Sucker for punishment - more bread!

Yes I might seem a bit bread obsessed, but I swear if it doesn't work out this time I will hang up my baking gloves. What seemed like a simple task is turning out to be a huge pain in my big fat greek bum.

Okay, here goes, one last try at making bread...here's another big fat 'but'....this time I am going to make my own recipe *waits for the gasps of horror*, technically it's not my recipe, it's the parts of the previous two recipes that I think worked. Who said there were rules when it comes to cooking?? Look at me crossing the line and hop scotching on it!

Recipe 1:
          - good parts: bread was a nice colour and nice size (nice? nice? Mrs Brown down the road is nice)
          - bad part: omg the overpowering taste of bicarbonate of soda and ensuing stomach ache!

Recipe 2:
          - good parts: bread tasted good
          - bad parts: shortest bread ever!! very hard crust, pale in colour

Recipe 1 + Recipe 2 - all the yucky parts = my recipe!

First to go was the bicarbonate of soda from recipe 1, I replaced it with yeast from recipe 2.
I added 100g of cake flour from recipe 1, I decided I didn't need the extra 20g as I was still using 600g of wholewheat flour from recipe 2.
I replaced the water from recipe 2 with the milk from recipe1.

I kept the yoghurt from recipe 1

I added a splash of oil from recipe 1

Because I'm a girl I can multitask and decided to toast the seeds at the same time  as I was warming the milk mixture

Feeling like such a pro!

 Side note about the seeds: the poppy seeds keep falling to the bottom, you need to keep shaking the pan to get an even distribution of the seeds

Can't see the poppy seeds right?

There they are, sneaky buggers!

I was so distracted by the disappearing poppy seeds that I didn't realise I had put the tub of yoghurt right onto the hot stove! DOH! Damn but melted plastic is really smokey! So much for multitasking...

Once the milk was mixed into the seed and flour mixture I decided to be brave and add 100ml of water. Both the recipes imply that the dough is fairly soft, but my results have been clumps of sticky dough. So I added the water.....

...and was pleased with the result

I used one bread tin and the dough filled it nicely. No more dwarf loaves!

I left it to rise for an hour, with no interfering Greek mother in sight!

I know I've said this before (twice) but it looks like this is working!

While the bread was rising I started preparing the butternut. Of course I am too scared to cut the butternut with my history of self mutilation so I roped my uncle in to cut it for me

It seems this problem with not being able to use knives like an adult is genetic -_-

Google is your friend..... http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/roastedbutternutsqua_89911

Who woulda thunk! Long live BBC! That recipe is shorter than my bread! 4 simple instructions,  that is exactly what I did:

And they turned out exactly as promised! Except it took an hour and a half to get them like that, not 45 - 50 mins, all recipe books lie. I might have gone a bit overboard with the poking and checking, whoops.

Erm sorry about the multiple stab wounds!

While the butternut was roasting I prepped the lamb chops. I was going to follow The Complete South African Cookbook's recipe but step 4 needs you to turn to page 175 and start making a whole complicated sauce then come back to page 124 to finish the recipe. No. I won't. Culinaria Greece wasn't much help either. So I winged it (winged? wung? *shrug*)

Drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, sprinkled some dried Rosemary, then a generous splash of lemon juice

While we're at it let's throw some dry white wine over them (Magdaleen's idea)

Hello Patra! See you in August

Oh for fucks sake! THE GARLIC! Forgot it, again. What is wrong with me?? Just tear up my Greek passport, I am not worthy

Magdaleen said to cover them and bake them at 180 degrees for 40 minutes, turning once. I turned them at 20 minutes and again at 40 minutes, then I uncovered them and gave them another 10 minutes on each side. They looked good but I grilled them for a minute or two just to give them that lovely golden brown colour

To recap and deconfuse: Prep bread dough, leave it to rise. While bread dough is rising, prep butternut. Butternut goes in the oven, prep lamb chops. I put the bread and lamb chops into the oven at the same time while the butternut was in the bottom oven (is it frowned upon to mix different dishes in the same oven? oh well, rookie mistake, OR pro tip!)

Once the lamb chops were done I took the bread out of the tin and popped it in the oven with the butternut for 10 minutes, just in case.

Haaaaallelujah!

Lo and behold, bread that looks AND tastes good!

The Great Bread Struggle is finally over. Quite proud of myself for modifying the recipes and getting it to work! Yay me

Bread – Round number 2

So my first attempt at bread failed horribly. Funny that, the recipe seemed super easy and foolproof (who you calling a fool??). I cheated on my recipe books because when in doubt – google is your friend. 

Five Seed No-Knead Bread, yes please!

South Africa - 2, Greece - 1


Ingredients:

This may not be news to some of you but we actually have 7g packets of yeast in this country! I was convinced that was a luxury reserved for first world countries

I also found Bake & cooking paper. You no longer need to use oil or butter, just pop a piece of paper under the food and hey presto. Even for eggs! Amazing!

...except it kept tearing every time I tried to put it in the bread tin, aaargh! *throws it in the cupboard and makes a note to find a gingerbread man recipe*

I even bought measuring spoons. Such a pro!

Okay so technically this is a four seed bread, not a five seed one. Potato potatoe.

 Toast the seeds in a dry pan for 3-4 minutes:

Instagram worthy?? Nah

A note about toasting seeds: poppy seeds live up to their name! Those things start popping after 3 mins!

Child labour. It's free!

Once the seeds are toasted and mixed with the dry ingredients they give off a lovely smell. This bread is starting to come together! Yay!

Still no Instagram heart :-(

Suddenly I remembered something we were taught in Home Economics at school! When mixing liquid into dry ingredients, make a 'hole' in the middle, then pour the liquid in and stir. This makes the dry ingredients fall into the liquid evenly each time you stir

Look at that! I actually learnt something from the old bag Home Economics teacher who said ridiculous things like if we didn't know how to cook we would never find husbands! Ha! Oh, wait.

 '...lightly mix until you have a soft and somewhat sloppy dough'

Ya this looks right!

 Grease the pan

She WANTED to help, I swear!

9 year olds don't understand the concept of 'that's ENOUGH butter!'

 '...divide the alarmingly loose dough between the two tins...' well I wouldn't exactly call it 'alarmingly loose', that stuff was stickier than a stick (You know that joke right? What's brown and sticky?...A stick!)

 Yeah it looks like there isn't enough dough in each tin but the last recipe (without yeast) said the bread wouldn't rise and it nearly overflowed! This recipe has yeast in it and says you must leave the dough to rise for an hour, it should rise to double the size, so these tins are definitely the right size, don't worry.

What is that? A loaf of bread for ants?? (have you seen Zoolander?)

Errrrm. On the left is yesterday's 'no rise' bread, and on the right is today's 'rising' bread. Errrrm. That is the shortest loaf of bread in history! Please note the poison bread from yesterday is untouched, not fit for human consumption, it is just in the pic for show, it's off to the hazardous waste pile next!

This is what the bread is SUPPOSED to look like ---->

Kids, don't believe everything you see on the internet

While not an aesthetic success, today's recipe definitely tasted much better, it's quite good actually. The crust is rock hard though, cutting it with a knife is nearly impossible, here have a chunk of bread. I left it in the oven for over an hour, this recipe lied too because at 35 minutes it was still very doughy and nowhere near ready. But at least it was edible.

Okay Little Red Hen, eat the bread

So what went wrong? Maybe my bread tins are bigger than the recipe lady's tins. Why don't these things have measurements on them?? Or MAYBE it was my interfering Greek mother who halfway through the rising time just had to get involved!! I walked into the kitchen and saw she had put the tins in the oven and switched it on, her excuse was that bread dough needs to be in a warm place to rise, she was just 'warming' it. YOU ARE BAKING IT WOMAN!! GAAAAH!!!!

Now that I can cook, onto baking!

Having successfully cooked a roast chicken and potatoes I feel confident enough to move onto the next step, baking! Freshly baked bread is surely the hallmark of being a great baker, if you can bake bread you can do anything! In my mind, baking bread involves hours of waiting for dough to rise, muscle-building kneading and general slaving away. Turns out it's not that difficult. Correction, the recipe led me to believe it wasn't that difficult. Mrs Magdaleen's recipe simply requires you to mix the ingredients and bake, that's it, no kneading, no waiting, quick and easy. Culinaria Greece requires some waiting and kneading, so even though their recipe was visually more appealing I opted for the easy route. South Africa - 1, Greece - 1.

Pretty, yes. Easy, no

In BOTH recipe books the bread recipe is on page 308 *cue creepy music and conspiracy theories*

Ingredients: Check!

Radio Romeos (Geia sou Giannena!) on full blast, live from Greece, via audio streaming on the tablet. God I love technology!

Let's make bread!

The first step is mixing all the dry ingredients together:

OMG! That totally looks like a heart!! Happy accident! I am Instragramming that right now!

I heart Instagram. And I heart hearts <3 <3 <3

Now comes the part where Magdaleen lied. The recipe says stir well, this assumes that the spoon isn't standing upright in very unstirrable dough!!

I resorted to a kind of kneading, it was more like squishing the dry ingredients left over into the clump of dough. I was tempted to add milk but I figured what do I know.

The next step/lie is to pour the mixture into a bread tin:

*unimpressed face* I should have added more milk.

Well let's pop these babies in the oven and see what happens!

Magdaleen (the compulsive liar) says: "Note: This bread does not rise very much, and has a moist consistency"

LIAR!!! After ten minutes the bread was almost flowing out of the tin. If this carries on while it's cooking for the next hour we are going to have words Maggy!

After an hour I took the loaves out but they were still doughy inside and were an icky white colour. I put them back in the oven, a couple of times. After an hour and almost 40 minutes I was over it! The bread looked the right colour....

......but was still a bit doughy on the inside.... well tough titties we're eating it like that now! Cheese will fix this

Emmental AND Gouda because who can choose?

Yes, I have been told that I cut doorstops instead of slices of bread. And don't even start on the cheese slices! I once sliced my thumb open while cutting mozzarella and went for surgery to fix it, general anaesthetic!!! I had cut a nerve and the surgeon told me in no uncertain terms that if I ever wanted to pick things up without them falling out my hand I had to go for surgery, eek. WARNING: BLOOD AND GORE PICS COMING UP, PARENTAL GUIDANCE IS ADVISED!!!

And another time, I took a chunk out of my arm while trying to curl a ribbon with kitchen scissors.

 

 A frikken ribbon.

I WARNED YOU!!!! Stop being such a girl, it's just a bit of blood.

See, my avoidance of the kitchen thus far is totally justified!

So how was the bread? (How can you even think of food after all that blood and gore??). Well, the bread looked good, but man was it nasty tasting! I doubled the recipe, so not sure if that means I should have halved the bicarbonate of soda? All you could taste was bicarbonate of soda!! I did eat two slices though just to show myself a little bit of support and encouragement. I spent the rest of the day on the couch reading a book, nursing a headache and trying to find clothes that didn't feel so damn hot on my skin...oh fuck.....NOBODY EAT THE BREAD!!