browning bananas sadly slumped in my fruit bowl for a couple of days now. 

Judging me.

I obviously wasn’t going to eat them, because bananas bore me slightly at the best of times, never mind the weekend. Plus, I have so many eggs to use!

So, I turned to my new favourite person ever, Mary Berry. I feel like I know her. And love her. She did not fail me, presenting me a beautiful banana loaf recipe which I bastardised with chocolate chips. AND I got to use my brand new loaf tin!

Best. Weekend. Ever.