Stressed Mum

Archive for the ‘Baking’ Category

A chilly, damp day in September seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out my new Mermaid pudding sleeve.

The Mermaid website did not contain the promised recipe but a quick google and a look at my recipe books turned up the right combination of ingredients.

I don’t often make puddings, certainly not steamed suet puddings, but this is so simple to make. You need to plan a little in advance as it takes an hour and a half to steam but once it’s made and cooking you can leave it be, maybe topping up the water if needed.

The pastry is a simple mix of 200g SR flour, 100g suet (I used vegetable suet), baking powder and cold water is rolled out, spread with jam, rolled up and placed in the pudding sleeve. Steamed in a few cm of boiling water it cooks beautifully and you have a lovely pudding just crying out for some custard.

My son went to France last week on an exchange trip with school and has returned a complete Francophile.

He now requires French bread for his school lunch so I thought I’d have a go at making my own. I used the French bread dough programme on my bread machine to make the dough.

500g White bread flour
1 teaspoon quick yeast
2 teaspoons salt
320ml warm water

The dough took over 3 hours to make. It would have been quicker to use the Kenwood but I wanted to just leave it as I was busy.

The dough was split into 4 portions. Each was flattened then rolled out to about 4cm x 30cm with plenty of flour.
Each piece was then rolled into a cylinder shape and the join pinched together. The loaves were left to rise covered with a damp teatowel for half an hour.

They were put into a hot oven, 200C for 15 minutes. A bowl of hot water was placed on a lower shelf to provide steam.

The result? Four delicious, crusty loaves to be proud of! They didn’t last long though!

It has been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, and stressful. I have been ill and one of my daughters involved in a car accident, fortunately she is ok just a broken ankle.
I decided it was time to get back to my blog and back to baking so this post combines the two!
Latest fun thing for me to make is bagels. I have to follow a low fat diet at the moment and they are great for that. I have tried out different types of flour and different toppings and decided that I like fennel seeds as a topping and 75% white, 25% wholemeal mix for the flour (although all white is good too!).
I use 450g flour, 1tsp quick yeast, 1Tabsp sugar, 2 tsp salt and 300ml warm water to make the dough. My trusty Kenwood Chef makes short work of the kneading and then I leave the dough to rise for an hour.
The fun aspect is dropping the bagels into boiling water with three tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it. After the dough has risen and the bagels shaped (twirling them round the handle of a wooden spoon is quite fun too!) they are dropped, 3 or 4 at a time into the water. They rise up to the top and you turn them over. After a couple of minutes you lift them out, drain off any water, sprinkle them with yummy seeds if you like and then bake them for 25 minutes. Delicious!
Check out my photo and give them a try, they really are easy. Let me know how you get on

Home made pitta bread

Eccles cakes

Gone a little mad these last few days. Baking mad. Made Eccles cakes, my husband’s favourite, and doughnuts, very popular with son and daughter (and me!). My favourite was the pitta bread. These were really easy and they looked and tasted at least as good as the bought version. Lovely with some houmous and salad for tea.
All of this baking means I have not done as much of my English as I would like so today is dedicated to working on that. No baking allowed, except maybe some naan bread to accompany the curry tonight! As well as my English I need to catch up with the laundry. A couple of days of rain stopped me washing as I have been using the lovely free fresh air to dry but I still have plenty of ironing staring at me, pleading to be smoothed out and put away. I’ll save an hour of that as a treat after some work on my assignment!

Hot, fresh doughnuts. Delicious.

Tasty Tiger Bread

The bread making has been going well. I made Tiger bread this week. My children love Tiger bread but I did not think I could make it at home. It has taken quite a bit of research and trial and error but I have finally come up with a recipe that works. The trick is in the paste made with rice flour, yeast and sesame oil which you coat the bread with before the final rising. Rice flour does not contain gluten so the paste does not rise with the bread but cracks to give the characteristic appearance of Tiger bread; the paste also browns more than the loaf when cooked.
I used a basic recipe for a white loaf, using sesame oil in place of the olive oil I normally use when making bread. During the first rising I made a paste with 100g rice flour, ¼ tsp salt, 1tsp sugar, ½ tsp quick yeast, 1 Tab sp sesame oil and 150ml warm water. When the loaves and rolls were shaped I spread the paste over them and put them to rise again then baked as normal. The results were very tasty but short-lived!
If you try this yourself please let me know how you get on.