The Bread Bible - crumpets

If you hadn't read the title of this post you might wonder what the blob in the photo is. It was meant to be a crumpet. I've made these before with modest success during the bake-through of the Baking Bible. This recipe is from the Bread Bible and the main difference between the two is, as Rose notes in the introduction to the crumpet recipe in the Baking Bible, there is more liquid in the latter. (Although I didn't read that until after I'd attempted these crumpets.)

This is obvious when you make the Bread Bible crumpet batter which, for me, was more like a loose bread dough. It certainly didn't 'pour' into the crumpet rings. I used the scalded milk option for liquid in this recipe instead of the alternative low fat milk powder and water. I'm not sure if this affected the density of the batter also. 

The good news is that despite the slightly more bready than crumpety texture of the crumpets they were extremely tasty (straight out of the frying pan with  bit of butter). This is an extremely easy recipe (liquid issues not withstanding) requiring only patience while the batter proofs a couple of times.

This post was a catch up (I'm in perpetual catch-up) for Rose's Bread Bible baking group. Have a look at the main baking group website to see how the others are going. I've made the January Traditional Challah (post coming soon) and am next on to February's Spiced Herb Breadsticks.

Almost Perfect Savoury Cream Puffs

About ten years ago I attempted to serve Terribly Impressive Chorizo Puffs* to friends who had come to dinner. This was not long after I'd moved to hot, humid Darwin. I'd made them successfully several times previously (in another more temperate climate) so I wasn't worried. But they flopped terribly (and not so impressively). It was mortifying (picture little soggy blobs). After some research I concluded that humidity was the enemy of choux pastry and wiped it off my baking list. However ten years on and I'm induced to try choux pastry again through the Alpha Bakers. And, lo and behold, it seems that the problem was mine rather than the climate. A fact slightly mortifying in itself... 

So there are plenty of reasons for me to view this recipe with disdain but, because my puffs actually worked, I have only warm feelings towards the choux and all of its relatives. I haven't filled my puffs yet but I'm planning to dip the tops in chocolate ganache and fill them with sweetened cream. I've had a lovely and highly competent university student working with me for the last two weeks and I think he deserves a cream puff-thank you morning tea this Friday. 

I have some of the choux mixture left in the fridge and today I'm off to buy some chorizo sausage. Those little chorizo puffs really are very delicious and ten years is a long time to wait. 

*From Jill Duplex's book New Food which was central to entertaining in my student days. Jill is a master in inspiring cooks to expand their repertoires. The first book of hers I bought was called I Hate to Cook which was aimed at tricking nervous cooks into making more sophisticated food. Similar to Rose in that one minute you're thinking 'I'll never be able to make, for example, Kouign Amann', and next minute you're whipping them up at the drop of a hat. Okay it would have to be a very long probably multi-day drop, but you get the idea.

I think previously I've made the choux paste completely by hand. I just remember mixing furiously when adding the flour, then the egg to the liquid. This time I used the food processor to mix in the egg, In my current state of choux smugness, it all seems very easy. 

This dough was very sticky and a little bit stuck on your finger can go a long way as I discovered...on the laptop, the bench, the tap, the oven, the laptop again... I'm fairly sure the insides of my laptop are filled with flour already so I don't want to add anything else. One of the perils of using an eBook.

Of course, my puffs would never win a beauty pageant. My aversion to piping anything unless I really have to, remains strong. I dibbed these out using two teaspoons and then smoothed them over with a finger dipped in water. The raw blobs are pretty uninspiring but it's surprising how they puff up and start to look almost perfect (in their mother's eyes).

I was very careful to cook the puffs long enough to really dry them out. After the initial baking period I poked a little steam hole in the side of each one before I put them back in the oven to dry. No soggy blobs for me.

Next week we're making Cream Cheese Butter cake. This has to be good.

Sacaduros!

Sacaduros! Another Alpha Baker musical number starring bread, butter and salt.

These little bread rolls are great. Not only because they're really more-ishly delicious but also because this is one project where being slapdash is advantageous. I know some of you are looking at the photo of my rolls below and thinking 'poor thing, she tries so hard'. But no! They're meant to look like that - or something like that anyway. I think they're really meant to have two neat little 'petals' adjacent to each other but the picture was a bit blurry so I think mine are within acceptable Sacaduros standards.

The recipe called for half or three-quarters of the dough recipe for Hearth Bread in the Baking Bible (I can't remember exactly because it's a few weeks since I made them). My first question was why? Something to do with making a certain number of rolls perhaps? Anyway that just sounded too complicated to me and I made the whole amount. There can never be too many rolls, I say.

That's a rectangle of dough below waiting for a business fold, in case you were wondering.

It was a bit unclear in the recipe whether the dough should go through the rising stages before shaping it into rolls. After studying the book and the posts of (the more organised) Alpha Bakers who had already made them, I decided that I'd put the dough through the two rises before I shaped them. I notice that some people didn't do this and their rolls turned out fine so maybe this is just a bullet-proof recipe (my favourite kind).

I'm not sure if any of you will believe me when I say I weighed the dough when I divided it into little balls. I don't know what's happening to me...next thing I'll be weighing biscuit dough. I must have been feeling more serene than usual because I really enjoyed the shaping process.

The deliciousness in these rolls comes from the little piece of butter and smidgen of salt flakes you put in the middle of each roll. I used Maldon salt flakes which I had in the cupboard although the recipe suggests Fleur de Sel (which I don't keep and is probably expensive).

To make the petals you fold the corners over the butter about twelve times, although I found the instructions a bit confusing and it was easy to lose count. The key is not to seal the folds too well so you get the final folds of dough sticking up. I had a variety of results. Those rolls I sealed better were more solid while others ended up with wilder looking petals and were hollow in the middle. They were all delicious.

The rolls are quite small which is great for a dinner party but I think they would be nice just a bit bigger too. I made a larger one with the last bit of dough and it baked nicely. It was more solid that the smaller rolls and probably didn't have much in the way of petals but that might be because it was at the end of the production line and my serenity was fading. 

This is the hollow middle of one of the rolls. I can't tell you how crunchy and chewy the outside was. This is my favourite kind of bread texture and it's not that easy to achieve, as I've discovered in my past bread baking. I'll definitely be making these again.

I still have to write up my post on the New Zealand Fig and Walnut Bread from last month and next month I'll be making Baguettes with the Bread Bible Alpha Bakers.

Fun new ingredients and Southwestern Corn Spoon Bread

I don't ever remember having eaten cornbread before, although it's possible I have done in the distant past, but I've definitely never cooked it myself. It seems ubiquitous in the US but is not widely known here in Australia. That other cornmeal dish, polenta, on the other hand, is well known due to Australia's large Italian Australian population and the popularity of Italian food. (Spag Bog* is arguably one of our national dishes.)

Of course I'm assuming that the Southwestern Corn Spoon Bread (this month's Bread Bible project) is a close cousin of the run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving sidedish-type cornbread. Spoon bread it turns out is exactly that, bread that holds together but needs to be spooned out of the dish rather than sliced and served. I'm now a big fan of spoon bread and possibly cornbread as a whole, if they're all like this recipe. I found this crispy, spicy and deliciously savoury.

*Spaghetti Bolognaise - an Australian knock-off of an Italian dish which is spaghetti with beef mince and tomato sauce.

The popularity of polenta is why I ended up using something called polenta tradizionale (a less common polenta type that is white-ish coloured where most polenta is bright yellow). The other reason is that in Darwin food supplies are almost all trucked in and are very feast or famine in character. So last time I browsed the aisles of my favourite grocery shop, they had every type of cornmeal/corn flour you could wish for. When I went to buy the cornmeal this time, almost nothing. I first came home with a packet of Pan, but after some googling I realised that it was a pre-cooked corn flour rather than a meal. I think I could have used it but the result would be more cake-like due to its finer texture. I know you can use yellow polenta to make cakes so I thought my polenta purchase would be fine.

This was a fun week for new ingredients (rather than my usual excuse to buy new equipment) because I also got to buy the exotic sounding chipotle in adobo. I'd heard of it before but, never having cooked anything Mexican besides nachos and guacamole, I'd never seen it up close. It turns out to be chillies in a very smoky, vinegary sauce. The smokiness reminds me of the Spanish smoked paprika and I suppose it would make sense if they were related. I thought it was delicious and I'm planning what to do with the leftovers.

This recipe is full of vibrant colours and flavours. The need to roast and peel the red pepper (and cook the corn) makes this dish just out of the realm of quick and easy. I realised if I was feeling really lazy I could buy some of those Spanish roast red peppers that were sitting on the grocery shelf next to the chipotle in adobo.

More great colours - that's the only reason for this photo, except perhaps to show you the delicious flavour mix of the vegetable part of the recipe.

My only possible issue with this recipe is the 3 tablespoons of sugar in the batter. I wasn't going to add any until I realised how hot the chipotle was and thought it may need to be offset by some sweetness. I added 1 tablespoon but next time I wouldn't add any at all. I don't think it needs it, especially with the sweetcorn.

The colour in the finished dish didn't come out very well in the photo - it was a lighter, more yellow colour in real life. The cornmeal made the edge bits particularly delicious and crunchy. I've been thinking about what shape dish would give you more edges - maybe a very long, thin pan? Aha! A good excuse to buy more equipment. This recipe could not get any better.

Next month we're baking Traditional Challah.