Sunday brunch – homemade brioche

We had freshly baked brioche for brunch this morning. It was melt-in-the-mouth delicious, and very, very light. I made the dough yesterday, so all I had to do was pop it in the oven when I got up.

Brioche

I used Paul Hollywood’s recipe from ‘how to bake’. It is seriously good. I’ve made a few recipes from the book now, and all have worked perfectly and taste great.

You will need:

500g strong, white flour

7g of salt

50g of castor sugar

10g of instant yeast

140ml of warm, full fat milk

5 medium eggs

250g of soft, unsalted butter

Get your mixer out, and add the flour to the bowl. Put the salt and sugar to one side and the yeast to the other. Pour in the milk and the eggs, and mix on a slow setting for about two minutes. Turn up the power to medium and mix at this speed for another 6-8 minutes, until your dough is elastic and soft.

Cut your butter up into squares and add this to the dough, mixing it well for about another five minutes. Stop the mixer every now and again to scrape down the sides. Make sure that the butter is well mixed though. Your dough should be smooth and very soft. I’ve been trying to think of what the texture is like. This was my first time making a rich dough. All I can think of is, it reminds me of soft butter. The colour and smell were divine, and the texture was very soft.

Tip the dough into a plastic container. I’m usually quite open to interpreting recipes (sometimes very liberally), but the recipe says a plastic container, so I followed it to the letter. I don’t know if you could keep it in the mixing bowl and get the same results (mine is metal). If you know better than I do, let me know in the comments below! Cover the dish and chill it for at least seven hours.

After the seven hours, the dough had metamorphasised. The squishy dough had firmed up significantly and it was much easier to manipulate.

You’ll need to grease a 25cm round tin at this stage. It doesn’t need to be lined.

Flour your work surface and tip your dough out onto it. Fold it over onto itself a couple of times to knock some of the air out. Divide it into nine similar-sized pieces. Eight of these can go around the edge of your tin, and the ninth goes into the centre.

Balls of brioche, ready to prove

Cover this with a clean plastic bag or clingfilm and leave it to prove for another 2-3 hours. I did all of this on Saturday afternoon and left the dough to prove overnight in my kitchen. Your dough should rise again.

When you’re ready to bake, heat your oven to 190°c. Bake your dough for 20-30 minutes – mine took about 35 minutes. When it’s done, put it on a wire rack to cool for a bit. We ate ours still warm from the oven with raspberry jam.

Baked brioche

Christmas is coming! Paul Hollywood's Christmas buns

Christmas is fast approaching and to celebrate the season, I made these Christmas bun’s from Paul Hollywood’s ‘How to Bake’ at the weekend.

Christmas buns

The list of ingredients looks long, but you probably have most of these knocking around your cupboards, or at least some good substitutes.

I ended up making them with wholemeal flour, thanks to some short-sightedness in the supermarket <<must go to Specksavers>>.  The dough was a bit – dense – but this could also be because I baked them in a 20x20cm tin and they didn't have a lot of room to expand in.  They were all eaten pretty quickly.

Dough:

300ml full-fat milk

40g softened butter

500g strong white flour

10g salt

10g instant yeast

1 egg

Filling:

25g melted butter

75g soft brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

100g dried cranberries

100g dried apricots (I am not a fan of apricots so I used 100g of raisons AND 100g of pistachios, so I'd 300g of filling in all instead of 200g. Hey, it's Christmas)

Extras:

75g (or 9 half-teaspoons) apricot jam (I used some rhubarb jam I had in the fridge)

100g icing sugar

1 tablespoon of hot water

the fine zest of a lemon

Warm the milk and the butter in a saucepan until the butter melts and the mixture is lukewarm.

If you haven’t already, wash your hands.  Then, in a large bowl, mix the flour and the salt and then add the yeast. Mix in the milk and the egg with your hands until the dough starts coming together. 

Flour your worktop and tip the dough onto it and knead it until it’s smooth and soft. This should take about 5-10 minutes. If you start getting tired, you’re kneading the dough too intensely, so lay off a little ;-)

Oil the bowl and put the kneaded dough back in. Cover it with clingfilm and leave in a warm place to rise until it’s doubled in size, which should take an hour or two.

When you’re ready to start working again, line your baking tray with some baking paper. As I said, I used a tin which is about 20x20cm, which was too small.

On your floured counter top, shape the dough into a rectangle about 30x20cm – your dough should be about 5mm thick (about the thickness of a coin).  The 30cm side should be nearest you. Stick this side down by pushing the dough into your counter top.

Rolled out Christmas buns dough

Brush the dough with the melted butter, then sprinkle this with the brown sugar, cinnamon and then the dried fruits and nuts.  Leave about 1-2cm clear at the side nearest you – as you roll the dough up, the filling will push in front of the sausage and this gap means that you waste as little filling as possible.

With all the filling - and the 1-2cm gap 

Right, time to roll. Take a deep breath and take the edge of the dough furthest away from you and fold it about 2cm in to start the roll. You have to roll pretty tightly, so don’t be afraid. If the roll is too loose, all the filling falls out. Keep going until you’ve got a sausage shape.

When you’ve got your sausage, divide it into 9 pieces. Place these, cut side up, onto your prepared baking tin, cover with a towel and leave to relax for 30 minutes.

Relaxed dough ready to go into the oven

After your 30 minutes, heat your oven up to 190°C. Bake the buns for 20-25 minutes.

When the buns are done take them out of the oven and put them n a cooling rack. While they are still warm, heat the jam slightly in your microwave and brush the tops of the buns with it. Make your icing by mixing the icing sugar with the water in a cup and trickle this over the buns.

The buns are quite deep – about 5-6cm high, so if you prefer a more Danish pastry sized treat, cut the sausage into more pieces and use a bigger baking tray.

Photos were all taken with my phone, so apologies for the bad quality!

The Great British Bake Off / How to Bake

I know that a lot of people are glued to their TV screens every Tuesday evening for the Great British Bake Off. Some are there for the baking, some are there for the competitive element; some are even there for James (no, I don’t get what all the fuss is about either…) but I reckon that most of us are there for the delectable Paul Hollywood. And the cake, of course. Oh, Mr H, you can squeeze my muffins any time!

We are now at episode 6 of series three, and the competition is heating up. You can see that the contestants are still friendly with each other, but there is a certain fatigue and sense of competition seeping in. Ooooh I love this part of a competition. Muahahahahahhahahaaa.

Anyway, aside from my lusting after Mr H, I’m also lusting after all the goodies they bake on the show. This week was a complete disaster for my diet saw my cooking fantasy list explode, with sticky toffee pudding, steamed apple pudding and a host of others all joining it, in the hope of being made (again) soon.

I bought Mr H’s book ‘How to bake’ and had time this weekend to make a couple of his recipes. It was almost like having him in the kitchen. I tried his fougasse and scones (sc-own-s please, not sc-on-s. I’m Irish).

Me and my own homemade scones are not a success story. They always end up like biscuits. Would the lovely Paul’s recipe be The One that would actually work?

In a word, yes.

450g strong flour (I’m working my way though a bag of 'pain blanc' from Delhaize at the moment. So far, so good).

80g unsalted butter

80g castor sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

5 teaspoons baking powder

250 ml milk (he says full fat, I used semi…)

I also added 100g of dried cranberries and a few drops of vanilla essence with the milk

Heat your oven to 220°.  Prepare your baking tray.

Put the flour into a large bowl and rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Add the sugar, baking powder and the cranberries and mix well. Mix in the beaten eggs. Pour in about half the milk and mix well. Keep adding more of the milk until the mixture comes together – you might not need all of the milk for this.  I didn’t need the last 50-60 mls, but that was just the flour I used.

Sprinkle some flour onto your counter top and tip the dough onto it. Bring it together with your hands until it is smooth, but try to handle it as little as possible.  Pat your dough down to about 2.5cm thick and using a glass about 7cm wide, cut circles from it. Put the scones onto your prepared baking sheets and leave them to rest for a few minutes. Before you put them in the oven, brush the tops with a little beaten egg. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden. Serve with jam and cream.

Cranberry scones

As mentioned, I also made fougasse, a type of focaccia from southern France. If you are interested in making both the scones and the fougasse, start the fougasse as it needs to rise. It can be flavoured with many things, such as different dried herbs, cheese and meats, but I stuck to Paul’s oregano.

250g strong white flour

5g salt (that’s a teaspoon)

5g yeast (there are 7grams in a packet, so I used 7)

1 tablespoon of olive oil

190ml cool water

semolina or extra flour

dried oregano and a little extra oil

Mr H starts off by oiling a plastic container. I like recipes that tell you what you need to do in advance and saves you from lots of unnecessary hand-washing. I rarely read a recipe through so I’m always having to wash doughy hands a few times. So annoying.

Put the flour, salt and yeast into your mixer bowl (what! no kneading by hand!!!)  and add the olive oil and ¾ of the water. Pop your dough hook on the mixer and mix slowly until the dough starts coming together. Add the rest of the water slowly. Continue mixing for another 6-8 minutes, until the dough is elastic. Tip the dough into the oiled container and cover for about an hour until it has doubled in size.

Line your baking sheet with baking paper.

Now, Mr H says to dust your counter top with flour and/or semolina, tip your dough onto this and transfer it to the baking sheet. So, he actually doesn’t seem to do anything with the dough once it’s on the counter top.  So, I reckon that you can just transfer your dough from the plastic container to the prepared baking sheet.

Push it out into an oval shape and make some cuts in it. I made a rather nice modern art take on a leaf… Make sure your cuts are well separated from each other – I mean, once you cut, move the dough away from its other side of the cut – the dough will rise, and the gaps are the attractive part of this bread. Cover it with cling film and leave for 20 minutes.

I dusted the dough with some semolina and then poured about a tablespoon of oil over it all before sprinkling on about a teaspoon of dried oregano. As I said, you can flavour this with lots of things, so do as you wish.

Bake for 15-20 minutes and eat warm.

Fougasse with dried oregano

Homemade bread (an ode to Nigel)

Having finally and successfully made brown bread (soda bread) at home, I tried making white bread, without the bread machine. Before you start recoiling in horror and thinking that I obviously have more time then sense, think again. Kneading your own bread is one of the most satisfying things you can do, and as for stress release… it’s like totally instant good vibes. Dude.

Which is where Nigel Slater comes into it. His cookbooks are really simple. You can make the vast majority of his food from stuff you have at home already, which is great when you come home in the evening, starving, and lacking either the inspiration or will to go shopping. His recipes are sparse of detail (some of this, a bit of that) and he often proposes alternative ingredients to what is in the recipes (if you don’t have this, use that or this).  His book ‘Eating for England’ is some sort of Willy Wonka fantasy shopping list (don’t read it if you’re on a diet).

‘Appetite’ is the book I turn to most often. It opens with chapters of advice on what to eat, how to shop, the different types of meat, what’s in season, how to cook. It also has a very simple bread recipe.

White bread - you can see where the yeast  tried to rise but the oven was faster. Evil laugh.

You need, aside from a couple of hours:

1kg of white bread flour (I used the ‘pain’ flour)

1 cube of fresh yeast (his recipe uses 2x7g sachets)

a teaspoon of honey

20g salt

700ml water

In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt. As I use fresh yeast, I dissolve this in 500ml of warm water with a spoonful of honey, and add this to the flour. Add most of the rest of the water and mix. In all, your dough should come together with no bits at the bottom of the bowl – if there are bits, add a little (ie: a teaspoon) more water – nor should it be too liquid – you should be able to handle it. If it’s like this, add a little more flour.

Kneaded dough

Flour your counter top and turn out the dough. With the heel of your dominant hand, push into the dough. Lift your hand out and with your other hand turn the dough about 45°. Keep this up for 10 minutes – you’ll notice the dough will get softer. This means the yeast is working. If you find yourself getting tired, you’re kneading too hard. It’s supposed to be gentle.

Pour a little olive oil into your bowl and using your hand, smear it up the sides. When the dough is soft and elastic, put it back into the bowl and cover it with a damp teatowel. Don’t be tempted to clean up your countertop. Put the dough somewhere warm – I use a radiator or a sunny window sill. After an hour or so, the dough should be twice its original size.

Once it’s grown and is in danger of taking over your kitchen, it’s time to fight back. Tip it onto the floured countertop and knead it again for a couple of minutes. It should regain some of its original size. Flour a baking tray and put the ball of dough on it and leave for another hour. If you’re so inclined, you can clean up your countertop as you won’t need to knead anymore. After the hour, put the oven on to 250°and knock the dough ball back into shape (you can keep it on the baking sheet for this).

Cook the dough at 250° for 10 minutes (just don’t slam the oven door or the bread won’t recover from the fright of the loud noise). Turn the oven down to 220°. Watch the epic battle taking place in your oven as the yeast fights to expand once more while the heat cooks it, sealing a crust that the yeast cannot break free from.

After 30 minutes, check the bread. Knock the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds hollow, you’re good; if there’s a heaviness in reply to your knock, leave the bread in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

Cool on a wire rack. I know it’s tempting to dive in and take a slice of it now, but your bread needs to literally let off steam and dry out, so wait until it’s fully cooled before you attack it with a bread knife.

Or you could just nip to the local bakery. But where’s the fun in that?

Bread, about to be devoured