Tag Archives: Baking

Baking Bread at Loaf Online

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Apologies for the delay between posts but I have returned to work and it’s been a bit of a shock to the system after being off on maternity. Whilst I have been doing some work during my maternity in and around Baby G’s naps and feeds, now she goes to a childminder for 2 days per week. I try not to miss her too much and get some work done, with try being the operative word!

Not satisified with a day job, a baby to look after I all the rest of things that fill my life I have also setting up my own papercraft business as an Independent Stampin’ Up! demonstrator. My other interest apart from cooking is crafting, and being a demo is now becoming a big part of my life.

So that’s where I’ve been and why I haven’t yet told you about the completion of one of my 2011 resolutions. This year I wanted to learn to bake real bread and I particularly wanted to go on a course at Loaf Online. Once word got out on twitter that me and Jo of Jo’s kitchen were going, we had a few other tweeps interested and so organised a Midlands Food Bloggers (and friends) course with Tom Baker of Loaf Online. Now I’d previously been to Loaf Online as part my first foray into the food blogger world and so knew what to expect and was really excited about the reality of learning how to bake good bread, and what’s more consistently good bread.

The day began with some fresh bread (naturally) and tea and coffee whilst Tom explained what we would be doing during the course. It sounded like we had a lot to do … ciabattas, white loaves, wholemeal rolls, fougasse, brioche dough and not forgetting pizzas for lunch!

As Tom demonstrated the perfect kneading technique we learnt how to ensure consistent good baking with a few tips and tricks like the right oven temperature and weighing your water amongst others.

Then it was our turn and in pairs we set to work on making our dough’s. I loved how “hand’s on” the course is, as getting the right dough mix and knowing how the feel of it changes as you knead is really the key to good bread. Plus we had Tom there to check we had kneaded it enough and had a good dough to prove.

Bread course

Once the dough’s were made and left to prove, we were taken outside to Tom’s clay woodfire oven to prepare fougasse and pizza’s.

Tom built this oven himself (wonder if can get hubby to add one to our garden?!) We were shown how to make fougasse with it’s distinctive slits and then set to work to make our own. The hardest bit for me was trying to get the bread into the oven with the peel – it’s all about a confident sharp shove apparently!

Our fougasse were flavoured with the morrocan spice blend Ras el hanout and once baked put to one side to kick start our  bread bounty that we would take home at the end of the day.  Then it was on to lunch and we each to prepared a pizza to share with the group. 

During the day we also made the dough for the ciabatta,  which we all found quite tricky to work with due to the wetness of the dough, but it was good to do this on the course so you can get a feel for how wet it really “should” be. (oh yes, I did sit there smirking when the contestants on Great British Bake off seemed perplexed about the wetness of the foccacia dough!)

During the afternoon it was time to bake the loaves, buns and ciabattas we had prepared and the last job of the day was to prepare a brioche dough which we would take home to bake the next day.

It was a great day and I can say it made me feel more confident in baking bread at home.

Thanks to Tom and all the other MFB tweeps that attended for a really enjoyable day.

Mad about Baking

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I have always been a keen cook but tend to stick to savoury dishes and until recently my baking skills have been limited to my trusty carrot cake and a few cupcakes, or a couple of loaves of bread. However, with a date with the Derby Clandestine Cake Club looming I need to up the anti with my baking skills, and adding fuel to the fire is my weekly addiction to The Great British Bake Off so I have decided in the next few weeks to practice lots of new baking treats …… but where to start?

I do have a decent collection of cookbooks but quite often when I want to get creative in the kitchen and not sure what to cook I get out my trusty aid …… google! With a quick look at the BBC Good Food page and a search on UKTV food I was still at a loss at what to cook and went on the hunt for more recipe ideas.

I found this recipe at Baking Mad and decided to give it a whirl.

Chocolate Gingerbread

200g Molasses Sugar
4 eggs
50g Chocolate (Plain 65% cocoa solids)
75g butter unsalted
4 tbsp Yoghurt
pinch salt
225g plain white flour
25g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp mixed spice
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
pinch black pepper

Whisk the eggs and sugar until combined. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave oven. Stir in the yoghurt. Gently stir into the egg mixture.

Sift the dry ingredients together and gently fold into the chocolate mixture until well combined. Pour the mixture into a 23cm/9 inch greased square tin and bake for about 45 minutes Gas mark 4/180ºC/350ºF until cooked through.

Leave in the tin for 15 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack to become cold. Store in an airtight tin.

I really enjoyed making this and it was a simple start to my new baking adventures. Baking Mad has lots of fabulous recipes for me to venture on to and has a handy search function so you can search by word, ingredient, preparation time or by type of cake with categories such as Posh Puds, Celebration cakes or even Cake Stall Bakes. I shall definitely be seeking inspiration for my Clandestine Cake Club bake from there.

What are your favourite baking treats to make?

Fresh from the Oven – Carrot & Walnut Bread

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This is my first entry into the Fresh from the Oven challenge which encourages bakers to test their boundaries and venture into new recipes one loaf at a time. This month the challenge was set by Sally of My Custard Pie who wanted to assist vegetable growers with the over abundance of vegetables in their season by using them in bread. She made some gorgeous looking courgette cluster rolls and whilst I was tempted to give them a go I was suffering with an abundance of carrots in my vegetable rack. Normally these would be transformed into my infamous carrot cake but I thought I’d try a bread with carrot.

After a quick google I found this recipe on the ever faithful BBC GoodFood site.

Carrot & Walnut Bread

350g plain flour
150g wholemeal flour,
1tsp salt,
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda,
150g carrots, peeled and grated,
handful of walnuts, toasted and chopped
300ml low fat Greek yoghurt
125ml semi-skimmed milk

Pre-heat the oven to 230C. Mix the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then stir in the carrot, walnuts, yoghurt and enough of the milk to make it a soft, quite sticky, dough.

Tip onto a floured surface and form a flat ball, put on a baking sheet, slash the top and bake for 30 minutes until risen and cooked. Listen for the hollow sound as you tap it.

This was a really enjoyable. Perfect with some strong cheese or even just slathered in some butter.

Thanks to Sally for hosting this months challenge and I’m sure I’ll be back next month.

Hasta la proxima / until next time

Welcome aboard

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Now hopefully you might have arrived here from my old blog at Blogger so welcome to the new home of Comida y Vida.

The move and new website coincide with a slight change in direction. It has always been called Comida y Vida / Food and Life and the majority of writing has covered my foodie adventures with a little sprinkling of my life.

With the arrival of Grace, aka Baby G, my time and focus has obviously changed. Gone are the days of whiling away hours in the kitchen cooking up a feast, or dining out on a regular basis. So this blog is changing to reflect that, there will more of a balance between Food and Life, with a sharing of my experiences as a first time mum.

It could not come at a more appropriate time as Baby G approaches the age where she will begin her foodie adventures, so it will be a true tale of Food and Life, and I hope you’ll join me along the way.

So as a little housewarming present to myself I have baked these muffins.

Raspberry MuffinsRaspberry Muffins

120g self raising flour
120g wholemeal self-raising flour
3 tbsp caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
200ml milk
2oz butter, melted
170g raspberries

Preheat the oven 190C. Lightly grease the muffin tins. Sift the dry ingredients together, tip in the wholewheat flakes from the sieve. Beat the eggs, milk and butter with the dry ingredients to create a thick batter. Add the raspberries and stir them in gently. Spoon the mixture into the tins and bake for 30 minutes

So make yourself a cuppa, grab a muffin, put your feet up and have a look around.

If you’re only interested in the food related posts then click Comida on the link on the menu bar, for all parenting related posts click on Vida.

Hasta la proxima / Until next time

Soda Bread Made Easy

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I really want to get into bread baking (remember resolution 4 ?) and am eagerly awaiting my chance to go to a bread course at Loaf Cookery School with some fellow food bloggers and tweeters but until then I was inspired to have a go by one of the many foodie tv programmes I watch.

Over the last 4 weeks we have been shown by Lorraine Pascale, a former model now turned chef and patissier who has worked in some of the top London restaurants, how baking can be simple and quick in her show Baking Made Easy. (If you’ve missed out you can still catch up on BBC iPlayer at the moment).

In the first episode, along with some fabulous looking Blueberry and Lemon MilleFeuille, Lorraine showed us how simple Soda Bread is to make. A bread that requires little kneading and no waiting around for it rise is perfect for those times when you’ve ran out of bread and need to bake some with minimum effort and time.

So this week at 39 weeks pregnant and no energy to battle my way round a supermarket, I decided to give the Soda Bread recipe a whirl.


370g/13oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
130g/4½oz wholemeal flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
40g/1½oz butter, melted
1 tbsp black treacle
300–340ml/11–12fl oz buttermilk. (I only had a 284ml carton so added a dash of milk to make it the right consistency)

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 and ensure the top shelf in the oven is in position. Place the flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl and stir together. Make a large hole in the centre of the flour mixture and pour in the melted butter and treacle, plus enough of the buttermilk to make a loose sticky dough.

Tip the dough onto a lightly dusted work surface. The dough will be quite sticky. Knead the dough for one minute, then shape it into a large ball with a taut, smooth top. Place the dough on a baking tray and flatten it a bit. The easiest way to do this is with a rolling pin.

Take a wooden spoon, put some flour over the whole handle, then hold it horizontally over the bread. Put the wooden spoon handle on top of the bread then push it down until you feel the baking tray at the bottom. This mark is the first half of the trademark soda bread cross. Repeat with a line at right angles to this.

Dust with some flour then bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes, or until the bread is brown, has risen nicely and the dough inside where the cross was made is not damp.

I was really pleased with how it turned out and no sooner was it out of the oven than I was slathering a slice with butter and devouring like I was eating for more than two!! I really liked the nutty sweet flavour it had, and whilst the texture was dense the crust was deliciously crunchy.

I then later served it with some homemade Carrot and Ginger soup and the next day I toasted and topped it with some cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Lorraine made it look easy,  as so many chefs do on these programmes, but I have to say this time it really was easy and definitely one I will be using again and again.

I am also entering this into English Mum’s Fresh bread Bakeoff, so if you fancy baking some bread pop on over and let the Queen of blogging know.

Hasta luego

Chocolate y Churros

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Oh my goodness, I nearly failed my first resolution for 2011. As today dawned I realised I had not posted a Spanish recipe during January. I guess being 9 months pregnant I could have claimed maternity leave, but not one to shirk my duties, here it is.

Whenever I travel I always like to try the local dishes and when I lived in Spain I fully immersed myself into the Spanish culture and aimed to try all the traditional dishes. One of the things on my list to do was try “Churros con Chocolate”, the spanish version of doughnuts. In Madrid the dish is so popular that there are special Chocolaterias which serve it and during my time there I sampled the dish at various places, but the one lasting memory is my visit to San Gines, the oldest chocolateria in Madrid. The traditional time to visit is about 6.00am after you’ve been out partying all night – the spanish alternative to a fry-up!

Now for those of you thinking what can be so special about Doughnuts and Chocolate, well the Spanish are very serious about their chocolate. It can’t be compared to the hot chocolate drinks we have here; it is a rich, thick dark sauce that is not so much drunk but used to dunk the doughnuts in.

In the winter, the thick chocolate coats your insides and warms you through, and with the winter we’ve had I’m not sure why I’ve never attempted to make this before, but I decided to give it a whirl and found a recipe online from the divine Nigella. What’s more it fits with the blogging challenge set by Maison Cupcake “Forever Nigella” for this month of Seduced by Chocolate.

 

ForeverNigella_Banner_02

I based my efforts on the following recipe but added some of my own touches and tips for the method.

Churros
50g caster sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp olive oil
250mL freshly boiled water

Chocolate Sauce
100g dark chocolate – use 70% cocoa solids.
1 table spoon golden Syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
150ml double cream
50ml milk – add more if the sauce is too bitter.

To make the chocolate sauce you need to put all the ingredients in a bowl over a pan of boiling water and allow the chocolate to melt to form a rich sauce.  For the Churros add the flour and baking powder to the bowl and then mix the oil and boiling water into the flour to make a sticky dough. Leave to rest for 10 minutes. Heat the oil in a fryer to 170C (If using a pan on the hob heat until a small piece of bread browns in less than 30 seconds).

Then place the dough into a piping bag with a star-shaped nozzle. (I used a glass to site the piping bag in as the dough is very sticky to deal with). Squeeze lengths of the dough into the hot oil. In a fryer the best way is to move the piping bag horizontally and then lifting up the bag to create lengths of 5cm. Fry for about 3 to 4 minutes until crispy and golden. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with caster sugar.

They were lovely and worth the effort as the dough is not the easiest thing to work, especially with hot oil. Though I’m sure it will get easier to do with a little practice – and I’m definitely going to practice this again!! 

Midland Foodie Bloggers Meet the Carrot Cake!

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Well it’s time for post number three and my first thing to share with you was the recent meetup with other foodie bloggers from the Midlands. Whilst I love reading tweets and blogs of the London based foodies, they are always read with a tinge of envy that I seem to live in a barren wasteland as far as other foodie bloggers go, and then from a surf around I stumbled across the West Midlands Blogger Group on UKBFA. Luckily for me Jo from Jo’s Kitchen had organised a meet-up and I was just in time to get myself on the invite list (despite feeling like a bit of a fraud with just 2 posts to my name!!).

So on a lovely March saturday afternoon I made my way to the venue for the gathering, Loaf in Cotteridge and the home of Tom Baker. Tom is an advocate of real local food and set up Loaf Online to promote food that is grown, produced and prepared in and around Birmingham. His ventures have now gone on to develop a Cookery School offering classes in forgotten skills like breadmaking, butchery and foraging, and a Community Bakery, providing artisan rye and sourdough breads to locals that commit to buy. Apart from being a genuinely nice bloke he is really does have an infectious enthusiasm for local food, something I am very keen to promote.

The other participants in the inaugral meeting of Midlands Food Bloggers included the organiser Jo , a foodie blogger from Halesowen who is keen to give us Midlanders a taste of what London foodies have become accomstumed to (well done Jo) and Charlene from Coventry and author of No Love Sincerer who like me, loves to share her culinary adventures. Lastly, but most definitely not least, was Wendy from Peters Yard, a producer of the finest tasting crispbreads I have ever tasted. Seriously!! Now you may hear the word crispbread and think of Ryvita or some other such cardboard tasting like brand, but trust me these are worlds away from that. Crunchy with a lovely savoury flavour and a lightness that can only come from the fact they are handmade. Wendy kindly brought samples for us to try with Brock Hall Farm goats cheese, which is the one of the nicest goats cheese I have had, subtle flavour and lovely creamy texture and with the added bonus that it is produced less than an hour away. The crispbreads were a perfect start to the meeting and I’m so glad Wendy brought a pack for us to take home with us so I can indulge some more!!

After a round of introductions and a natter we got down to some foodie business, kicking off with making some handmade pizzas to cook in the brick oven for which Tom had prepared the dough and we had all contributed to a range of toppings.

 

You can just see one of the pizzas cooking (it looks round so it’s definitely not mine, as I could only manage a triangle!!), it only takes 3-4 minutes, and tasted divine!

Despite feeling a little full, we ventured onto an ecletic collection of desserts. Jo had made some Rocky Road (recipe on her blog here), a chocolatey delight that combines a little crunch with some gooey marshmallowness (is that a word?). Charlene had made her first ever batch of scones as if she was a seasoned WI lady, truly delicious!

I contributed with some carrot cake (a favourite of my family and friends), which I’m pleased to say went down well and was later describe by Tom with the following tweet
@Loafonline -I’d just like everyone to know that @louisesims makes the best carrot cake. That’s all. 

and highlighted on Charlenes blog about this very event.(check her article out as she has some fab pictures). Seen as it was well received I thought I would share the recipe. I think it is from a Womans Weekly cookbook but all I have is a photocopy page in my trusty recipe binder (so if anyone recognizes the recipe, please let me know so I can attribute it correctly)

Carrot Cake

250ml of sunflower oil (I have used vegetable too and not noticed any difference)
225g light brown sugar
3 large eggs (or sometimes I use 4 normal size)
225g self-raising flour
large pinch of salt
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
250g carrots, peeled and coarsely grated.

Using an electric whisk, whisk the oil and sugar together to combine, and then whisk in eggs one at a a time.Sift in flour, salt and spices over the mixture and fold in with a metal spoon so as not to knock the air out of it. Tip in carrots and fold in till all combined.

Then you can either divide the mixture into two 7inch sandwich tins or bake in one larger one (depends if you want to have a cream filling layer in the middle). Bake for 30-40 mins at 180C until a skewer comes out clean. (This may take a little longer if cooking just one cake,) leave in tins to cool for 10 mins, then tip out onto wire rack to finish cooling.

For the frosting combine 225g of cream cheese with 25g of icing sugar and a drop of vanilla extract.

Sorry no pictures to post of the cake as forgot before I went to event and then the leftovers had all been scoffed by hubby and sister before I got chance to take a picture. (May add a photo when I next bake it, which I’m sure won’t be far away!).

So all in all it was a Saturday afternoon well spent with fellow foodie bloggers, eating delicious food, swopping foodie (and other) stories, and I for one can’t wait till the next time.