Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Bagel Bombs Part 2 - Garlic and Cream Cheese Bombs

I think I mentioned in Part 1 of this Bagel Bomb series that I made the sweet potato and bacon bagel bombs because someone attending the party didn't eat cheese? Well, I decided I wanted to have cheese ones anyway, so I made two lots.  I've started making both types every time I make them, just doubling the dough recipe (my awesome new KitchenAid can handle it!). I honestly cannot choose my favourite of these. Everyone else tends to lean one way or the other. I'm happy to eat two though. And usually, two more...

I don't have many photos from these ones, or at all currently. I've been very slack with my food photography . Which is possibly for the best, seeing as my laptop screen is cracked and it's not so easy to process them! Hopefully things will get back on track in the new year!


Dough – adapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook:3 ½ cups flour (I used 2 cups plain, 1 cup wholemeal and ½ cup spelt)
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tsp raw sugar
1 1/8 tsp active dry yeast
1 ¾ cups water, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil)
Filling
1x 250g packet Philadelphia cream cheese
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 clove galic, minced
2 tbsp oil (I used bacon fat)
¼ cup flat leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Egg Wash Topping:
1 egg, at room temperature
¾ tsp freshly ground rock salt
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp rolled oats, roughly chopped

Heat the oil to medium/low heat in a frypan and add the minced garlic, stir around until fragrant and starting to go golden. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Using a hand beater, blend the cream cheese on low until smooth. Add the garlic (include any oil left in the pan), salt, parsley and sugar, then beat to combine.

Using two teaspoons, roll heaped teaspoonsful of this mixture between the spoons, pushing down to compact slightly and put on a tray lined with baking paper. Put in the freezer for a few hours (while you make the dough) to set hard. This makes it much easier to form the bombs later. You will need 16 balls.

Stir together all of the dry dough ingredients with the hook of your standmixer in the bowl of your standmixer by hand. Add the water, and mix with your hand until it’s mainly come together. Attach the bowl and hook, and beat the dough on low for 5-10 minutes, until it comes together into a smooth ball.  You might need to add more flour to get the right consistency. Lightly coat another large bowl with oil and put the dough ball into it, roll to coat the dough with oil too. Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm corner for 45 minutes until the dough has almost doubled in size.

Heat the oven to 175C

Punch down and flatten the dough on your countertop. Cut the dough into 16 pieces and loosely cover the dough you aren’t currently forming with the plastic wrap from the bowl earlier to stop it drying out.

Roll each portion into a neat ball in your palms, then use your palm and fingers to stretch out into a flat disc. Place a ball of the filling in the centre, then pull all of the edges up and around the mixture. Pinch shut, then roll the ball gently in your hands to smooth into a neat ball. Place on a lined baking tray.

Whisk egg, then brush each bun with a generous amount. Mix all of the other wash ingredients together in a bowl and sprinkle over the top.

Bake for 20-30 minutes until golden, allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before eating because the filling stays quite hot!

Friday, December 27, 2013

Bagel Bombs Part 1 - Sweet Potato & Bacon


My husband has endured many a shopping trip with me detouring us past the Kitchen Aid Mixers, while I gaze longingly at all their amazing colours, before sighing and getting on with the boring shopping. So when I told him I was entering the Summer Bake-Off recipe, he supported me but was a little less excited than he normally would be. He’s always excited for me to cook more things, because he gets to taste-test them, so it was a little unusual! I chose to make Hot Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches (malt ice cream sandwiched between chilli chocolate cookies) and entered the competition.  Fast forward a few weeks to my birthday, and he gives me an I.O.U...if necessary. He was going to buy me a Kitchen Aid for a present, but he’s so confident in the deliciousness of my recipe that he didn’t want to buy one and end up with me having two. He said it was actually a bit of a relief, considering the pressure of picking the right colour! He’d been trying to get me to tell him which one I wanted, but I kept liking several colours.

Sadly, I didn’t win the competition, so Lance and I went and picked out a mixer for a belated birthday present. And the first thing I wanted to make in it is bread. I have been a little addicted to breads lately, and I had tested this recipe before as something  to take to a bring-a-dish Christmas party. I remembered seeing a cheese filled bagel bomb years ago on pinterest. I can’t find the original recipe to link to, but I do remember that the dough and basic idea came from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook. I didn’t get to the Milk Bar in my last NY trip, but we did have udon and pork buns at the Momofuku Noodle bar. The pork buns were amazing! So good! One of the attendees doesn’t like cheese (crazy, I know. Don’t worry, I mock her for this), so I though a vegetable filling would be better. And added bacon. In fact, if you have some, you can sub the bacon mixture from this for ½ cup bacon jam and it’d be delicious!

These are best served straight from the oven, so I par-baked them, then did the last 10 minutes at the venue.

Bagel Bombs Part 2 will be garlic and cream cheese bagel bombs! Both these and the garlic bombs have become my current most-requested dish! Any leftovers are perfect reheated for 10 minutes in the oven for breakfast!


 
Dough – adapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook:
3 ½ cups flour (I used 2 cups plain, 1 cup wholemeal and ½ cup spelt)
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tsp raw sugar
1 1/8 tsp active dry yeast
1 ¾ cups water, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil)

Filling
2tbsp olive oil
3 medium sweet potatoes
4 rashers bacon, finely diced
1 large garlic clove, minced
½ tsp smokey paprika
½ tsp sweet paprika
½ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp cinnamon

Egg Wash Topping:
1 egg, at room temperature
¾ tsp freshly ground rock salt
¾ tsp raw sugar
½ tsp smoked paprika
sesame seeds optional garnish

Heat the oven to 150C

Split the sweet potatoes lengthwise, rub oil on the split, then place cut-side down onto  a baking tray and bake until soft – around 40 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Heat the olive oil to medium/low heat in a frypan and add the minced garlic, stir around until fragrant and starting to go golden. Add the bacon and fry for 10-15 minutes until brown and crispy. Add the spices and cook through for a minute.

Scoop the now cool sweet potato flesh into a bowl, add the bacon mixture and mix thoroughly to combine evenly. Using two teaspoons, roll heaped teaspoonsful of this mixture between the spoons, pushing down to compact slightly and put on a tray lined with baking paper. Put in the freezer for a few hours (while you make the dough) to firm up. This makes it much easier to form the bombs later. You will need 16 balls.

Stir together all of the dry dough ingredients with the hook of your standmixer in the bowl of your standmixer by hand. Add the water, and mix with your hand until it’s mainly come together. Attach the bowl and hook, and beat the dough on low for 5-10 minutes, until it comes together into a smooth ball.  You might need to add more flour to get the right consistency. Lightly coat another large bowl with oil and put the dough ball into it, roll to coat the dough with oil too. Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm corner for 45 minutes until the dough has almost doubled in size.

Heat the oven to 175C

Punch down and flatten the dough on your countertop. Cut the dough into 16 pieces and loosely cover the dough you aren’t currently forming with the plastic wrap from the bowl earlier to stop it drying out.

Roll each portion into a neat ball in your palms, then use your palm and fingers to stretch out into a flat disc. Place a ball of the filling in the centre, then pull all of the edges up and around the mixture. Pinch shut, then roll the ball gently in your hands to smooth into a neat ball. Place on a lined baking tray.

Whisk egg, then brush each bun with a generous amount. Mix all of the other wash ingredients together in a bowl and sprinkle over the top.

Bake for 20-30 minutes until golden, allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before eating because the filling stays quite hot!

Oh, and I chose the melon mixer

 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

How the Focaccia - Lemon and Olive Wholemeal Focaccia





You know how sometimes you get given an appliance and it sits there? Or sometimes you even buy yourself an appliance and it just sits there. Well, I’ve got a few of those in cupboards around the house. And I feel bad, because I know they are probably really useful. But when you don’t have a great deal of time to cook already, it can be just too difficult to get out a new appliance and learn how to use it. Or even think about it sitting there. It may even be revolutionary in it’s time-saving-ness and it’s something you should be using every day…but it’s in the box and you need to read the instructions and. And. And…you don’t use it. And it sits there. You need a kick to get it out and use it.

One of those said appliances for me is a breadmaker. Stupidly, I grew up with a breadmaker, mum stopped buying bread and made it all when I was in high school, but I still didn’t rush to use my own. We don’t eat a great deal of bread in our house, so it just didn’t make sense to make my own. I already have to freeze a loaf and thaw/toast it as I need it. But then l I fell in love with pretzel rolls. Beautiful, fluffy pretzel rolls. Not having a proper standmixer yet, I had to work out another way of mixing the dough. And then it hit me. The breadmaker. Well, that folks, was the revelation I needed to start using my breadmaker.

Lance and I host an annual day-long BBQ for friends and family in October and being a full-day of drinking and celebrating – we need decent filling snacks to keep things from getting too rowdy. Bread is perfect for that.  This recipe makes a foccacia the size of a whole baking tray, so it's perfect for entertaining a large group of people.

I served this with maple butter. A little trick I learnt on the Sweet Escape Retreat. Drizzle a little maple syrup into room temperature butter and mix in well. Delicious.



Lemon and Olive Wholemeal Focaccia
2 cups warm water
1 tbsp yeast
3 tbsp sugar
2 ½ cups plain flour
2 ½ cups wholemeal flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp salt
1/2 cup olive oil
zest from one lemon

2 sprigs thyme, leaves picked off
20 or so pitted olives, sliced into rings
Coarse sea salt
2 tsp raw sugar
Drizzle of olive oil


In the base of your bread maker, stir the warm water, sugar and yeast together. Let it sit until foamy. Add the olive oil, then the flours, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Select the ‘dough’ setting and leave it to do it’s thing. Once finished, it should be a risen slightly sticky dough.


(If you don’t have a bread maker, follow the steps above but mix in a standmixer. Then put the dough in a large oiled bowl , cover, and place bowl somewhere warm for an hour or so to double in size.)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with paper and dump the dough out into the middle . Stretch the dough out until it covers the whole baking tray. Poke bumps and holes into the dough. Leave it to rise in a warm area.

Drizzle a little olive oil over the top and gently rub it across. You should only need a few tablespoons. Then poke the olives into the dough a little, so it ‘holds’ them. Sprinkle with the lemon zest, thyme, salt and sugar.

Bake until golden and slightly crispy at the edges. Serve with maple butter.

 

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Obsession - Pretzel Rolls



Pretzel Rolls. If you are like me and love nothing more than sitting down to freshly baked bread, still warm from the oven , smeared with butter - then these two words are going to change your life. One of the sponsors of the Sweet Escape retreat was LaBriola bakery, and they gave Alejandra (and hence us) a whole bunch of pretzel rolls. And they were good. Addictively good. Can't eat just one good. When I got home, I immediately googled recipes for pretzel rolls, needing them in my life. I've made these twice now and love them. They're not quite as good as the La Briola ones, but they are definitely an adequate at-home substitute! Both batches were gobbled up by my guests pretty quickly, so that's a fairly good indication of yumminess.

The first time I made them, I made the dough in a stand mixer that is woefully poor at actually mixing more than the small centre of the bowl where the blade sits and had to knead the rest in by hand. I can't wait til I finally get around to saving enough for a KitchenAid! The second time I made them, I used a breadmaker to mix the dough. This method worked well, but the dough ended up a bit sticky, so I needed hand-knead in some extra flour. Until I get my KitchenAid, I will be sticking with the breadmaker method, and checking earlier on to see if the dough is sticky. If you have a good stand mixer, then that will work.

As I said, these are perfect with just some butter, but also great as slider buns. Let's face it - any time you need a bun these are perfect. I realised I forgot to take a photo of them sliced up with said butter or fillings - but I was too busy eating them. Maybe next time, I'll pop it on instagram



Pretzel Rolls
adapted from here

1 1/2 cups warm water (as hot as your tap gets)
1 tbsp dry yeast
2 tsp sugar
4 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp melted butter
1 beaten egg for glazing

Poaching:
8 cups water
1/4 cup bicarb soda

Start by melting the butter, and setting aside to cool slightly.

Pour the warm water, sugar and yeast into the bowl of the breadmaker, stirring together. Leave it to sit for about 10 minutes until it's foamy.

Add the flour, salt and butter, then set the breadmaker on the dough setting. Watch as it comes together, and once it's all combined (about 10 minutes into kneading for mine), gently and safely touch the dough to see if it's 'sticky' to the touch. If it is, add a tbsp of flour at a time until it's not sticky. I added an extra 4 tbsp to mine.

Once the dough is a good consistency, leave the dough setting to finish and it will do it's first rise in the bowl of the machine.

For standmixer, follow the breadmaker instructions as above up until the rise - it'll need around 5-10 minutes of kneading time. Then cover bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm position for 1-2 hours until doubled in size.

Lightly flour your work surface and drop the ball of rised dough out onto it. Knead lightly into a flatter disc and cut into 16 equal pieces for slider sized buns. Take each piece and roll around in both hands, so you have a smooth ball. Place on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Repear with all the pieces of dough, leaving room on the tray for them to rise again. Place in a warm spot 30mins to an hour. They won't quite double again, but will look puffier.

Now it's time to prepare for baking! Preheat oven to 225C. Place the water and bicarb soda into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Beat the egg for the glaze.

Carefully slide each roll "flat" side down into the poaching water, let it sit for 30 seconds, flip it over and let it sit "round" side in the water for another 30 seconds. Flip it back over and fish it out with a slotted spoon and pop it back on the baking sheet, flat side down.

Brush each poached roll with the egg wash and slash a deepish line across the middle with a knife (if desired, you can sprinkle salt on top, too).

Bake the rolls in the oven for 15-20 minutes, rotating trays half-way through, so the rolls are an even golden brown and sound hollow when you tap the base. Allow to cool slightly before eating. Best served warm!