Ginger & Spice Sourdough Loaf

Ingredients:

Starter 125g

Plain flour 125g

Strong white flour 125g

Milk 150g

Yoghurt 50g

Butter 15g

Honey 1 tbsp

Sugar 1 tsp

Salt 4g

Mixed spices 1/2 tsp

Crystallised ginger (chopped into small pieces) 50g

Maybe because of all the sales emails I get or the Christmas lights in town, I've started to feel I want to add some festive touch to my baking too. I added my favourite fiery aromatic root veg, ginger, and mixed spices to my loaf.

And bang! Even before baking the loaf, the kitchen smelt like Christmas! Love it. ;D

Adding plain flour made the crumb soft and bit more on the cake side. The spices came through even more when I toasted it. I think other dried fruits will work too... (hum.., maybe rum soaked dried fruits next time...;)

Rich Sourdough Beer Loaf

Have you seen my Walnut & Beer Sourdough Bread that I made with leftover beer the other day?

This mini loaf has the same idea. Made with leftover beer, but this time I added eggs and butter to make it super rich. ;D

Ingredients:

Starter 125g

Very strong flour 250g

Egg 2 + Beer =165g

Honey 30g

Butter 30g

Salt 4g

It is like brioche. It's buttery and has slight sweetness. And on top of that, there are depth and body that (I think) come from the beer.

Beautiful crumb!

Toasted is even better!

(I like my toast to be well-done...;D)

Remember to grab your FREE 2015 Calendar with 12 recipes including Sourdough bread and rolls!

Sourdough Coconut & Honey Loaf

What is slim and loooooong...? ;)

I bought a slim-long loaf tin when I was back in Japan last time, and finally got around to try it out with this aromatic Coconut & Honey Loaf.

Ingredients:

Strong flour 125g

Plain flour 125g

Starter 110g

Milk 160g

Honey 25g

Coconut butter 2tbsp

Salt 4g

This loaf has such a nice smell from the coconut (I use homemade coconut butter because it's much cheaper than shop bought ones!) and natural sweetness from the honey. The dough might seem pretty weak as it's got 50% plain flour, but don't worry, this is what make the crumb nice and soft.

Good size for small hands. ♥︎

Mini loaf three ways...

Plain.

Buttered.

Eggy bread or French toast (by Andy).

They were all nice but, the best was Andy's quick eggy bread. Good call for doing that! (Hum, I actually don't know his eggy bread recipe...). 

What do you put in your eggy bread?

Earl grey sourdough cube loaf

I believe that the more you use (feed, refresh, whatever you want to call it) the sourdough starter, the better they get. So, based on this, I'm currently using my still-very-new Lemon Yeast more often than my other starters.

Mr Lemon has quite a strong lemon smell, which gave me an idea for this particular loaf, Earl grey tea loaf. Yes, lemon tea, indeed! ;D I used earl grey tea as a liquid (The tea was very strongly brewed, and cooled down beforehand).

Earl grey and lemon worked well together. The tea gave the loaf nice caramel colour and the bread had quite a distinctive fruity aromatic flavour.

Along with the regular size cube loaf, I made some small ones. I bought some small cube tins back in Japan, and I absolutely love them! They are the cutest mini loaves. :D

Loaf for one? ;)

With the Lemon and Coconut curd..., it went down beautifully too...

(The lemon and coconut filling from the croissants.)

Basic Sourdough Loaf

As much as I love hard crusty country type bread, I sometimes do crave for a very simple white loaf...

Such as this one...

It's one of my basic bread recipes and can be used for rolls as well. ;)

Ingredients;

Starter 125g

Strong flour 250g

Milk 168g

Salt 4g

Brown sugar 25g

Butter 25g

Having butter and milk in the dough, the crumb is nicely soft and springy, and there is also a gentle sweetness from the brown sugar.

Some people say you need to wait for bread to cool down after the bake. But with this one, I really can't help myself breaking it apart ...and..,

...with a bit of butter, tuck in while it's hot...

This bread is definitely Lana's favourite too. 

She destroyed one third of the loaf!

And here we go..., I made cheesy toasted sandwich for myself;)

Have you seen my epic video of this sandwich on Instagram? 

If not yet, then take a look here! ;)

Cornmeal bread

Ingredients:

Starter (Banana yeast) 130g

Very strong flour 250g

Cornmeal 20g

Milk 190g

Salt 4g
Olive oil 1tbsp

A variation of my basic white loaf. I added cornmeal to give the bread extra flavour and slightly yellow and lighter crumb.

I also tried a new scoring pattern, which, I have to say, I'm quite please with. It's my interpretation of 'Corn'. ;D

So, last Saturday started with my freshly baked Cornmeal bread. For breakfast we had some slices with butter, and some more toasted...

Bread and butter, such a simple combo yet, so satisfying. 

With the left over slices, 

we made nice homemade sandwiched for lunch.

....♥︎....

Mine with salad and peanut butter...

It sounds weird but tasted pretty good. ;)

The meat eaters had Andy-made burgers.

As I was preparing for lunch I caught Lana diving for a big piece!

I can already see this Cornmeal bread becoming one of our regular;D

Cheesy Loaf

I love cheese.
I am quite possibly addicted to cheese.

So, this one was for the cheesy hole in my stomach.

I made a basic white loaf with my yoghurt and raisin yeast, and added cheese in the dough as I was shaping it.
It was midnight when I finally started baking the bread, and the smell of cheese coming from the oven made my sleepy stomach rumble...

First I had a slice just as is. The loaf was soft and springy and it had a 'not too strong' cheesy flavour to it. I was very happy with the bake. But then, when I toasted it, it went up to the next level! The cheese in the bread got slightly melted and it was like cheese toast.The crispy cheesy crust was amazing too!

Cheese melting in the bread..., yum yum..;D

I used mozzarella (that was the only cheese I had...) this time but next time I'll go for bit more stronger ones like cheddar or emmental.

Cinnamon Roll Loaf

I made my regular Milk and Honey loaf dough with a good intention of making cinnamon rolls with it but instead ended up making a loaf...

When I wake up early in the morning to bake, my body is up but my brain is sometimes still left in bed, and that's what happened when I was making this bread. I made the cinnamon butter filling then spread it on the rolled out dough. Next thing I knew, I was folding it as I do when I make a marble loaf... By that time, I said to myself it would be like a big cinnamon roll and taste pretty much the same...

So that's how the Cinnamon Roll loaf was made! It was actually very nice. In a way a slice of this loaf was much easier to eat (especially for a little person, it's not as sticky as normal cinnamon rolls.)

The cinnamon butter filling is a great option for those who are avoiding sugar as I use honey instead of sugar. It can, of course, be used for usual cinnamon rolls, or spread it on a slice of toast and you will have an instant cinnamon roll toast! ;D

The cinnamon butter filling:

Butter 3 tbsp

Cinnamon 1 tsp

Honey 2 tsp

Mix well all the ingredients together.

Milk & Honey loaf

Hello everyone, it's been a little while since my last post... but I'm still here and baking breads and cakes more than ever.

Because of the recent heat wave here in the UK, it's been a little difficult to maintain my starters (by the way, I call them 'my trusted guys'). The house gets too hot for my guys if I leave them outside the fridge too long but then I do need to take them out to the room temperature when I want to use them... Hum, the timing is even more important now in this hot weather..

I keep checking the conditions of the guys (I normally have only one starter out while the others rest in the fridge). If it's looking less energetic I feed a bit. I also leave it at the coolest place in the house (which is Lana's room!) during the day.... yes I'm like a mad man (or mad baker in this case.)

Though, I believe that anyone who keeps their own starter will understand what I mean... The longer you've had the starter the more you feel attached to it. ;D

Anyway, look!, my guys do respond to my hard work! They are coping with the heat ok and still producing awesome breads!

This one is our recent favourite Milk & Honey loaf. They are nice and soft with a good crust outside, and every bite there is a slight sweetness from honey. Not only does it taste good as is but also it's an excellent choice for sandwiched or cheesy toasts... hum yum yum...

How does everyone keep their starter in this heat? ;)

Last Friday night ~ ♫

Time flies...they say... I forgot to post this last Friday's Curry Night photo, and now another Friday is approaching!

Anyway, so, this was what we had last curry night. Curry in a bread! This idea kind of happened as I was baking...

I thought.., 'we need freshly baked bread for the curry night.' so I baked my usual milk loaf in a cube tin. When I took the bread out of the tin after the bake, I thought... 'Um, this is actually a good container for curry...' then, I cut the middle out, grilled the bread further 10 minutes or so, poured the curry in it, and served!

Not only does it look fun and unique but also it's quite practical. You pull a bit and dip, and pull a bit more and dip again...

If you've got a cube tin or even a loaf tin, try it next time you have curry. That curry soaked bread is dangerously addictive... ;)

Frog (?) Loaf

So..., it was supposed to be a frog face... does that look so? I think it's looking more like an alien cat...

Anyway, I've seen this kind of loaf before on Japanese website (I don't know what it's called. Maybe a 'Loaf art'...) and I've been wanting to try it out for ages. So..., here we are, my first attempt for a loaf art... Mr Frog.. ;D

First I pictured what 'face' I want in my loaf, then thought about the pieces and ratios of dough I was going to need. I used green tea for the green dough and raisins for the eyes.As I started to assemble, I realised that the piece for the outer shell was a bit thin, but I stretched it out and managed to wrap the whole thing up... Now, all I could do was to wait for Mr Frog to prove.

It was so exciting when I cut into the loaf because you just don't know how it will come out until you actually see the inside! Ok..., to be honest, the face inside wasn't what I expected... but, humm, it still looked like a face of some sort... So, I say my first attempt wasn't too bad, and more importantly it tasted good and was a great fun. :)

I might get addicted to this...