How to Make Buckwheat Focaccia

Making bread at home is fairly easy. All you need is good quality yeast, flour, water and a bit of salt, at the very basic level. Once you're confident with that you can easily expand your repertoire with a few more ingredients and even with different kinds of flour. I find focaccia to be one of the easiest breads for beginner bakers like me. I've made innumerable focaccias and so far, thankfully, I've had no disasters! 

On a recent visit to the market the hubby and I picked up a packet of buckwheat flour. The plan was to use it to make pancakes in place of the regular APF pancakes I was making. 

buckwheat flour

I happened to make bread at home soon after and we immediately wondered how a focaccia with some buckwheat flour would taste. I did search on the Net but found recipes that were purely for those looking for vegan or gluten free breads. Since those required ingredients I didn't have I decided to just see what happened if I replaced a certain amount of APF with buckwheat flour in my usual focaccia recipe. As you can see in the picture above, it worked! 

Buckwheat Focaccia

2.5 cups all purpose flour

1 cup buckwheat flour

1.5 tbsp sugar

2.25 tsp instant yeast

1.5 tsp salt

1 cup tepid water

1/4 cup good quality olive oil

extra olive oil

toppings of your choice - garlic, sun dried tomatoes, olives, jalapenos, etc

In a large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer mix all the dry ingredients and the olive oil. Stir for a couple of minutes to mix. Use the dough hook if you're using a stand mixer. Now pour the water into the mixture in two lots, mixing well in between additions. Don't add all the water unless you need to. Mix the dough combining all the ingredients till it comes together. 

If you're kneading by hand tip the dough out onto your cleaned and lightly oiled work surface and knead for a good 15 minutes till the dough comes together in a soft, slightly sticky ball. Add dry flour if the dough is too sticky but work at it steadily with a gentle hand. 

You can let your stand mixer do the kneading, it turns out just as well. Keep an eye on things and add a bit of dry flour if required. 

Once the dough is ready shape it into a neat ball and put it into a large greased (with olive oil) bowl to rise. Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel and leave it undisturbed in a warm spot till it has doubled in volume. 

Now turn out the risen dough onto your work surface and deflate it gently. Divide the dough into two and shape two loaves by gently patting the dough onto baking sheets. You can make the loaves thick or thin, as you like. Press holes into the surface of the loaf with your finger tips and poke in slivers of garlic, bits of rosemary, sun dried tomatoes or any other topping. Leave the loaves to rise for another 25-30 minutes. 

While the loaves are proofing set your oven to preheat at 200C. Once the loaves have risen properly slather generously with olive oil and bake for 15-18 minutes till done. When you tap on the loaf you should hear a firm hollow sound. The buckwheat flour will give you a darker loaf so don't go by how brown the loaf has become. 

Remove from the oven and brush with more olive oil. Let the breads cool and then slice up and serve. Enjoy the focaccia with bowls of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, soft cream cheese, and some cold cuts, or pair it with a hearty bowl of soup. You can also make superb sandwiches with this bread. 

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Grana Padano Pull Apart Rolls

If there's one thing that cheers up the hubby it's the smell of bread baking. He'd been bugging me to make bread at home for quite some time but for one reason or the other it just wasn't happening. This morning I decided nothing was going to get in the way - I was going to bake some bread no matter what. Something simple, comforting, and easy to put together with whatever I had in the fridge and pantry. 

After rooting around I found a jar of sun dried tomato pesto and a wedge of Grana Padano cheese among a whole lot of other things and thought of using the two in pull apart rolls. Pull aparts are among the easiest breads you can make at home, and if you're a beginner with breads, these rolls will boost your confidence for sure. Simply make the basic dough, knead for a bit, let it rise, roll out, slather with filling, roll up, slice into portions, place in baking tin, let rise again, and bake. That's it. It's just the initial kneading that requires some attention, and once that's done it's a matter of following a simple procedure step by step.

I've made pull aparts with many different fillings - some sweet, some savoury - and there's no end to the variety of possibilities. Tomato and cheese is a classic combination and it works very well in breads too. In these rolls I used Grana Padano, a hard cheese from Italy that is similar to Parmesan. In fact, you can use Parmesan instead if you prefer. 


Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Grana Padano Pull Apart Rolls


200 gms all purpose flour
2 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp sugar
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp butter, softened
1 tsp salt
3-4 tsp sun dried tomato pesto
1/2 cup Grana Padano, grated
extra butter for brushing

Mix the sugar and yeast in a bowl and then pour the luke warm water over both. 

Take flour in a clean mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast-sugar mix. Bring it all together with a pastry cutter (it's less messy) or simply mix with your fingers. You will have a sticky dough. Remove from the bowl to your floured work surface. 

On the side of your work surface mix the butter and salt with your fingers, rubbing in a light circular motion, fingers parallel to the surface. Once the butter looks pale and foamy mix it into the dough. Now knead gently till you have a soft pliable dough, stretching and folding as you go. Dust with dry flour as required if the dough is too sticky. Knead for 10 to 12 minutes. 

Roll the dough into a ball and place it in a clean bowl to rise. Cover with a damp cloth and leave it to double. This should take around 20 to 30 minutes depending on the weather. 

Once the dough has doubled remove it onto your floured work surface. Deflate it gently and knead it for a minute. 

Roll out the dough into a largeish rectangle. Try to get a uniform shape or you will have lop-sided rolls. Spread a generous few dollops of the sun dried tomato pesto going to the edges of the rectangle. Try to drain out as much of the oil as possible from the pesto (when baking, the oil will settle to the bottom of your baking tin and you will end up with 'fried' bits). Grate the cheese over the pesto uniformly. 

Now carefully roll the rectangle Swiss-roll style. Do this gently or your roll will be lumpy and loose. Tighten the roll as you go. You will have a long roll of dough. Cut into rolls with a sharp non serrated knife or a dough scraper. Arrange the rolls loosely in a baking tin, cut sides horizontal, leaving enough room for the rolls to prove and swell till they are double, or just squashed up closely with each other. Use more than one tin if they don't all fit into one, but don't crowd them. 

Once they have proved pop them into a preheated oven at 200C and bake for around 20 minutes till the tops are a nice golden brown. Brush with a bit of butter as soon as you take them out of the oven. 

Serve them warm or enjoy them at leisure with a bowl of soup. 

Cherry Chocolate Cake

My pantry was suddenly full of cherries. No, not fresh ones though it's the season for them now, but bottled cherries. I'd bought a couple of kinds from my favourite shop in Crawford Market where I shop for goodies occasionally, and then Saee gave me some more. While I'm not a fan of fruit the hubby loves them and always waits eagerly for me to make something exciting with fruit in it. With such a flood of cherries it went without saying that I'd be making something with them soon.

I browsed around on Pinterest, my favourite source of ideas and inspiration, and came across this exceptionally simple yet delicious sounding recipe for Cherry Chocolate Cake on this lovely blog called Tutti Dolci. I ran it by the hubby and once I had his approval I set about making it. It goes without saying that I have made my own adjustments and changes to the recipe and here is what I did, though I followed the method exactly.

Cherry Chocolate Cake

3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup or 60 gms butter
2 tbsp preserving syrup from cherries
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk with a tsp of lemon juice stirred in
enough cherries preserved in syrup to decorate

Preheat the oven at 180C.

In a clean mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients.

In another bowl whisk the sugar and butter till light and creamy. I did this in my stand mixer. You can do it in a bowl with a hand held electric mixer or even by hand with a whisk. Use small grain sugar. I added a couple of tablespoons of the cherry syrup at this stage.

Once the sugar and butter are creamed well add the egg and the vanilla and beat well. Slow down the speed of the mixer and pour in a bit of the flour mixture and mix. Add some of the lemon and milk mix. Beat to mix. Add the dry mix and the liquid in alternates and blend it all in well to make a smooth satiny batter.

Smear the insides of an 8 inch round cake tin thinly with butter. Pour in the batter. Dot the top with as many cherries as you can but don't squash them too tight. The cherries will sink into the cake and, since they're preserved and not fresh ones, might even disintegrate into the cake. Don't worry, the cake will be delish anyway. Bake for around 25 minutes. Check with a thin skewer to see if it's done -the skewer should come out clean.

Cool the cake in the tin before removing. Ideally, use a loose bottomed tin so you can unmould it more easily. If, like me, you're using a regular tin wait patiently till the cake is cooled before you try to remove it or the cake might break.

Dust the top lightly with powdered sugar if you like and serve. A scoop of vanilla ice cream alongside a warmed slice of this cake would also be magical!

Marathon Bloggers

Challah - A Bread and a Milestone

I've just treated myself to a beautiful wooden chopping board that I bought from 42 Design Studio. A lovely paddle shaped board with beautiful wood grain, I lost my heart when I first saw the photos on Facebook. I promptly ordered one for myself already imagining the photos I would take with this beauty as a prop!

Finally it arrived and I couldn't wait to use it. I thought a nice loaf of bread would be perfect to inaugurate the board.

I wanted to make something I hadn't tried before and I wanted something that would be fitting for such a lovely addition to my blogging toys. Yes, that's what they are - toys that we bloggers play with :)

Once I started getting more interested in homemade bread I did what most of us do - joined a couple of interest groups on Facebook. I looked in the files of one of the groups and read a few recipes till I found one that I felt confident enough to tackle and had the ingredients ready and available. I was going to make a Challah - a Jewish bread that's pretty to look at and is usually eaten on the Sabbath and on other special days. In fact, there are versions of this bread all across Europe.

I gathered the ingredients, cleaned my work space thoroughly, and set out to make my Challah. Things went wrong right from the outset. Though my yeast bloomed perfectly and I followed the instructions to the T there was no dough - just a big bowl of paste, or batter if you want to be more polite. I gave it more time to rise, since the initial steps were new to me, thinking that the cold weather was probably affecting things. Eventually I realised this wasn't working and I wasn't going to be able to do this bread by hand.

I cranked up the Kitchen Aid and poured the batter (!) into the mixer bowl. I dug out my flour canister and got ready to attempt to turn the batter into dough. I thought I needed to just add a little, bit by bit, and all would be well. It wasn't. The batter remained a batter and eventually I started flinging in fistfuls of flour instead of measured tablespoons. After adding as much flour as the recipe originally asked for I finally came close to a dough. It was still sticky but at least it wasn't pouring consistency!

I came back to my work area, floured the surface and plonked the dough on. A few minutes of hand kneading with generous lashings of more flour, and I finally had what I thought was a satisfactory dough.

I buttered a large, no huge, bowl and set the dough to rise. It doubled in half the prescribed time. I had no idea what was going on! But hey, it was supposed to double and it had done that. I wasn't arguing.

The dough was duly punched down and left to rest for 10 minutes as prescribed. It rose ominously in those 10 minutes. By now I was frazzled and not thinking quite clearly. I forgot I had doubled the flour and therefore ended up with a lot more dough than I should have. Ideally I should have halved the dough and probably frozen half. But I don't yet know for sure what dough can be refrigerated/frozen and what can't. But I did divide the dough, into two parts, just not equal ones.

I proceeded to further divide the bigger lump into three portions, rolled each portion into ropes and then made a simple basic three strand braid. It was rising as I was making the ropes an then braiding. It was like a dough possessed.

Anyway, I brushed it with an egg wash and put the braid into my biggest and only deep baking pan, lined with baking parchment. I left it to prove and proceeded to make a braid with the smaller lump of dough too. In the few minutes that it took me to make the second braid the first one had grown alarmingly fat.  I kept an eye on it and put it in to bake as soon as it had doubled. It certainly didn't take the 45 minutes it was supposed to.

Seeing how fast the dough was rising I shoved the smaller braid into the fridge so that it would go slower. I had to bake the big one and I couldn't take a chance with the smaller one turning into another giant loaf.

I could have wept with relief when I popped the big braid into the oven to bake. The recipe didn't say what temperature to bake at. I wanted to fling something at someone. Anyone. I took a chance and set the oven to preheat at 160 and then baked at the same for around 35-40 minutes. Just before putting the braid into the oven I brushed with egg again and sprinkled poppy seeds on the loaf.

I could have wept again when out emerged what looked like a perfectly baked Challah. Okay, it wasn't that beautiful, nutty brown, but otherwise it looked quite good. Just a tad pale and a little gargantuan. Well, actually it was ridiculously huge! The hubby is confident there's enough in that one loaf to last us a week.

Thank God for the smaller one. It turned out beautifully. And it's the perfect size for my board! Alls well that ends well, a few hissy fits notwithstanding :)

I'm sharing what I think will be a successful recipe for a Challah keeping in mind all the adjustments I made. I'm quite clueless why the dough chose to rise at such a speed but fortunately the bread turned out quite fine. This recipe will give you two loaves.

Challah

1 kilo maida or plain white flour
1 tsp salt
600ml warm water
2 tsp instant yeast
2 tbsp honey
3 heaped tsp butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 egg yolk for glazing
2 -3 tsp poppy seeds

In a jug or bowl bloom the yeast in the warmed water. Stir with a spoon and leave it alone for a few minutes.

In a big mixing bowl stir the salt into the white flour. Once the yeast is bubbling get ready to mix it into the flour. Push the dry flour to the sides of the bowl to make a well and pour the yeast solution in. Mix in just enough flour to make a paste in the middle leaving dry flour around. Cover and leave the flour paste to bubble up. This should take around 20 minutes.

Once the flour paste has bubbled add the melted butter, honey and beaten eggs into the paste and mix. Gather in the dry flour from the sides and combine to make a soft dough. (Since the proportions in the recipe I followed were wrong this step worked very differently for me and I had to add flour endlessly to get a dough). You can either knead this dough by hand on your work surface or you can do it in a stand mixer if you have one. Work the dough for around 10 minutes till it's soft and elastic, and not sticky any more.

Put it in a large greased bowl, cover with a damp napkin and leave it to rise. Depending on the yeast, the weather, and the various bread gods, this should take anything from an hour to two hours.

While the dough is rising watch a few videos on YouTube to see braiding techniques. There are simple 3 strand braids and there are many more beautiful, but complicated braids that you can also try. With two loaves guaranteed, it won't hurt to try two different braids.

Punch the dough down and give it a quick and gentle knead. Let it rest for a few minutes.

Divide the dough into two halves. Make 3 portions or more with each half, roll each portion into a rope and braid into a loaf. Brush with the egg yolk to which you add a little water. Just a teaspoon or so. Bread expert Sujit Sumitran shared this little tip saying the yolk and water mix will give you that lovely dark brown classic challah colour.

Leave the braids to prove and double. If your dough is rising too fast just pop it into the fridge. It will rise slower.

Preheat the oven to 160C and then bake your challah till it sounds hollow when you tap it. 40 minutes or so is what it takes to get there. If your oven has space to do one at a time you can leave the waiting braid in the fridge. Don't forget to take it out 10 minutes before you put it to bake.

Let the bread cool completely before you slice it. You can also pull chunks off the loaf using the folds of the braid to guide you.

The reason I'm not halving this recipe is because I found that the basic error in the original recipe was the ratio of flour to water. I don't know if there was too much water or too little flour. So till I figure that out I'm going to be making two challahs whenever I make them :)

This experience was a milestone for me. Today I realised that I do understand bread. I was able to make a good bread in spite of what seemed to me a flawed recipe. I am proud of me :)

Marathon Bloggers 

Pancakes!!!

I learned how to make pancakes when I was ...maybe...9 or 10 years old. I made them recently for breakfast, after a really long time and was flooded with memories of my childhood. This was one of the first things I could cook from scratch without anyone's help and ma allowed me to make it quite often :)

The thumb rule that I remember for pancakes is 1+1+1.

1 cup of milk
1 egg
1 cup flour, sifted.
Mix all three in a large bowl and add some salt. Let it rest in the fridge, covered, for at least half and hour.
In a small non-stick pan, add a little oil and ladle in the batter, enough to cover the base. Once it bubbles, flip the pancake and cook the other side. This should take about 3 to 4 minutes in all.

You can make them thick or thin, as you prefer. To make thin pancakes, simply add some milk to the batter.





Serve hot with honey, peanut butter, Nutella, cheese spread, jam, marmalade, sauteed mushrooms....whatever you like!! We had ours with honey and with bacon rashers.

Simply Delicious Shortbread

This is a recipe I have used time and again.. it is from The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits (Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook Series). It's an easy recipe and suitable for vegetarians too.

Here goes!!

You will need 250gms butter, softened.
2 tbsp rice flour/ground rice
2/3 cup icing sugar
2 cups plain flour.

Sift the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Rub the butter into the mix. Turn out on to a lightly floured board or table top and knead untill smooth.

Grease a 9x9 baking tin and press the dough into the pan. Level the top with a spatula. mark squared with a blunt knife and poke lightly with the tines of a fork.

Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes at approx 170 C.
Cut while warm and let it cool after. Cut and serve with coffee. Store in an air tight tin, of course..