Stressed Mum

Posts Tagged ‘bread’

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

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.

When I decided to join the 21st century and write a blog I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to write about. I still have no idea. I do know that I like to write. I also like to cook, read, garden, watch Manchester City and sew. I do not like to clean, tidy, wash, iron…. you get the picture. I may write about cleaning, tidying etc. as I do those (almost) every day. I am more likely to write about the things I love.
The things I love do, of course, include my husband and four children so I may write about them too, but only if they do something interesting!
Currently the thing I love best is my new Kenwood Chef. My Mum had one of these when I was growing up but I was never initiated into its mysteries. I recently did some research (Google and talking to friends!) and decided to buy one with the proceeds of a few days teaching in March. I am a convert. I have chopped, sliced and mixed. I have made bread (lots), pasta, soup and cakes. I think I may be addicted to bread making. Looking for and trying new bread recipes takes time but the end result is very satisfying so I am trying to collect together a good selection of recipes. I will post on here any good ones I find.