Bread

[Catrablue]

Hi,

I wanted to say a big thank you to Frazer and Jenny for sharing their bread expertise and knowledge.

Earth Girl, please could I have your recipe for damper bread with cheese and beer (and does it matter what sort of beer? It was lovely and I'm hoping to make it for a group next Friday, along with some laver soup.

Also my daughter has asked for the recipe for Welsh Cakes--she said they were so much nicer than the shop-bought ones.


And if anyone is interested, this is my method for a relatively hassle-free yeasted bread dough:

In the evening mix:
4 mugfulls of flour (Bread flour if you've got it, strong white or mixture of wholemeal and white)

Teaspoon or two of salt

Half a sachet of instant yeast (it fits in the palm of my hand)

Stir it all together

Add a bit less than two mugfulls of hand-hot water and stir until mixed.

Leave covered overnight to rise.

Break into bits and shape in the morning...add seeds / children or whatever you like.

Allow it to warm up if you can in order to rise, then bake / fry.

It makes a particularly good focaccia if you just use white flour--When shaping coat in olive oil, put it in something flattish and make dimples with a finger. Slosh on some more oil and sprinkle liberally with salt.


Thanks,

Cara

 

[Toddy]

Sounds excellent and a very good idea for a thread too

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

I'm not sold on adding children to bread though - would spoil the bread!

 

[Toddy]

....but they add such interesting colours thankfully the heat of the cooking should kill any buggits they add.

M

 

[Elen Sentier]

I'm not sold on adding children to bread though - would spoil the bread!

I quite agree !!!

 

[sandbender]

Thanks for that, it is now on my 'to try' list.

 

[Earthgirl]

Hi Cara

Thank you Glad you enjoyed it...

I'd liked to have met Fraser but he'd left by the time we got there.

You can make the damper bread with bottled or canned lager or beers but we find there's a slight bitter aftertaste from them.

We used a Co-op fairtrade honey beer, about £2 a bottle, easy enough for 3 loaves if there's any left ... lol... but any bottled ale you like will do.


Recipe is:

1 1/2 cups (or mugs) of self raising flour

a good 1cm wedge of butter

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

good pinch of salt

2oz of strong cheddar cheese, coarse grated. If you grate it smaller you end with a much doughier loaf

and just mix in enough beer to form a dough.

Cook in the centre of gas oven at mk5 for 30mins approx.

It'll go well with your laver soup.

I hope this helps

A variation I haven't tried yet is, instead of grating the cheese cut it into 1cm cubes and mix them in, my theory is that should just get nice melty cheese bits in the bread


Welsh cakes always taste best straight off the griddle... lol...

1 lb self raising flour
8oz butter
6oz caster sugar
6oz sultanas
and a beaten egg in some milk to combine.

A couple of variations


If there's anyone who doesn't like raisins substitute 4oz of choc chips instead of the sultanas, quick tip put the choc chips in the fridge before you add them.
or alternatively soak the sultanas overnight in some rum and add these instead

 

[Earthgirl]

Sorry just reading through what I wrote and forgot to say thanks for your recipe, I'm going to give that a go especially as I can just leave it over night. I'm not sure about adding children also... lol...

Here's a couple of pics of some of the loaves we all made.

 

[Craig88]

These are all great recipes, I intend to try them thanks for the share!

Sent from my GT-I8160

 

[Catrablue]

Thank you, and thanks for the tips about chunky cheese, etc. Will have to show the girls the photos--great memories!

 

[Goatboy]

Can I say cheers for posting the recipes up too. Always good to get new ideas and ways of doing things. They sound good. Cheers for posting up. GB.

 

[Emdiesse]

The cheese and ale bread was fantastic and went down very well over at the man crèche (AKA Dave's forge)

 

[Earthgirl]

Glad you enjoyed it

 

[Catrablue]

Sorry just reading through what I wrote and forgot to say thanks for your recipe, I'm going to give that a go especially as I can just leave it over night. I'm not sure about adding children also... lol... ]

Ah, when doing this at home I usually make the dough after the children are asleep, as then it only takes 5 minutes and isn't as messy! I add them in at the artistic shaping stage!

Any yeasted bread recipe can be left overnight I think. If it is warm it is best to pop it in the fridge if you have one handy to slow things down. The slower proving makes the finished loaf slightly more digestible.


I had a go at making the cheese and beer damper breads--they came out lovely. I added black pepper and wild thyme and used IPA, and there was a really good beery taste that didn't seem bitter. I also made a gluten-free version for a friend and added an egg to get it all to bind together better which worked well.

Thank you for the inspiration!

Cara x

 

[Earthgirl]

Hi Cara

I'm glad they worked out so well, so easy to do and loved your variations

In fact the variations are endless it's just down to what you prefer flavour-wise

Thanks for your recipe I tried it out last week, 3/4 organic wholemeal and 1/4 organic white flour, bloody lovely

Thank YOU for 'joining in'

 

[BlueTrain]

I wanted to throw in a couple of comments here about some of my own attempts at bread making in the last month or two. Mostly they all were flat and I wasn't trying to make a flatbread. Mind you, the taste is usually not bad but the result might not deserve the name bread. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Possibly using the wrong incantations or something. So I gave up and made one from a package, the one I used being a sourdough mix. It turned out quite nicely, actually. It was as least as light as expected but it still was a little flat. The directions called for two hours to rise in the mixing bowl, then transfered to a baking sheet to "rest" for another 40 minutes, then into the oven. The taste is good, it rose more or less as expected but the dough spread the width of the baking sheet. Anyway, it was as much in the way of an experiment as anything else. The grocery stores and bakery shops are full of all sorts of breads and if one looks, just about any kind of bread you've ever heard of, only the packaged mix is less expensive and the result will naturally be as fresh as it could be.

More to the point, however, I've always wondered why recipes for breads and most other baked goods (even if fried) always call for salt. Is there a simple and easy to understand explanation for that? What happens if you forget? I'm not complaining about salt, understand (which I refuse to refer to as sodium) but I'm just curious.

Another point here: a photo that was published in a book published by Lake Clark National Park in Alaska of the diaries of Dick Prenokke from the mid-1970 has a woman holding two loaves of bread. They were baked in large coffee cans, so the result was a loaf that looks like it was baked on end, which it was, sort of. Anyway, I always laugh when looking at that picture. But the loaves in the photos above appear not to have been baked in loaf pans and they're nice a round, unlike my squat sour dough bread loaf.

 

[British Red]

More to the point, however, I've always wondered why recipes for breads and most other baked goods (even if fried) always call for salt. Is there a simple and easy to understand explanation for that? What happens if you forget? I'm not complaining about salt, understand (which I refuse to refer to as sodium) but I'm just curious.

.

Salt slows down the yeast so that the gluten can strengthen in a slow rise. Without it the yeast can go mad making large amounts of gas fast resulting in large air bubbles and a poor crumb.

 

[Huon]

I'm not sold on adding children to bread though - would spoil the bread!

You'd certainly inhibit the rise.

I prefer to reserve the kids for the filling once the bread is at the sandwich ready stage.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[plastic-ninja]

The salt in bread does indeed slow the action of the yeast and also makes the bread keep better.
There are saltless breads in Italy ; mainly Toscano Rustica.
They tend to have a fairly anarchic structure and uneven bubbles and stale very quickly.
Possibly because of this trait, the recipes of Tuscany frequently call for stale bread and feature some very salty salamis and prosciuttos.
I need to come down to one of these get-togethers and make some sourdoughs.I was hoping to make it this year but Fate had other plans for me.Next year perhaps.
Cheers, Simon