Pesto, herb n cheese scones

Now I don't often "post savoury" here but these are so good I had to share! I got an urge this morning to make scones but having a teeny bit of a cold I was too lazy and had to make do with some nasty white bread toast (that was sssssoooo good) and coffee! So after the caffeine kicked in and I'd read the March issues of Delicious and Taste Italia magazines I decided some savoury scones might in be order for lunch.

I've never made a savoury scone before, I've had them in Avoca but never actually thought about going and producing my own but now that I have the possibilities seem endless and I'm already thinking these would be nice with some olives in them, or leave out the pesto and herbs and do sundried tomato and cheese scones......................................yum!

So here's a basic soda bread recipe that can be turned into a loaf or made into scones, it can be flavoured or not and sweetened or not depending on your tastes.


For the basic recipe you'll need:

450g plain white flour
1 tsp bread soda/bicarbonate of soda
400ml buttermilk
1 tsp salt

To this you can add:

1 tbsp basil pesto (you could use any pesto you want here)
1 tbsp thyme leaves finely chopped
salt and pepper (only use salt if you've not used it already above)

Preheat the oven to Gas 8/230.

Sift the flour, salt if using and bread soda into a large bowl.
Add the finely chopped thyme to the flour.
Mix the pesto into the buttermilk and add to the flour mixture.
Mix well with your hands until you have a loose sticky dough.
With floured hands turn the dough out and pat into a round. Cut into wedges or into circles with a cutter.
Bake for 10-15 mins, the bottom will sound hollow when they're done.

I really think now the possibilities are endless for this recipe, any flavours could be added to the dough adding dry ingredients to dry and wet to wet if that makes sense.

Bread glorious bread............

just dripping with butter................

How do you like my "rendition" of the bread version of Food glorious food? I have to confess I'm a bread fiend! Any type even the nasty white sliced bread from the supermarket, as long as it's fresh or warm or toasted with butter or like this mornings breakfast dripping with lemon curd!

I've made this bread a lot of times and it's the same recipe I use to make my pizza dough. It's from Jamie Oliver's first book The Naked Chef and it's such a versatile recipe with lots of possibilities for flavouring the bread if you want to. Me, I just like it fresh from the oven and don't even need to put anything on it!

In saying that though have been consciously trying not to eat bread for about the last 6 months going from eating a full loaf of my favourite sliced bread Big Toast Brown every week to maybe eating only a couple of slices of the husbags beloved white sliced type and sometimes none at all! This was something I had wanted to make all week, once I got passed my lemon/citrus and pear cravings on Tuesday and Wednesday, curd and pear crumble followed these.


So after all my rambling here's what to need;

1lb of plain white flour, I use Tesco Organic plain flour or you could use 500g plain flour an 500g semolina flour
3x 7g sachets of dried yeast
1oz honey/sugar
1 pint tepid water
1oz salt

Blend the yeast with the honey/sugar and half of the water together.
Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the yeast mixture.
Make a claw shape with your hand and bring the dry ingredients into the flour until all the yeast mixture is incorporated.
Pour in the rest of the water and mix together, don't be afraid to add more a little at a time if it's kinda dry as different flours can vary I think and use more or less water.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 mins until the dough has come together and is springy and smooth.
Oil a large bowl (or use the one you've made the dough in washed out with warm water and the warmth will help the rising begin, tip courtesy of the domestic goddess Nigella) and put the dough in, scoring the top as this will help with the rise aswell.
Cover tightly with clingfilm and leave to double in size, this will take approx an hour. I normally turn my oven on to heat at this stage as it warms underneath the bowl and again helps the gluten to develop and the dough to rise.


Once the dough has doubled in size, knock it back for about a minute or so. Shape into whatever shape you want and allow to rise so it is doubled in size again.
My loaf was made by shaping the dough into 5 equal sized balls and then putting them into a 10 inch springform tin, 1 in the middle and 4 around the sides so it's shaped like a flower.
Once risen, bake the bread at gas 7/225C for 20-25 mins or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom (you'll need to take it out of the tin for this).
Allow to cool and enjoy.

We had this with an amazing chickpea soup below that's a meal in itself from the Jamie's Italy book that I'll blog about again, I've made it for my lunches this week and should get 2 days out of it. It's flavoured with rosemary and so fragrant and the best of all weight watcher friendly!

Oh cardamom how do I love thee..............

let me count the ways. It's much much more than a thousand ways I can assure you!! You may or may not know my love of all things cardamom spiced and todays recipe from Rachel Allen's book Bake is no exception!!! As I type my hands smell of cardamom and yeast and I am feeling satisfied and home-makery as I'm making bread. I always feel like this when I work with yeast....like a real baker and I love watching my dough double in size and feel very proud indeed when it comes out of the oven all golden and beautiful.

I must admit of late that I've been feeling rather underconfident about my baking, I went back to weight watchers a while ago and I think I must have subconsciously decided that baking is bad and that it's too much trouble to point everything. I've lost a good bit of weight, mostly for holidays, but I intend loosing more but am not being as rigid and strict with myself since we can back and am enjoying my food more as a result. So when my bread came out so well I think I got a little of my baking mojo back, the smell and the texture were divine, it's breakfast bread at it's best!!

So anyway, this bread smells amazing, there's yeast as mentioned, freshly ground cardamom which smells amazing to me, I added some orange zest and am sure thart some freshly grated nutmeg or cinnamon could be added this to dough too to make it more festive and christmassy, it's very easy to work with and comes together very quickly. I've never made a plaited loaf before either so this is an achievement for me and I one I will definitely return to again! This is the perfect breakfast bread, reminiscent of brioche with it's lovely eggyness and texture but much less work!


Here's what you need, courtesy of Bake;

125 ml/4 fl oz water
75g/3 oz butter
50g/2 oz plus 1 tsp of caster sugar
175ml/6 fl oz warm water
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast/15g or 1/2 oz fresh yeast or 1 7g sachet of fast acting yeast
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp freshly ground cardamom, I used about 40 pods as mine were kinda small but the recipe advises 28 pods
grated zest of 1 unwaxed orange
600g/1 lb 6oz plain flour, sifted

Place 125ml water and the butter in a saucepan, bring to boil and then set aside in a bowl and allow to cool.
Mix together the teaspoon caster sugar, 60ml of the warm water and yeast together and let stand for 5 mins until frothy.
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, the 50g caster sugar and salt together then add the remaining 115ml warm water. Mix together until combined.
When the butter and water mixture is warm add the yeast mixture and the egg mixture and stir until well blended.
Transfer the flour to a large bowl and make a well in the centre, pour in the yeast, egg and water mixture and mix*.
*I used Rachel's technique of making a claw shape out of your hand and mixing the ingredients to a dough, it worked very well and was less messy than I find dough sometimes is. Just keep your hand stiff and go in circles in the bowl, I'm hoping this makes sense!
Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead for 1o mins adding more flour if needed, I add 3 generous sprinklings of flour to my dough, it was smooth and pliable and felt loose after these and the 10 mins kneading.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover and allow to double in size, this could take up to 2 hours.


Preheat the oven to 180/Gas 4.
Knock back the dough and shape into a normal rounded loaf plait by dividing the dough into 3 and rolling each piece into a long sausage shape approx. 1 1/4 inches wide and 12 inches long. Pinch the ends together and tuck under neatly and plait the normal way. Tuck the ends in and place on an oiled baking sheet to allow double in size again.
Bake for 30-35 mins until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the underside.
Serve with lashing of butter and a cup o tea!!!


Oh and p.s I'd like to mention www.askaboutfood.ie a wonderful forum set up by John Maguire where us foodies can go to ask questions, there's also a new section where bloggers are asked to submit their posts too. Check it out at the link above!

Nigella's Lazy Loaf

This is from Nigella's newest book, Nigella Express. This isn't my favourite of her books (or tv series) but the recipes are fast and anything I've tried has worked out wonderfully. This is SO simple, to be blunt you literally feck everything into a bowl, stir and put it into a greased loaf tin. With this homemade bread is accessible to everyone

So for the ingredients:

200g sugar free muesli (I like Dorset Cereals muesli)
325g wholewheat flour
7g sachet of yeast
2 tsp Maldon salt or 1 tsp table salt
250ml low fat milk
250ml water

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and stir. Transfer to a greased loaf tin and transfer to a cold oven turning the heat onto 110/gas 1/4 for 45 mins, this will allow the dough to prove.
• When the 45 mins are up, turn the heat up to 180/gas 4 and bake for an hour. By this time the bread will be cooked through and when you tap on the bottom of the loaf it should sound hollow, if it doesn't sound hollow pop it back into the oven for a few mins without it's tin.

DIVINE!

It's a Bill Granger Weekend Part 1 - Coconut Bread

So Bill Granger is my new favourite tv chef. I love his laid back style and the way he's always smiling and he give off this air of total relaxation. I've been watching Bill's Food on BBC after Saturday Kitchen (which I've gone off a bit I might add, the lovely James Martin has come crashing from his pedastal) and am loving him, so I decided to bake a couple of his recipes this weekend; Coconut Bread and Lemon Pound Cake.

I made the coconut bread this morning when I was waiting for the husbag to come back from the shops with my Lavazza coffee cos I'd run out (shock, horror!!!!!) and let me tell you this bread is gorgeous and I also had left over dessicated coconut from Christmas and was looking for a way to use it up. Bill recommends it toasted with butter and a sprinkle of icing sugar but it's perfect all on it's own in it's lovely moist density.

So here's what you need:

2 eggs
300ml milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1tsp baking powder
350 plain flour, sifted
2 tsp backing powder
1 tsp cinnamon
225g caster sugar
150g shredded/dessicated coconut
75g butter, melted

So preheat the oven to Gas 4/180.
Lightly whisk the eggs, milk and vanilla together.
Sift the baking powder, flour and cinnamon into a bowl and add the sugar and coconut and mix.
Make a well in the centre and add the egg mixture stirring until combined.
Add the melted butter and stir but don't over mix.
Pour into a greased, floured loaf tin and bake for 1 hour on until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool for 5 mins before turning out onto a rack and allowing to cool.

Although there's cinnamon in this there isn't any hint of it in the final loaf so I wonder what it's purpose is but am sure it's there for a reason. My loaf tin is a pound loaf and this rose wonderfully but I needed to cover the cake after about 50 mins as it was very brown and not fully cooked in the middle so it probably had about an hour and 15 in total.

Comfort food - Banana Bread

Last Friday week in a certain large supermaket who shall remain nameless I bought 2 bags of bananas that were reduced as they had reached their "sell by" date thinking it was a fantastic idea obviously.

Needless to say they were never used so I made up my mind to do something with them and banana bread is something I've never made before.

I used a recipe from 80breakfasts as it's a blog I read all the time and remembered I'd seen this recipe ages ago and thought I must make that at some stage. I've measured everything to make it easier as opposed to using cup measurements but you can find the original recipe here should you want to use the original measurements.

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas (mine were very ripe but not black and I used 3 medium bananas cos I was a bit worried it'd be too banana-y)
• 2oz melted butter
• 200g sugar (I used raw cane caster sugar as opposed to white)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (not essence)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch salt
• 300g flour

I am lazy and played around with the instructions so here's what I did but if you want to follow the original recipe click on the link above.

• Put your bananas (I used 3) into a food processor and blend
• Add your melted butter, vanilla extract, egg and salt and blend for a couple of seconds
• Add the sugar and blend and then the flour.

The mixture is quite stiff but still very easy to work with, I made 2 loaves 1 in a silicone mould and 1 in a loaf tin. Both came out really well and the loaf in the pics is from the silicone and so it's lower but still gorgeous.

Enjoy!!!!