The best everyday brown bread recipe

Part of the reason Melissa and I moved down to Brighton was because we wanted to make a major change to our lifestyle.  We wanted to lead a more simple life, taking less for granted and even though we would have a much lower income, we wanted to spend our money with local businesses and eating local food rather than blindly pushing a trolley down the aisles in the Saturday morning supermarket rat race.

Several months on, we've realised we can't cut out the supermarket completely - it's just not practical or affordable - but we certainly make more informed and considered choices about the food we buy.  We buy most of our eggs, fruit and vegetables from local greengrocers The Park Farm Shop, we only buy sustainably sourced fish, fairtrade chocolate and coffee and we have boycotted nearly all processed food in favour of making everything from scratch. 

Occasionally we do slip, but one rule we've stuck religiously to is our pact not to buy supermarket bread.  It's not always been easy, especially because I'm a total toast fiend and breadmaking takes a long time, but we've not bought a single loaf since January.  So I have now had plenty of practice to perfect my favourite bread recipe, which I thought I would share with you.

This loaf is my ultimate sandwich bread - it's got a lovely springy soft crumb, subtle malty flavour, and it always turns out lovely and light.  Some bread recipes can be fickle, but this one always seems to turn out perfectly every time - it's pretty foolproof. 

Everyday Malted Brown Bread Recipe
Makes 2 loaves or 1 loaf and 8 rolls

700g brown or wholemeal bread flour
200g white bread flour
80g malt extract (you can find this in heath food stores or Holland & Barratt)
80ml sunflower or vegetable oil
4 tsp dried active yeast (I use Allinson's)
30g demerara or light brown sugar
3tsp maldon sea salt, crushed (if you use regular table salt you will need to add more - try 4tsp)
540ml water

1. Dissolve the sugar in 180ml boiling water in a large jug, then add 360ml cold water so you end up with a 540ml lukewarm sugar solution.  Sprinkle over the yeast and give the mixture a good whisk then leave in a warm place for about 20 minutes.  This gives the yeast the perfect wake up back to life ready to spring into action and create a lovely springy loaf. 
2. If you have a mixer with a dough hook then this recipe is a cinch.  While your yeast is reawakening, measure out the flours and salt into the bowl of your mixer and give it a quick mix.  Make a well in the middle and add the oil and malt extract.  Once your yeast mixture has a nice frothy head of about 1-2cm add this in as well and mix until combined.  Leave the mix to stand for 10 minutes to absorb the liquid into the flour before kneading.
3. Knead the mixture using the dough hook on a low setting for 10 minutes.  I'm sure you could do this by hand if you don't have a mixer, but it's quite a wet dough so be prepared to get your hands messy and try not to add much more flour during kneading.
4.  Shape your dough into a round, then place into an oiled bowl and cover with a teatowel or dark plastic bag.  Leave somewhere snug and draught-free to rise until doubled in size (mine usually takes less than an hour but will depend on the temperature of your room).
5. Once the dough has risen, tip out onto a lightly floured surface and press down all over with your fingertips to knock out the air.  You can then form into a round and leave to rise a second time to improve the flavour and texture, but it's not essential.
6. Split the dough evenly into two and shape into rounds (or rolls if you prefer).  I like the River Cottage Bread Book method which you can see here.
7. Place your shaped loaves onto a well floured teatowel and coat liberally all over with flour. Cover and leave to prove until nearly doubled in size (this usually takes about 20 minutes, but keep checking regularly). 
8. Preheat your oven to 210C (195C fan assisted) and stick a large baking sheet in to heat up.  When your loaves are ready to bake, it's best to work quickly!  Get the hot baking sheet out of the oven (shut the door quickly to keep the heat in) and cover with baking parchment or sprinkle with flour to stop the bread from sticking.  Transfer your loaves to the hot tray and slash the tops with a serrated knife - this helps the bread to rise evenly in the oven.  Put the loaves straight in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes (15-20 minutes for rolls), or until you hear a hollow sound when tapping on the base of the loaf.

The bread keeps well in the bread bin for a few days and also freezes very successfully.  It's not too dense (unlike many homemade brown bread recipes) so makes it perfect for sandwiches.  It does take a while to make, but if you have a mixer with a dough hook it really takes very little effort and is far better than any supermarket loaf. 

As always, I love to hear your comments so if you give this recipe a try please let me know how you get on :o)

Bakeathon for Picnic In The Park tomorrow

Yes the time is nigh and I've got my apron on and sleeves rolled up for a full marathon day of baking in preparation for tomorrow's market stall.  Already ticked off the list are the Sticky Jamaican Ginger Cake, Cinnamon and Courgette Cake and Nigella's delicious Italian Almond and Carrot Cake, and as I write there is a Luscious Lemon Trickle Cake rising nicely in the oven.
As you may have come to expect from me, this is no ordinary Lemon Cake I'm baking.  The surprise ingredient in this one is.... mashed potato.  I admit, this may sound like a cake catastrophe in the making, but I trialled the recipe as a thank you gift for our lovely friends Sheena and Nathan at the weekend and it was a real success.  The potato keeps the cake beautifully moist and it also happens to be naturally gluten free which is a bonus for the stall tomorrow. 

Even though this cake's a winner on the plate, getting it there is another matter.  This recipe is like a naughty toddler that doesn't want to do what it's told.  Perhaps it was the fact I was trying to make the cake with a hangover the morning before we were off on a 4 night camping trip and still hadn't packed that was the problem.  The mixture kept splitting when I added the eggs and I had to employ my secret trick of using the hairdryer to warm the outside of the bowl of the mixer to help it emulsify (this was advocated by my tutor at pastry school so I'm not completely barking!).  Then the mixture took about half an hour longer to cook than the recipe said it would and so it helped make us nearly an hour late to meet our friends for lunch.  I gave it some stern words that it had better behave as I strapped it in to the back seat of the car and prayed that it would be good on the 4 hour drive to Wales. 

Luckily it was and Sheena and Nathan seemed to love it.  Potato is such a mild flavour that you really can't detect it at all and it gives it a wonderful texture.  But if you're still a sceptic why not come by tomorrow afternoon to Queen's Park and try a slice?!

It's nearly ready to come out the oven so I must sign off and get back to the kitchen - 48 muffins, 32 brownies, 16 flapjacks and a Wholemeal Honey Cake still to go :o)

More recipe trials - eggless chocolate cupcakes

To the untrained eye, it might seem like I am trying to avoid redecorating the spare bedroom today, but since the oven was already hot from the Sunshine Marmalade Flapjacks coupled with the fact it gave me an excuse to use my lovely birdie cup measures, I decided to tackle an intriguing vegan chocolate cake recipe I found on the internet yesterday.

There are quite a few versions of this cake on various websites, but the Suzanne Martinson recipe I plumped for was highly recommended on a forum so I figured it must be a good one.  What's handy is that you're likely to have all the ingredients in your cupboard already, even the egg substitute, which by the way is vinegar.  Yep, I agree it sounds disgusting, but if you know me by now, this only made me more curious to try it.  I already have quite a few cake recipes on the list for the next market so I thought I would try this recipe as cupcakes instead.

Try as I might, I just couldn't imagine how using cider vinegar in place of eggs in a cake recipe could possibly taste good let alone still deliver the indulgent richness a good chocolate cake really needs.  But like Alice down the rabbit hole I went and if they were going to go wrong then nobody needed to know.  The first thing I was pleasantly rewarded with was how simple and quick it was to make the batter - no bingo wing busting creaming butter and sugar, no worrying about the mixture curdling as you add the eggs, just sift together the dry ingredients, stir together the wet ingredients then mix.  Easy peasy.  Then finally add the magic ingredient of  the cider vinegar which curiously fizzes up as it reacts with the baking soda and makes you feel slightly like a mad scientist.  Then the only stressful bit is making sure you get the mixture in the oven as quickly as possible after adding the vinegar.

I was suprised that the cakes rose much better than I had expected in the oven, and just 20 minutes later I was rewarded with 11 brunette beauties (in hindsight a couple were overfull so this mix would make 12 comfortably). 

Because I have the winning combination of being both greedy and impatient I had to try one while it was still hot from the oven.  Curiouser and curiouser, these cakes are really good!  Who would have thought it.  I might even go as far as saying they are better than most chocolate cakes I've tried - they're moist, rich and chocolatey, not too heavy and you would never know they were made with vinegar instead of eggs.  I also tried one once they had cooled down in the name of quality control and can confirm that yep they are still yummy. 

I have to say though, the raspberry and chocolate glaze that Suzanne recommends for the top is pretty horrible and I'm glad I tasted it before ruining the cakes with it.  I don't think it really needs a glaze in any case.  I might consider adding some dark chocolate chips though for a bit of added texture.

So my only dilemma now is whether I promote these cakes as vegan on the stall - will this put non-vegan people off buying one?  I'll have to put my thinking cap on again to come up with a good name :o)

Secret mushroom muffins

A few people have suggested that being in Brighton I should try offering some *special* cakes which might go down well with a certain local clientele.  I hope that I'm not disappointing readers of this blog by revealing that the secret mushrooms in these savoury muffins are good old chestnut mushrooms from the local greengrocer.

A little while ago my friend Big Nick sent me a picture for some broccoli muffins as a cool idea for the bakery.  I was so intrigued that I scoured the internet for the recipe and discovered one of my now favourite blogs kitchenist.com.  Ever since then, my mind has been running at tangents trying to conjure up my own variations on a theme.  This is my first attempt, adapted from Ele's broccoli recipe, and they weren't half bad...

Secret Mushroom Muffins Recipe
12 mushrooms (each one should fit comfortably within a muffin mould, but remember they do shrink a bit)
275g softened butter
50g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
300g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp fresh thyme, leaves picked
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
60g mature cheddar, grated

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.  While the oven is preheating, clean the mushrooms and brush with a small amount of butter.  Place the mushrooms face down in each hole of your muffin tray and pop in the oven for a few minutes until just tender, then set aside.
2. Using electric beaters, whip up the butter until very soft, then add in the sugar and beat again until light and fluffy.  Crack the eggs into a jug and break them up slightly with a fork, then add a little at a time to the butter, beating well after each addition.  If it starts to split then you can add a large pinch of the flour which will help bring it back into shape. 
3. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, thyme, turmeric and salt, then fold this into the butter and egg mix with a spatula, followed by the grated cheese.
4.  Make sure you've taken the mushrooms out of the tin (but you don't need to bother cleaning it), then place a heaped tablespoon of the batter in each muffin case.  Next stick a mushroom stalk first into each yellow pile and top with another spoonful of batter, spreading the batter out to fill each case and making sure the tops of the mushrooms are well covered.
5. Bake the muffins for about 30 minutes until golden brown and firm on top.  Don't worry if some of the butter bubbles out during cooking, I think this helps make a crispier crust.  Cool the muffins on a wire rack before serving as a decadent teatime treat or a mid-morning lunchbox snack at your desk.  Mmmm.

One thing I would remember for next time is not to use mushrooms that are too small as they do shrink when you cook them and I think it gives a better effect if they fill more of the muffin.  I also think the recipe would work well with dried thyme (but use just 1 teaspoon) if you don't have fresh thyme to hand.  It's also very easy to halve the recipe if you only want to make 6 muffins as they are at their best eaten within a day or so.

Watch this space as I have plenty more surprise muffins to follow - they all sound good in my head but I hope I can translate these ideas into good recipes...

Happy baking x

Soda bread breakfast scones

We had planned to have some homemade sourdough bread for breakfast on Sunday morning, but when Melissa went to begin the recipe, she discovered that our homemade starter had died from neglect.  After a period of mourning we decided to learn the lesson that it definitely needs feeding every day, and said goodbye as Sarah the starter was resigned to the bin. 

Still we picked ourselves up and decided to start(er) again, and this time we have a bright pink postit reminder on the starter bowl:

We've decided that before we can get a pet (Melissa has been trying to persuade me to get a cat) we have to prove that we can look after the new starter and remember to feed it.  Updates to follow.

As the sourdough starter takes 7-10 days before we can use it to bake bread I needed a new plan. I decided I would get up before the others and bake a batch of soda bread, but instead of a large loaf I thought it would be cute to make individual scones and our guests could wake up to the aroma of freshly baked bread in the morning.

Adapted from a River Cottage soda bread recipe, here's how I made them:

Emily's soda bread breakfast scones recipe

250g plain wholemeal flour
250g plain white flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon fine salt
400ml natural yoghurt
A little milk, if necessary

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Mix the flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt together in a big bowl. 
Make a well in the centre and stir in the yoghurt until combined.  If the mixture needs it, add a tablespoon or two of milk to bring it together to a soft dough that's not too sticky.  You'll need to get your hands in at this point and bring the dough together into a loose ball.
Turn out onto a floured surface and divide into 8 even pieces. 
Roll gently into balls and place on a floured baking tray, leaving room around each one for them to rise.
Then with a sharp serrated knife cute a deep cross in each scone to let the fairies out (so the Irish legend goes).
Bake for about 22 minutes or until golden brown and when the biggest scone sounds hollow when tapped underneath.

Perfect with proper butter and homemade jam or marmalade and a strong cup of tea to cure a hangover.

Wholemeal honey cake with cinnamon icecreammm...

Melissa and I had our lovely friends (and soon to be neighbours) Laura and Slim down to stay last weekend.  And of course I need the very slightest excuse to get my pinny on and bake up a storm, so I pulled down all my favourite recipe books to search for a new recipe while Melissa rolled her eyes to heaven with a smile usually reserved for toddlers enjoying playtime.

After about two hours poring over photos of dozens of puddings and pies I plumped for a combination of two recipes - a wholemeal honey cake from River Cottage Every Day and cinnamon icecream from Rachel Allen's Entertaining At Home to go on top. 

The cinnamon icecream is a handy no-churn recipe that doesn't need a machine and is a cinch to whip up from just 4 ingredients - eggs, double cream, sugar and cinnamon.  I should say it's easy provided you have an electric whisk, as the cream, egg whites and yolks and sugar all need to be whipped separately to soft peaks - I definitely wouldn't fancy doing that by hand!  Then all you do is fold the mixtures together and freeze overnight until set.  Yum.

The wholemeal honey cake is a fairly standard sponge using a mixture of wholemeal flour and ground almonds which gives it a unique depth of flavour and texture.  It calls for a 23cm tin, but for some reason we have seven 21cm tins but none the required size.  I decided to try my luck anyway, thinking that 2cm can't make that much of a difference.  Turns out that it does.  When I checked to see whether the cake was done at the recommended time it wasn't even nearly done, the batter was clearly wobbling like santa's belly in the tin. It needed a good 20 minutes longer than the recipe said and unfortunately opening the oven door early made it sink a bit in the centre.  It's at these times you really wish your dining table wasn't right in the middle of the kitchen!  Still, it's how it tastes that really counts, and after I'd drizzled more than a healthy amount of honey over the top of the hot cake it was ready to serve up with the homemade icecream:

Although the two recipes weren't written to go together (and each stands up equally well on its own), the combination of the warm syrupy wholemeal sponge with the cool creamy spiced icecream was a good one.  The cake also has a lovely buttery sugary crust at the edge which is a really nice contrast to the soft and comforting sponge.

Laura and Slim's verdict:

And that was after seconds!

Beetroot...in a brownie??

Melissa and I both really like beetroot but for some reason they never seem to fit into any of the meals we're making (and I had also promised Melissa that I wouldn't make her eat the bright pink beetroot and vodka valentine's risotto again).  While we were at Shoreham Farmers' Market the other weekend Melissa and I had signed up to a local veggie box scheme and three earthy purple cricket balls from our first delivery had been sitting in our fridge for a few days calling out for me to use them in something good. 

I remembered a cookery programme I saw a while back when Diana Henry made a beetroot and chocolate cake that looked absolutely delicious.  I thought, if it could work in a cake, then why not a brownie?  So I googled "beetroot chocolate brownie" and top of the results was a recipe from BBC Good Food for a beetroot brownie.  It called for 500g of beetroot, which was exactly the weight of the three beets I had in the fridge, so figuring it must be a sign I decided to whip up a batch.

It always feels like a comedy recipe when you have to put on rubber gloves before you start but I have to say this is one of the weirdest recipe's I think I've ever made!  The gloves are necessary to prevent Lady Macbeth syndrome from the deep purple juices that seep out of the beetroot, which you peel, chop then microwave until cooked.  Then while they're still hot you stick them in the food processor with butter and a rubbley pile of bashed up dark chocolate chunks and blitz until everything has pureed and melted together.  I have to say it did not look appetising at this point...

You then whip up some eggs and sugar and fold in the mixture, adding flour and cocoa powder at then end.  What you end up is a pinky brown beetrooty chocoatey mush that looks like this:

Utterly unsure of how this was going to turn out I stuck the tray in the oven, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  20 minutes later they were cooked to perfection but Melissa and I were both none the wiser as to whether they would taste any good!

Once they had cooled I cut them into squares and carefully lifted them onto plates (as they are quite delicate) for an after dinner treat.  The texture of the brownies was beautiful - they managed to be rich, chocolatey and moist but still quite light at the same time.  I was a bit unsure of the taste on the first bite as you can taste the earthy tang of the beetroot, but they are surprisingly really moorish.  Usually one brownie is more than enough for me but I would have quite happily polished off a second one.  And as they are only half the fat of a regular brownie it wouldn't be a total sin to do so....

Our friend Jo is down for her birthday tonight so we now have some beetroot birthday brownies for her to sample for an unbiased verdict :o)

A little more Irish inspiration

While I was at work on Tuesday, little did I know that there was a wee leprechaun beavering away in the kitchen cooking up a home-baked batch of Irish Soda Bread to go with some freshly made carrot and coriander soup for dinner.   Such a treat to be greeted with after a hard day's work I'll forgive Melissa for trying to steal my thunder!

A belated happy St Paddy's!

My lovely wife Melissa is from the Emerald Isle (and I can never forget it!) so I had to bake her an Irish inspired treat to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day.  I really wanted to use my favourite shamrock cookie cutter but was struggling to come up an Irish recipe to use it with.  Colcannan cookies?  Bailey's biscuits?  Irish stew scones?  Mmmm I'm not so sure...  So I opt to make a savoury Irish oat biscuit that will work a treat with a wedge of Cashel Blue cheese, from Melissa's own home county of Tipperary.  I found an old Delia recipe and worked my lucky charms to give it an Irish twist:

Emily's Irish oat biscuits recipe (makes about 25)

175g wholemeal plain flour
50g Irish porridge oats
4 teaspoons soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon maldon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
a few good grinds of black pepper
110g Irish butter, chopped into small cubes
1-2 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F and lightly grease a baking tray

Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then using your fingers and thumbs rub the butter in evenly (as if you're making a crumble).  Add just enough milk to bring it together into a dough that's slightly wetter than you would normally use for pastry (this helps to hold it together because it's quite crumbly).
Roll the dough out onto a floured worktop until it's about 3mm thick, then use your shamrock cookie cutter to cut out your biscuits.  I guess you could use a regular round cutter, but it might not taste so good... Any leftover dough can be re-rolled adding a little extra milk if it's a bit dry.
Pop the biscuits on your baking tray and bake for 15-18 minutes until firm and slightly browned on top.  Carefully lift using a palette knife onto a wire rack to cool.

Keep in an airtight tin and enjoy with a generous hunk of Cashel Blue, Stilton or some Mature Cheddar and a spoon of homemade chutney.  Delish!

Well they would be if we actually had any cheese in our fridge.  Darn it!  Although I was waiting for an excuse to go down to Brampton's Cheese Shop in Kemp Town :o)

The first batch of brownies...sort of...

After our market research on Saturday, we think that there might be a gap in the (farmers') market for a stall selling brownies and tray bakes - sweet mouthfuls that people can enjoy with a cup of tea or even to eat on the way round browsing the rest of the stalls at the market.  With this in mind comes my two favourite parts of the process - baking and tasting!

So I pull down all my recipe books from the shelves and decide to start the hunt for the perfect signature brownie.   And there are many recipes to choose from that all have me salivating, spiked with all different kinds of nuts, flavoured with orange zest, caramel, differing degrees of chocolatiness and fudginess, topped with After Eight mints.... I think I might need to host a dedicated brownie party in order to choose between them :o)

And after all that, the recipe that sprung out at me wasn't for a brownie at all, but a blondie.  Like a brownie, but flavoured with brown sugar and vanilla instead of chocolate.  Despite being a brunette myself I don't discriminate, and the need for me to try Rachel Allen's recipe for Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies from her lovely Bake book was just too hard to ignore.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and put together, although I didn't have the right size cake tin.  Undeterred, I used my  trusty swiss roll tin and fashioned a "wall" out of tin foil that worked a treat and 40 minutes later delicious aromas were wafting from the oven as I pulled out the first batch.  I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't wait for them to cool down and burnt my finger breaking off a sneaky corner to taste - mmmmmmmmm.  Yep they were goooood.  Buttery, laced with vanilla but balanced by the salty peanuts, fudgey in the middle and perfect with a cuppa in my favourite mug:

The only thing that I would do differently is to chop the white chocolate bigger so that it adds more texture - it seemed to melt away into the blondie.  Oh well, I'll just have to bake another batch....

Welcome! And so the story begins....

After taking night classes to help my baking skills catch up with my wide eyes, sweet tooth and hungry belly I decided to put my money where my mouth is (literally) and am going to try my darnedest to start a successful small bakery business.  So in November 2010 my lovely new wife and I both quit our jobs, sold our flat in London and moved to our favourite town on the sea to do just that.  We've spent the last couple of months renovating our new home in Brighton and going on our last holiday for what may be quite a long time.  Now that we're back, with the new kitchen really nearly finished we can finally get (egg) cracking!