There's no brioche, we have plenty of time!

Yesterday I realised that I was quite behind on baking. As regulars may have noticed, there have been the odd absentee days scattered throughout the last few weeks. And understandably so I'd say, fitting baking around uni, work, farewell events, birthdays, greeting old friends and every other daily surprise is fairly difficult.

But that is, of course, no excuse for being late or unable to finish the challenge. So I'm making sure that from now on I remain on top of my challenge, I certainly don't want to leave a dozen recipes to do on the final day! Having said that, doing the same to catch up now would be equally ridiculous and back breaking (not mentioning wallet breaking and coma inducing).

I have to admit the main issue with the challenge now is the small matter of eating it all. I can't eat it all fast enough!

Anyway, the actual challenges today were Brioche and Chocolate Chip Cookies. And both went extraordinarily well, by now you will know that I am certainly my own best critic so this is by no means me simply tooting my own horn! I couldn't have asked for better if I'd tried. My only quibble was that I literally have no idea what to do with a brioche.

Call me uncultured if you wish but I simply had no idea what to do with it! Do I butter it? Put jam on it? Make sandwiches or dip it in soup? I literally haven't the foggiest! In the end I ate a couple of slices plain out of the oven which were lovely but I do wonder whether I should treat it as cake or bread... A mystery! I resolved to decide another day and popped it in the freezer!

The Result:

Both treats ended up being perfect. The cookies in particular are absolutely perfect, better than store bought cookies because they have that rustic homemade taste to them but importantly they still have the doughy texture you get from the shop bought treats. Perfect. And the brioche... Well it tastes good and looks brilliant, though I'm still flummoxed as to what I should be comparing to!

Bana-noooooo! Loaf

After Yesterday's powdery Shortcakes I decided I wanted to tackle something soft and moist today. Also, because I'm home from Uni now there is a lot more fruit here (I buy bags of lots of clementines or satsumas and literally nothing else) and of a much wider variety. Also, because I really dislike bananas it seems sensible to make Banana Loaf when A) I have people who can eat it other than  me! & B) I don't have to waste bananas buying a whole hand of them.
So I got to work mashing the horrible yellow fruits (don't you dare be nitpicking about herb or fruit!) into baby food, the smell was surprisingly pleasant. I can't say I've had a banana in many years of course, but I thought that the smell was a promising one; perhaps I would actually like this recipe...
It's a relatively simple recipe (I will post it up eventually, I will upload most of the less complicated & the best ones up here before the end!) which was a relief because I really didn't want to be slogging away separating yolks or carefully moulding anything which I knew I probably wouldn't like!

DISASTER STRIKES. Ok, that may be tabloidising it a bit but a frustration or mild annoyance did occur. Looking in the spice cupboard I realised we only had cinnamon sticks, no ground cinnamon... Why!? WHY!!?!

- Sorry to be over egging this disaster a bit, but when you write about baking everyday somehow it becomes rather a lot less eventful, I've got to take advantage a little and try and work in some exciting prose! -

So I got a knife and crushed the end of the stick a bit until it was a bit finer - not exactly an irreversible problem!

However, a less reversible problem crept up on me about 45 minutes later: distractions. The Loaf was meant to be cooking in the oven for an hour exactly. Naturally I wasn't going to sit around staring at it slowly cook in the oven but the problem was that my usual task of washing up took 15 minutes, about the amount of time a lot of the recipes I've cooked take in the oven. Today I got distracted...

I wandered upstairs (having set a timer on the oven) and took to my laptop. I fiddled around on various social medias for about five minutes but then I fatefully decided to check my eBay account. I've recently been selling my broken iPod so I decided to check its progress ( £2.20 at this moment in time!) but of course - as many shopaholics will know - it's not as simple as just checking eBay like that, no, I just had to search for an iPad. In fact, I've caught myself doing right this very second. I checked it to find out that price for you and now I'm already trawling through lists of glorious looking Tablets I'm still not sure I want and definitely not sure I need (Ok that's not true, I definitely want an iPad!)

And now I'm distracted by talking about it! Anyway *baking blog, baking blog, not tech blog*, this untimely distraction meant that the banana loaf was in the oven a bit too long...

The Result:

Mmm, Burny...

So there you have it, one burnt banana flavoured baked good... Possibly the worst thing I could ever imagine eating! Yet, it really wasn't half bad! Thought the outside looks burnt it's more burnt in the same way shop bought loaves of bread are (they always have a black top) the inside was very spongey and , well not very nice for my bananaphobic tastebuds. But others seem to have enjoyed it, so all in all, not a terrible disaster!

Recipe 8 - Wholemeal Harvest Bread:

Ingredients for one small loaf:
Wholemeal Spelt Flour 225g 
Semi Skimmed Milk 2 Tbsps 
Salt 1tsp 
Sugar 1 tbsps 
Yeast 1 tsp (half a sachet) 
Warm Water 175ml 
Sunflower Oil 1.5 Tbsps + Extra for Greasing 

Method: 

1: Mix flour, milk powder, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Add oil and warm water (gradually) and mix until it makes a smooth dough. 
2: Knead on a lightly floured surface for ten minutes sprinkling extra flour if it is too sticky. Oil a bowl and add the dough, leave the bowl in a plastic bag for an hour in a warm place. 
3: Oil a loaf tin (or a making tray if shaping by hand). Knead dough again for one minute and then shape into the desired shape or add to tin with the fold in the dough facing down. Leave covered for 30 minutes. 
4: Bake for 30 minutes. Tap the bottom and it should sound hollow, leave until cooled on a wire rack.

These Apple Pie Cupcakes were Golden Delicious...

Today's challenge started out as a bit of an ordeal and waking up about three hours later than I'd hoped wasn't the best of starts. I had intended to get some baking done and blogged about before my lecture started at three in the afternoon but the best laid plans of mice and men... So it was my own fault that I'm having to do this blog at Ten PM after a frantic couple of hours in the kitchen.

It all started going wrong when my driving instructor (who was meant to give me a lesson after my lecture) never turned up. You know how when you're waiting for someone to turn up you can't do anything else at all? Well I did that for about an hour, he never turned up, worse though was that I'd wasted the hour or so I could have been baking on hovering about expecting him to arrive any moment. In the end I settled on making some wholemeal bread because it would only take a bit of kneading and then could be left to rise if he suddenly turned up. I know it's not the most exciting or interesting recipe I've done yet but it needs to be done & earlier rather than later. I had set my hopes on making Warm Spiced Apple Pie Cupcakes but this was the prudent choice. Plus I could pretend I was kneading my driving instructor's face in frustration for him not turning up!

So it was left to prove as I decided that actually I wanted to do the cupcakes as well, I'd had my sights set on them all day and I really wanted to have some tasty cupcakes to have after tea. Alas, I didn't have the ingredients again. A long trek in the rain later I was stocked up with everything I needed. And by gum am I glad I did that. I'll admit I was stressed out trying to cook bread, cupcakes and my dinner simultaneously but with the skill of an Octopus chef I managed to do what no man has ever done before... Multi-Task, and pretty successfully at that!

The dinner was edible, the bread is edible and the cupcakes well, they were pretty close to perfect. I'll be the first to admit I don't make my baked goods look pretty but they tasted heavenly. The crunch on the top, the mild spiced flavour, the bite of the cooking apples and the spongey texture of the cupcake in the middle makes for a delectable treat.

Before baking it looked impossible; the kitchen was a mess, there was washing up to do from yesterday evening (it really piles up when you bake daily!) and the lack of driving lesson had knocked me all out of kilter (as well as putting me on edge). But when I sat down with a cupcake and a cup of tea after a few hours of hectic activity I knew that this challenge was well worth it. I may have taken on more of a challenge than I had ever anticipated but I know for sure now that every single day will be well worth the effort.

The Results:

Mmmm, DELICIOUS

Mmmmm, wholesome...

Recipes are here: Cupcakes & Bread

Oh Naaaan, another disaster!

Yesterday's pecan-tastrophe did a serious blow to my confidence levels. (How am I going to make a Bundt cake if I can't make Pecan Biscuits?!) so today was an exercise in confidence building. Not just that but today was also the first day back to lectures (no more lounging about baking all day!) and the heatwave we've had has sapped me of any energy so I wasn't looking for a tough task to take on. Naan bread seemed sensible, it fit the bill and also had the added bonus of not being full of butter and sugar (something I've noticed that almost all of the other recipes in the book seem to contain...).

If only I hadn't completely fudged it all up!

Making the dough and so on was simple and as easy as should be expected from a "veteran" at this sort of thing, however the simple task of READING THE INSTRUCTIONS seems to be completely above me in almost every task so far. To be fair to myself, I was baking on only five hours sleep, had just had a very long lecture and then sat in the sun for hours on end, my excuse is that I was woozy from exhaustion but really we all know that I was just cutting corners! I misread one instruction which said to grill under a high heat for one minute and flip over and accidentally read the time above it (for how long to preheat the grill) which was 15minutes... I was sitting in the lounge resting when the smoke alarm went off.

My house's smoke alarm is about as sensitive as baby's skin, it goes crazy at even the slightest whiff of any kind of smoke, I wouldn't be surprised if the kettle set it off somehow! But today it was right on the money, I rushed into the kitchen to see two of my naan breads as huge as balloons and burning merrily away. And when I say burning, I don't mean they were overcooked, I mean they were ON FIRE. So in short they were mostly inedible. Luckily I had two more to cook which came out gloriously after being cooked for the time suggested. The stress, the heat and the vast amount of curry eaten really got to me afterwards and I slumped on my bed and only just woke up about ten minutes ago, so I apologise profusely if any of what i've been saying makes less sense than usual (which I admit wasn't that much anyway!).

The Result:

Mmmm, Burny...

So overall I wouldn't say it was as big a catastrophe as it could have been, I mean ok there was a campfire going on in my grill and two of the Naans came out as black as coal but the other two were damned tasty so I guess it's just a learning curve!

I will upload the recipe as soon as I can and add the link in later so if you're interested in the one I used keep checking back!

Recipe 5: Naan Bread

Ingredients for 8:

Plain Flour 450g 
Sugar 2 Tsps 
Salt 1 Tsp 
Baking Powder 1 Tsp 
Egg 1 
Milk 250ml 
Sunflower Oil 2 Tbsp 
Fresh Red Chillis 2 
Fresh Coriander 15g 

 Steps: 
1: Sift Flour, sugar, salt and baking powder together. Whisk egg and milk together and gradually add, mixing with a wooden spoon until a dough is formed. 
2: Transfer dough to work surface. Make a well in the middle and add oil. Knead for three to four minutes (should have a smooth pliable dough). Wrap in Clingfilm and leave for an hour. 
3: Divide dough into 8 pieces. Cover with cling film and leave for 10-15 minutes. 
4: Make Naans into traditional teardrop shape. Mix chilli and coriander and press into the surface of naans. 5: Brush with oil & Cook each under a pre-heated grill until brown patches form and bubble appear. (One minute) and turn over and cook again for 45 seconds.

"Daily" Bread

So to kick things off I thought I'd go with the staple of most diets, Bread. Easy right?

I must admit I've been a fan of home made bread for a long time, and am even the proud owner of a low quality, carboot-sale-bought breadmaker. But that would be cheating, I am planning to go by the book...Let's see how that pans out!

First mistake was not checking my equipment... I'm a poor uni student and so I only have a meager set of baking things with me at Uni. I was lacking the essential "Loaf Tin" so I had to make rolls instead - so much for sticking by the book!- but other than that I was a devout and dedicated Amateur baker and stuck to the guidelines.I definitely have a natural tendency - like most men - to disregard those instructions set down by the professionals and assume that "I know best." Previously this method hasn't exactly stood me in good stead (most of my handmade breads have been rather 'yeasty' and a little solid) so sticking to the rules properly should yield a far better outcome.

I must admit that as soon as I deviated slightly by making rolls I began worrying. What if they're in too long? Do they need more or less time to rise? Did I shape them right? Honestly, it was guaranteed to cause a fuss from the get go, it's the first recipe and I'm already making an arse of it. Luckily, the kneading always makes me feel better, there's nothing like pummeling your worries into a spongey ball of dough. On top of that, everything seemed to be going well, my dough was as the recipe asked, it was as smooth as jazz. But then of course the proving (letting the yeast raise the bread) is the scary bit.
1 Hour ticked by and it had all risen perfectly. So splitting it into rolls and leaving it again was easy... timing it wasn't! I literally have no idea when it was that i started that process nor do I know how long I'd left them for, woops. So I put the "maybe-risen-maybe-not" balls of dough in the oven and waited for the taste test to seal my fate...

The Result:

Mmmm, Crusty!

So, as you can see we got some rather tasty looking rolls out of the job! Ok so obviously they're a little burnt but I'm sure you can forgive me for that, after all I was going by the recipe for a loaf (these took half the time). Luckily my nostrils were on top form at picking out the burnt smell before it was too late, fifteen minutes more and I am fairly sure these would have been black all over! The taste test is definitely the best bit, i had the smallest roll there and it was lovely and crusty and very tasty. The biggest one there on the other hand was a little burnt and a little yeasty tasting. Still edible but not perfect! I would recommend making about 12 rolls, these big uns just didn't cook as well!

On the whole though, not a complete disaster. Encouraging considering this is probably the most basic recipe in the book... I think I'd better invest in a fire extinguisher!

The Recipe is available in Home Baking From the Oven to the Table. Or Here!

Recipe 1: Crusty White Bread.

Ingredients:

Egg: 1 Egg Yolk: 1 Luke Warm Water: As Required Strong White Flour Bread Flour: 500g Plus extra for Dusting Salt: 1 1/2 Tsps White sugar: 2 Tsps Dried Yeast: 1 Tsp Butter: 25g (Diced) 
Cooking Time:

2 hrs Prep 30 Mins Cooking

Steps:

Step 1: Whisk egg and yolk then add warm water to make 300ml.
Step 2: Mix Dry Ingredients in a large bowl and rub in butter. Add Egg Water and work to Dough.
Step 3: Turn onto floured surface and Knead for 10 Minutes. Brush bowl with Oil, cover & leave in warm place for one hour (until doubled in volume).
Step 4: Oil a loaf tin. Knead dough for a minute until smooth. Shape to length of tin and three times width. Cover and leave for 30 mins to rise.
Step 5: Preheat oven 220c/Gas Mark 7 Bake for 30 mins or until Golden brown. If loaf is cooked a tap on the base will sound hollow. Leave to cool on wire Rack.