Adventures in breadmaking
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:15 am
A few weeks ago I made a fortuitous discovery - that my local bakery will sell me fresh compressed yeast at a ridiculous price - A$5 for a 1-kilogram block. Across the road, the large Chinese fruit store offers 12.5kg bags of bread flour for A$10/bag. The net result has been a month of mad baking, a few extra kilos on the bathroom scales, and the purchase of a new Kenwood Chef mixer !
I've had great success with three different recipes. The first is a Jacques Pepin recipe from his book Encore with Claudine, for "Small Light Country Loaves". This is an interesting recipe, because it isn't kneaded much by hand at all. It is quite a wet dough made of 4 cups flour, 2 tsp instant yeast, 2 tsp salt and 2 cups cool water, all put together into the food processor (I used the Kenwood) and processed for just 15 secs. It is then allowed to rise twice (taking several hours each time), before being shaped into four flat round discs, which are then baked on a pizza stone in a steamy oven. The end result is a small, flat loaf, actually more like a large flat roll, with lots of holes in the bread and a crunchy crust, reminiscent of Italian woodfired bread. It also has the chewy consistency of Italian bread, and keeps quite well for a few days, possibly because of the slow multiple rises.
My second bread adventure has been in brioche ! Last year I purchased a magnificent book from amazon by Sherry Yard called The Secrets of Baking. It's a book of complicated, detailed dessert recipes, and I highly recommend it if that sort of thing appeals to you. It certainly isn't a simple short-cut cookbook.
Every couple of months, I try something new from the book. Last couple of weeks, I've been working through the brioche section. Her approach is a little like the Simply Ming cooking shows, in that she provides a series of master recipes. Her recipe for brioche dough is an absolute cracker. Apart from making plain brioche, I also used the recipe to make her sticky buns, which I've now had to stop making for fear of killing us all - they're THAT rich. The brioche is made in the stand mixer and takes a couple of days (it needs to have its second rise overnight in the fridge). It's a very rich recipe, with two sticks of unsalted butter in each batch, to which you add honey, sugar and cinnamon to make the sticky buns...
Finally, hot cross buns ! I know it's early, but I needed to get the recipe right before Easter - we're planning to take buns around the neighbourhood instead of chocolate this year. These have been well received - I make them without mixed peel to make them more child friendly, rise them twice (I've now become a huge fan of an additional rising, particularly if I have the time to put the dough in the fridge for the second rise), and when they're baked, I glaze them with a milk and sugar glaze. My son tells me it reminds him of Krispy Kreme glaze, but it's not quite that decadent !
Cheers, Celia
I've had great success with three different recipes. The first is a Jacques Pepin recipe from his book Encore with Claudine, for "Small Light Country Loaves". This is an interesting recipe, because it isn't kneaded much by hand at all. It is quite a wet dough made of 4 cups flour, 2 tsp instant yeast, 2 tsp salt and 2 cups cool water, all put together into the food processor (I used the Kenwood) and processed for just 15 secs. It is then allowed to rise twice (taking several hours each time), before being shaped into four flat round discs, which are then baked on a pizza stone in a steamy oven. The end result is a small, flat loaf, actually more like a large flat roll, with lots of holes in the bread and a crunchy crust, reminiscent of Italian woodfired bread. It also has the chewy consistency of Italian bread, and keeps quite well for a few days, possibly because of the slow multiple rises.
My second bread adventure has been in brioche ! Last year I purchased a magnificent book from amazon by Sherry Yard called The Secrets of Baking. It's a book of complicated, detailed dessert recipes, and I highly recommend it if that sort of thing appeals to you. It certainly isn't a simple short-cut cookbook.
Every couple of months, I try something new from the book. Last couple of weeks, I've been working through the brioche section. Her approach is a little like the Simply Ming cooking shows, in that she provides a series of master recipes. Her recipe for brioche dough is an absolute cracker. Apart from making plain brioche, I also used the recipe to make her sticky buns, which I've now had to stop making for fear of killing us all - they're THAT rich. The brioche is made in the stand mixer and takes a couple of days (it needs to have its second rise overnight in the fridge). It's a very rich recipe, with two sticks of unsalted butter in each batch, to which you add honey, sugar and cinnamon to make the sticky buns...
Finally, hot cross buns ! I know it's early, but I needed to get the recipe right before Easter - we're planning to take buns around the neighbourhood instead of chocolate this year. These have been well received - I make them without mixed peel to make them more child friendly, rise them twice (I've now become a huge fan of an additional rising, particularly if I have the time to put the dough in the fridge for the second rise), and when they're baked, I glaze them with a milk and sugar glaze. My son tells me it reminds him of Krispy Kreme glaze, but it's not quite that decadent !
Cheers, Celia