Baked Potato & Onion Seed Bread

I bake bread regularly so popping a couple of potatoes into the oven to bake while the bread is baking is always a good idea, if I don't use them for gnocchi I can always use them to make this bread flavoured with black onion seeds.

You will need:
200g of activated starter Click here for recipe and instruction
500g of Strong White flour
300g baked potato flesh
20g of onion seed
16g of salt
300g water

I arrange for the main fermentation to happen overnight, because I find it convenient to bake the bread early to mid afternoon.
Begin by activating the starter, then when the surface is showing signs of vigorous growth add 200g of starter to the 500g of Strong White flour and 300g of water and mix to fully amalgamate. Leave to rise overnight covered and at room temperature. In the morning grate the baked potato into the dough and add the salt and onion seeds. Mix thoroughly on a medium speed for three minutes to fully incorporate the potato and seeds.

Leave the dough to rise covered and at room temperature, stretching and folding every hour for 3 or 4 hours until the dough shows signs of good gluten strength. Be careful to avoid knocking out more of the precious gas bubbles than you have to.

Form into two lots and roughly shape into rounds. Leave on the work surface, covered for half an hour. Take the individual rounds and form into a nice tight skinned boule shape, sprinkle a couple of proving baskets with bran and place the loaves in seam side up. Leave covered for 2 to 3 hours or until the loaves have nearly doubled in size. Turn out onto a heated baking stone, slash and bake in a hot oven 240C for 30 to 35 minutes.

Notes:
You can vary this bread by using dill seed or caraway seed, also a couple of finely chopped sage leaves work well, especially if the bread is to be eaten with cheese.

Mulligatawny

The electricity went off this morning, fortunately I had risen early to bake ricarelli for when Sylvia comes over later with her daughter Jenny for coffee. Ricarelli out of the oven cooling I was checking email when everything went off.

It turns out neighbour's trees need to be trimmed by the electricity people and I should have been notified. I'm not good with junk mail but I do know there has been nothing from the Electricity Board so I gave them a ring. After finding my way through several key options I got to speak to a very nice man somewhere in India, he said he was very sorry and I decided that was enough for me.

I decided to use the time well so drove off to buy kindling and pony carrots. Pony carrots are in fact perfectly good but deformed carrots which sell for a fraction of the more uniform ones. On my way home I suddenly thought the sack of carrots was perhaps a bit on the large side so wondered what I could begin to make with them. Maybe it was the polite voice of the Indian chap, maybe it was the rather chilly and miserable start to the day, but Mulligatawny was what popped into my mind. So on arriving back home to a rather dark kitchen, I lit a candle and began the long but worthwhile task of dicing carrots, onions, and a potato to make my soup.

Fortunately my stove top is run on gas so having brought out my largest saucepan I began by frying a teaspoon of black mustard seeds and another of cumin seeds in a tablespoonful of oil. When they began to pop I added my finely diced carrots and onions and a couple of bay leaves. I had the heat on low and from time to time stirred the vegetables while they softened. I added a teaspoon of turmeric and a one of cayene, a thumb size piece of ginger grated on a fine grater along with 5 cloves of garlic also finely grated. I added a heaped teaspoon of tomato purée and a dozen curry leaves and gave the mixture a final good stir before adding two litres of vegetable stock. I use Marigold Vegetable Bouilon powder. At this point I popped up the garden to feed the chickens and noticed some tender leaves on my broccoli plants so I picked a few, chopped them up when back in the kitchen and added them to the pot, along with some chopped coriander leaves. I seasoned the soup with some white pepper and simmered for an hour on a low heat until the vegetables were very tender.


You will need:

750g of finely diced carrots
2 large white onions finely diced
1 large baking potato or equivalent
Handful of finely chopped cabbage leaves
1 tablespoon of oil
1 teaspoon of black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
1 teaspoon of  turmeric
1 teaspoon of cayene
1 teaspoon of tomato purée
5 cloves of garlic finely grated
1 thumb size piece of ginger finely grated
2 bay leaves
A dozen curry leaves
1 tablespoon of chopped coriander leaves
2 litres of vegetable stock

Notes:

I should apologise to anyone who doesn't recognise any of the above as a description of Mulligatawny, you could instead call it vegetable soup spiced with Indian spices.
You can of course use any vegetables you fancy to make this soup, It's really worth taking the time to cut fine dice though, the finished soup should be a broth, packed with little diced vegetables.

White Bread with commercial yeast

Occasionally, despite enjoying the best bread baked using wild yeast, I fancy a loaf of white bread baked using commercial yeast. There are few things finer than a slice of this soft tender bread, almost hot from the oven spread with good quality unsalted butter and some home made jam; the current jam is gooseberry and ginger made a few weeks ago when gooseberries where in abundance.

I made gooseberry, gooseberry and elderflower and finally gooseberry and ginger, using glacé ginger. Each has it's merits and all have succeeded in winning me over to gooseberries.

Back to the bread, even if you decide to use commercial yeast, and for me that means easy blend yeast, the type you find in sachets that you can simply add to the other ingredients, it is possible to improve the final result greatly by simply slowing down the whole process. I make the dough last thing before going to bed and place it in an oiled polythene bag in the fridge. You need to be a little careful to position the bag so that the contents don't migrate in the fridge, because even at 5 degrees, the yeast will do it's work and the dough will rise a little.

In the morning, at some point simply take the dough out of the fridge, stretch and fold it a couple of times and put it back to keep cool. If I plan to bake around early evening, I take the dough out of the fridge early afternoon, I leave it to gradually come back to room temperature and shape it at least a couple of hours before baking. This process works well for all types of loaves, and pizza. Extending the process in this way improves not only the flavour and texture, but also the keeping qualities with virtually no extra hands on work.

To make two small loaves you will need:
600g of Strong white bread flour
1 packet of easy blend yeast
9g of salt
400 ml of cold water.

Mix all ingredients to form a soft by not sticky dough. Knead for a few minutes only before placing in a polythene bag that you have dribbled a teaspoon of oil into and squished together to line the bag with an oily film. This makes tipping the dough out easier. leave in the fridge overnight.
In the morning, tip the dough out onto a work surface and stretch & fold the dough a couple of times before returning it to the fridge.
Roughly 5 hours before needing to bake the bread, tip the dough out of the bag onto a work surface, stretch & fold a couple of times and leave covered with a tea towel to come back to room temperature. 2 hours before baking form the dough into two small loaves and leave to rise until double in size. heat the oven to 220 degrees C and bake the loaves for 25 minutes until golden, the loaves should produce a hollow sound when the base is tapped.

Miche with 20% spelt

The addition of spelt flour in this bread certainly adds flavour, I used Prior's organic white flour 

You will need:
For activating the starter,
100g of starter from the fridge
100g of Strong white bread flour, I used Prior's organic white for this batch
100g of water.

For the ferment,
All of the activated starter
200g of Strong white bread flour
200g of water

For the main dough,
All of the ferment
800g of Strong white bread flour
200g of white spelt flour
500g of water
20g of salt


Activate the starter by mixing all the ingredients together are leaving, covered until you begin to see bubbles appearing on the surface.

Take the activated starter and add the ferment ingredients, stir well and leave covered until the surface shows a healthy amount of activity See fig 1. Add all the main dough ingredients except the salt and if using an electric mixer mix on a medium speed for 3-4 minutes. Leave the dough covered for a minimum of 8 hours. At this point I go to bed.

After the bulk rising time, add the salt and mix again on a medium speed for 4-5 minutes to develop the gluten.

Leave the dough, covered, to rise for and hour. Stretch and fold the dough to further develop the gluten. Repeat the stretching and folding two more times at 1 hourly intervals.


Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces and shape into boule. Place seam side up in well floured lined banneton. Leave, covered for 2 - 3 hours until doubled in size. Tip the first loaf out onto a heated pizza stone or as I do, a hot cast iron flat griddle, slash and bake in an oven pre heated to 220 degrees C, for 35 to 40 minutes. After 15 minutes you can move the first loaf onto another shelf in order to repeat the process with the remaining loaf.

Notes:
I used only 20% white spelt flour, if I was using the Strong white flour I sometimes use I would have increased the percentage of spelt. The mix is up to you, it depends largely on the density of the finished loaf that you are happy with.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon meringue pie is one of the lasting memories from my youth, in those days the meringue was thinner and the filling was often made using a packet of powder which you added  egg yolks and water ton and cooked until thickened; the lemon flavour came from a small capsule that resembled a cod liver oil capsule. There were clear instructions to keep stirring the mixture while it gently simmered until the lemon capsule had burst, releasing the essential flavour. The egg whites would then be whisked up with sugar to create the meringue, we felt very modern indeed.

These days making lemon meringue pie utilises the extra eggs I have on my hands from time to time.

You will need:

For the sweet pastry:

70g of unsalted butter, chilled
140g of plain flour
30g of sugar
1 egg yolk
pinch of salt
enough water to form a dough

For the lemon filling:

6 egg yolks and 1 whole egg
200g of sugar
The juice and peeled rind of 6 lemons
150g of butter.

For the meringue:

6 egg whites
150g of sugar


Make the pastry, place the flour, sugar, salt and chilled butter cut up into small pieces into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mix resembles small breadcrumbs. Add the egg and pulse again until it has disappeared  into the mix, at this point add only as much chilled water as possible to bring the mix together into a firm but pliable dough. If you add more water than necessary at this point the pastry will not have such a tender crisp texture, so add a little, pulse a little and add only as much as you need.

Place the pastry to rest for 15 minutes. I find the fridge too cold for this making rolling out difficult. However, after rolling out the pastry and lining a 20c cake by 4c baking tin, I put the pastry lined tin in the fridge for half and hour to firm up and dry out a little.

Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees C, place a piece of parchment paper onto the pastry, and place ceramic baking beans on top of the paper. If you don't have baking beans, rice that you keep just for this purpose will do well. The aim is to weight down the pastry so that it doesn't rise during the baking process. cut the parchment paper large enough to overlap the tin so that removing the beans is made easier.
Bake the pastry in the oven for 15 minutes, take the tin out and carefully remove the parchment paper and beans and return the pastry to the oven with the heat reduced to 180 degrees for a further 10 minutes. Remove and set to one side.

Make the lemon curd filling, peel the lemons with a potato peeler (you need to avoid any of the white pith at this point) and place in a food processor with the sugar and switch the processor on for 2 minutes to grind the rind up as fine as possible. I find this method extracts the most flovour out of the rind. Place the sugar in a pan along with the juice of the lemons and bring up to a simmer or until the sugar is completely dissolved. If you find the process of grinding up the rind and sugar didn't make the rind fine enough you can sieve the dissolved sugary juice at this point. Allow the mix to cool for a few minutes while you cut up the butter, add the butter and 6 egg yolks to the mix and place back in the pan and on a medium heat, slowly whisk the mix, you will fnd the butter melts at which point it's important to avoid heating the mix too much. The aim is to heat only until the egg yolks thicken the mix, turn the heat down and do it more slowly if you're anxious. Take the thickened lemony curd off the heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes, whisk in the whole egg.

When the baked pastry case has cooled for a few minutes after baking, pour the lemon mixture into the pastry case and return to the oven for 20 minutes at 150 degrees C. remove and alow to cool completely/

Make the meringue, whisk the 6 egg whites until they form soft peaks, add the sugar, I add it all at once, continue whisking for a few minutes until you have firm peaks and the sugar is completely dissolved. Meringues weep when the sugar isn't fully dissolved.

Pile the meringue onto the cooled base and bake at 150 degrees C for 20 to 25 minutes until the top is slightly golden.

Notes:

This recipe may well look like too much work (easy to understand why the packet became available all those years ago) but the effort is certainly worth it, the end result is a delicious sweet and lemony treat, a variety of textures and with the addition of pouring cream, a perfect dessert.

Bonus! the process of making the lemon filling at least up until the point where you add the extra egg, you have actually made lemon curd which can be placed in a sterilised jar and kept in the fridge to use on scones or used to sandwich a sponge cake.

The pastry will shrink a little from the side of the tin but I find it best to leave the finished lemon meringue pie in the baking tin (loose bottomed) until just prior to serving.





You can make the base complete with set lemon filling up to a day before, but add the meringue and bake only on the day it is to be served.