Things I know

Having my non-computer literate mum tell me to google something is hilarious.

If I had had any idea of the sheer volume of liquid poo that Pippin could produce I would have stuck with disposable nappies, damn it.

Crochet is the crack cocaine of the craft world. I am so addicted, I'm hooking it even as I write this post.

It is sheer bliss to not have the house surrounded by scaffolding, even though the renovations are still not quite finished.

Some days it is just absolutely necessary to make fairy cakes with pink icing and cherries on top.

Joining in with Shae for the week - see what other people know here!

Love

Verity

Sensationally Tasty No-Knead Sourdough Bread: a tutorial

I've been trying, over the last few weeks, to find a satisfying compromise that marries the deliciousness of sourdough with the convenience of not having to knead said damn dough. Because, when I need to fit in bread baking two to three times a week, it is just easier if I can spend two lots of ten minutes on it, rather than trying to get the timing right for mixing, letting it rest, kneading, rising, shaping, rising, baking.

(The eating part is not complicated, though.)

So, following round after round of extremely tasty semi-scientific experimentation, I feel confident in presenting you with a tutorial for no-knead sourdough bread that has a delicious chewy crust as well as fabulous tangy flavour.

And - it's easy. Feel free to follow along with my simple step by step instructions. I make baking fun!*

You will need:

150g ready to use sourdough starter
750g flour - one kind or a mixture (eg 500g bread flour, 250g wholemeal)
10g fine salt
500ml water
More flour (added after first rise)
22cm x 13 cm (9 in x 5 in) loaf tin, greased

Before we start: some notes about ingredients
I only have one sourdough starter, which is a rye one made using 1 part rye flour to 1.5 parts water. Based on my experience, though, you should be able to substitute an equal quantity of any other kind of sourdough starter if you don't have rye to hand.

I normally use about 40-50% bread flour, because it gives good lift and helps to support the heavier wholemeal (regular wheat or spelt) that I use to make up the rest of flour weight. You can use either bread flour or wholemeal flour to stiffen the dough after the first rise.

I don't measure the quantity of flour that I add after the first rise, either; I just chuck it in until the dough looks and feels right. This is something I've learned over the course of a year or more of bread-baking, so I can't really describe it apart from to say that the dough will be stiff, difficult to mix, not at all batter-like, and not sticky. I hope that helps.

Don't be astonished either if the dough just seems to keep sucking up the flour; for example, on really humid days it sometimes seems like it takes twice as much flour as on a drier day.

You may want to filter your tap water as well; I have read that chlorinated water can be death to sourdough. Mind you on occasion I have used unfiltered water and everything has turned out just fine.

Can we get started already?

But of course.

1. Measure your flour(s) into a large, non-metallic bowl (avoids the metal reacting with the acids in the sourdough). Add the salt and stir thoroughly to distribute.

2. Measure your starter and your water into a large jug and give it a good stir.

3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix thoroughly. You will end up with a shaggy sticky dough, like this:

4. First rise! Cover with cling wrap and leave to ferment for 12-15 hours at cool room temperature (too easy).

5. At the end of the first rise the dough should be bubbly and greatly increased in volume:

Give it a good stir to deflate it. It will be extremely sticky but much smoother than when you first mixed it.

6. Add in the extra flour, bit by bit, mixing well to incorporate each addition. You want to end up with a dough that is very stiff and hard to mix.

7. Even when stiff, this dough will be a bit softer than a normal dough, and consequently harder to shape, but it is also quite forgiving; so just scrape it out into your tin and smooth the top with a wet hand.

8. Second rise! Cover with cling wrap and let sit at cool room temperature for 2-3 hours.

The  dough might not seem to have risen very much (I would say mine normally rises about 30%? But that's just me eyeballing it) but fear not, there will be an awesome oven spring!

9. Half an hour before you will bake your bread, preheat the oven to 200C.

10. Stick the tin in the oven and bake for 60 minutes (if you have an oven that browns things readily, you may need to cover the top with foil before this time, so keep an eye on it). Check it by slipping it out of the tin; does it sound hollow on the bottom? If so, good, but no-knead breads are wetter than regular ones and take longer to cook. So stick a fine skewer into the thickest part; if it comes out with more than a hint of crumbs on it, pop the loaf back in the oven (with or without its tin) for another 10-15 minutes. I often end up cooking my loaves for about 80-85 minutes.

11. Allow to cool if you can before you enjoy your insanely tasty low-maintenance homemade sourdough bread!!

Love

Verity

*with apologies to Strongbad.

Turtle bars blankets and kittehs, oh my!

Well, here is the slab of turtle bar, baked and cooling, waiting to be sliced... We shared some with a friend after dinner. It was totally delicious, and the kind of rich that sneaks up on you and makes you feel rather queasy while at the same time contemplating a second piece.

 The blanket that I made... the fat quarters are from vintage sheets (thanks Fifties Housewives!) and the back is cut from a thrifted plain white double bed sheet.

The light in our bedroom is rather poor, so I had to use the flash on the camera... which did not disturb our determinedly-snoozing cat Beren, obviously.

Have a wonderful weekend -

Love

Verity

A quiet 'good afternoon'

It has been a long time since I felt I could fit in any blog posts here... It's not like I haven't been doing stuff; I've been doing lots of things: baking, making, running around after Pippin (now 15 months old and more amazing by the day), reading, cleaning... Oh and drinking tea of course (I've just started back on my tea blog as well).

I want to try and keep posting here though. I think it will be good for me, but I'm not quite sure what things will look like or the kind of content I'll be putting up. So please bear with me if things are a bit muddled, chaotic and jump around a bit as I strive to find my blogging groove again. That said, part of the reason I stopped posting for so long was because I felt like my little blog here didn't really compare with any of the other homemaking/baking/daily life blogs I read and enjoy and I felt discouraged and sad. This was part of a kind of 'my whole life sucks and is pointless' existential crisis that I went through around Christmas time in particular, I think. Plus the pressure that I was putting on myself to take pretty pictures and post LOTS wasn't very helpful.

But! As I have come to realise, I'm not in the blogging business; I write my blogs for fun and I don't really care how many people read this blog (although if you do, and you enjoy it, I'm very glad!)... So there will probably be fewer posts in general, and probably fewer pictures as well. If this means that Nice Life With a Cup of Tea is not to your taste that's ok and I will not be offended if you move on.

In the meantime... Here's a few things that have been inspiring me lately:

c\_/ this poem posted on Roots of She, a site I am coming to love more and more I must say.

c\_/ these Turtle Bars (I had never heard of them before, had you??) sound SO DELICIOUS, I am making them tomorrow!

c\_/ I got a sewing machine for Christmas (from my lovely family!!) and I made a blanket like this one - I'll post some pics soon. It is making me so happy every time I see it on our bed.

Love

Verity

Fruit Breads

Do you have a favourite fruit bread fruit combination? These are some of the ones I've made recently:

Date and walnut
Dried apricot
Fig and glacé ginger

 

I was particularly hopeful about the fig and ginger one, but it wasn't quite as mind blowingly good as I had hoped it would be (although it was still very nice). Perhaps it was too wholemeally? Perhaps it was the wrong shape (the dough was very wet and I didn't handle it well so it was flatter than I wanted, and I got rather cranky).

I think so far the dried apricot one is my favourite. I have a bunch of raisins and currants sitting in the pantry, so I might use those up next time, with almonds! Any other suggestions?

Blurry photo, sorry!

Things I don't normally do

There are two things I hardly ever bake: biscuits/cookies and pastry.

Biscuits (however tasty) involve faff. You have to make lots of little balls of dough, roll them, flatten them, bake them in lots of batches (or at least I do; our oven is small)... Yawn. I prefer to make one big thing, like a cake, that I can just stick in there and forget about for half an hour or whatever, without being chained to the kitchen. However, having made the oatmeal raisin cookies from Veganomicon (photo here) - VERY PATIENTLY I might add, three sheets worth of carefully rolled and flattened cookies) - I am prepared to admit that diligence does pay off. I'm just not that keen on that much diligence very often.

Pastry - I lack confidence with. I am intimidated by the concept of making and handling pastry. I'm not quite sure why though, because despite my fear I have made several lots of shortcrust pastry in the last month or so and each has turned out well, and even been easy! Perhaps my developing bread-baking skills are giving me more confidence. Even more exciting is the fact that I now know how to make sourdough pastry, using this recipe from Wild Sourdough:

50g sourdough starter (any kind; I normally use rye)
310g wholemeal wheat or spelt flour (I haven't tried it with white flour yet)
85g water for plain pastry or maple syrup for sweet (honey also works)
75g olive oil
1 tsp salt (optional so far as I'm concerned)

Preheat oven to 200C.

Combine the liquid ingredients including starter and mix thoroughly. Stir into the flour and add the salt if using. Let rest for 10-15 minutes before rolling out and lining your pie dish - this is enough pastry for a 26cm tart or about 3 dozen mini tarts. (It also works well for free-form tarts.) Prick the base several times with a fork.

Rest for 30 minutes in the fridge before filling and baking - you can also blind bake it for about 10 minutes or so if you want to add a filing later.

 

I filled this little stack of sweet tart cases with the following coconut-chocolate ganache:

200ml coconut cream

200g dark chocolate (50-70% cocoa depending on how sweet you want it)

Heat the coconut cream in a small saucepan over low heat until steaming. Remove from the heat. Break up the chocolate into small chunks and add to the coconut cream, stirring until completely melted and smooth. Allow to cool slightly then pour into tart cases. It will thicken and set as it cools. Store in the fridge.

It's not super-strong in the coconut flavour - you might like to add some coconut essence or liqueur or something if you want it stronger. You can use it as a sauce for ice cream or to ice a cake. Or just eat it. It's pretty good.

What I've been baking lately

Half 'n half wheat-spelt sourdough, my new favourite I think - I've made two batches; this was the first and it was better than the second. Not quite sure why? That said the second batch was quite different from the first... no spelt just white/wholemeal wheat, I remembered the salt, I made it free-form instead of in a tin, held the dough over in the fridge for 2 days... ok, ok, so basically it was two different loaves entirely.

 Oatmeal-raisin cookies from Veganomicon - the yummiest ever!

 A second batch of ciabatta, more successfully and carefully shaped this time.

And a second batch of Peter Reinhart's French Bread #1 from Crust and Crumb... the first batch tasted ok but I didn't even photograph it because it looked appalling. I got the shelves and heat wrong in the oven so it burnt on the bottom and didn't colour on the top. This batch was better. I had to return the book to the library but when I get my hands on it again I'm going to try a third time to see if I can improve some more!

This Week's Baking: Ciabatta

I made sourdough ciabatta for the first time this week. The process was a but different - the whole rise (apart from the last hour or so) was in the fridge,and prior to that the dough was stirred rather than kneaded - it was VERY wet dough.

My shaping left quite a bit to be desired, unfortunately. Only the middle one really looked like a proper loaf.

I cooked the loaves on the bottom shelf of the oven with Tennant's pizza stone under the tray and a water bath on the top rack. Not sure how much difference the water bath made (it's meant to made the crust crustier I think?) but the bottoms browner nicely! Sinceour oven heats from the bottom, though, the tops didn't colour at all in the short baking time (15 minutes). Luckily I came up with a solution - rearrange the racks and then put the loaves under the grill for five minutes or so until browner. It worked a treat.

The ciabatta was SO delicious. And check out those air holes!

I didn't intentionally cut it this way so it would look like a pair of lungs... These things happen to me sometimes.

This Week's Baking: Rye & Spelt Sourdough and Chocolate Cherry Cake

It's been a while since I did a baking post... I have been too sick to bake much over the last couple of weeks - we even had to buy bread from the market the other weekend, which we haven't done for ages! And then I thought my sourdough starter might have died... It was looking very sorry for itself in the fridge... But I took it out and gave it some love (and flour and water) and it has perked right back up and is still doing its job beautifully. Thank goodness!

Today I made a rye and spelt sourdough. Here it is on the rise in its tin:

This dough was a dream to knead, not too sticky at all. Drives me bananas when the dough is super sticky, especially because I am not always as organised as I should be and then I have to go hunting for my bench scraper with dough all over my hands, etc etc. I do try to remember my mise en place but I get a bit carried away sometimes.

It's not been super warm and in fact has been raining steadily for most of the day, so the dough rose relatively slowly. I'm pretty happy with the way I rolled and shaped it to fit the tin this time; I need a lot more practice (and maybe to watch some instructional videos) to get my shaping right!

I wish I could share with you how nice this bread made the kitchen smell on this rainy, rainy day! I had some trouble getting it out of the tin to check it for doneness, unfortunately... The bottom stuck even though I thought I had greased it thoroughly. Oh well.

Last night I made a chocolate cake for dessert (seeing as dinner was a pot roast that didn't require any last minute preparation - have I mentioned how much I love my slow cooker?? I must write a post in praise of it sometime) from my husband's Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Chocolate: the Chocolate Cherry Polenta Cake.

It's quite a nice cake and relatively easy to make as well. I don't normally choose recipes that involve beating egg whites and folding them into a mixture because that sounds intimidating. It wasn't too hard though, but I think the cake turned out a bit flatter and denser than it was supposed to because I didn't fold the egg whites in delicately enough. Anyone have any handy hints for how to do this properly??

The cake tastes good, but I prefer the Nigella Lawson chocolate brownies for sheer chocolatey indulgence! But this cake was a good way to use up some glacé cherries that have been lurking in the pantry for goodness knows how long (although glacé cherries are so scarily artificial that they could probably survive almost indefinitely. There's something slightly addictive about them though don't you think?).

Some thoughts on different bread styles

I am loving my sourdough baking, but the bread really is very different to the Kneadlessly Simple ones I was previously baking almost every week. The sourdough breads are much leaner; unless it's a fruit bread there is no added sugar/honey/molasses and although some oil gets worked into the dough from my oiled bench and hands (to stop it sticking) there is usually no added fat either.

The sourdough breads consequently don't keep anywhere near as well. In the Kneadlessly Simple book the author Nancy Baggett generally recommends only keeping the bread at room temperature for a couple of days, but I find that the breads keep perfectly well in our bread bin for nearly a whole week (we do mostly toast them though). Of course they don't always last that long! But I find that the sourdough breads are only good for a couple of days and then you really are better off to freeze the remainder.

Now that my sourdough starter is vital and healthy I am keeping it in the fridge, taking out what I need and refreshing it as I go, rather than tending to it everyday. I also use the 'dough retardation' method as often as possible, whereby you rest the dough in the fridge overnight before baking it after a slower second rise. That said it is still a bit more complicated to make the sourdough breads compared with the no-knead ones. With the latter you seriously only need a couple of periods of about 10 minutes each for mixing and the rest of the time the dough is just sitting around either in the fridge or on your kitchen bench doing its thing without any help from you. Consequently it's easier to fit breadmaking into your life. With the sourdough you really do need an hour or two at home to get the bread ready for its first rise. Things get a bit easier after that.

The other thing about making the sourdough though, is it is FUN! You get to air-knead the bread by grabbing it and throwing it in the air! Then whacking it on the bench! It's great and even more cathartic than regular kneading. So if you feel that you have stuff to get out of your system... this is a most productive way to do it. You let off steam, and then you have nice bread. This is called a win-win situation.

Do you have a method of breadmaking you prefer? My friend Anne was also posting about these sorts of issues on her blog Pins and Thimbles... check it out!

This Week's Baking: Semolina Sourdough and Orange, Currant & Fennel Loaf

This week I decided to try the orange, currant and fennel fruit loaf and the semolina sourdough from Wild Sourdough. Actually, I'd already made the semolina sourdough the week before (as bread rolls to have with some burgers) and it was that nice I thought I would make it again.

I even managed to take some photos while I was making the batches of dough. (They might be a bit fuzzy owing to the difficulty of using a camera without getting it coated in doughy gunk.)

The currant loaf recipe was rather vague about the point at which the orange marmalade should be added. Like, didn't mention it at all. So I thought I would layer it on as I was folding in the currants and fennel seeds. It worked a treat:

 Folded!!

This bread is SO delicious. Screw you Dench bakers and your orange fruit loaf that costs $7 a pop. This is better.

Rising

And the finished loaf:

Here's some action shots from the semolina sourdough. This is another one that uses lots of starter - I fed my rye starter with white flour so it is only a little bit rye-y, but definitely 100% dense tangy goodness.

Honestly, not quite sure where that funny pointy bit that's sticking up at the side there came from, but no matter.

I'm thinking I might do a couple of no-knead breads next though, for a bit of a change. I also have a post scheduled that compares the two different kinds of bread techniques - just a few thoughts.

This Week's Baking: Sourdough Bonanza

This is actually a bit of last week's baking as well. I made fetta and chilli sourdough from Wild Sourdough... except without the fetta because I couldn't get hold of any at the time, so instead I sprinkled the bread with chilli flakes, fennel seeds and dried thyme. You do that when the dough is pressed out into a rectangle and then roll it up tightly. The pinwheel effect was only very minor because the spices were so small; it would have looked more impressive with the fetta. Tasted good; this is a wholemeal bread (using rye starter) and it has a nice texture and medium-dense crumb:

The bottom is all bumpy because I have taken to baking my bread directly on the oven rack with only some baking paper underneath the loaf. I think it looks kind of cool:

I have a bit too much sourdough starter on hand though, so I've been looking for ways to use it up. I came across this helpful recipe for blueberry muffins.

(Sourdough Home, where the recipe is from, is a terrific sourdough resource by the way - much as I love my Wild Sourdough book it leaves out quite a bit of useful information (poor sub-editing I'm afraid, which is disappointing) and so I have had to turn to the internets for additional information. Sourdough Home has been extremely handy for filling in some of the gaps.)

With some alterations, here are the muffins I made:

1 cup sourdough starter (rye, in my case)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour
pinch of salt
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1 cup frozen blackberries

1. Prehreat oven to 220C. Grease a 6-hole Texas muffin pan.
2. Mix the starter, oil, egg and vanilla together thoroughly in a medium bowl.
3. Mix the flour, sugar and salt together in a small bowl. Stir in the chocolate chips and blackberries.
4. Working quickly, add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and combine thoroughly. Spoon into muffin cups.
5. Bake at 220C for about 30 minutes or until slightly browned on top and cooked through.

These muffins are not your usual sort of muffins - much chewier and denser (although if you used a plain white starter, rather than rye, they would be lighter I suppose). They're not excessively sweet, either, so are a good breakfasty option; if I'm going to have a muffin for breakfast I like it to be substantial and not super-sweet and fluffy!

This Week's Baking: Nigella Lawson's Brownies

Sometimes you just gotta have chocolate things... like brownies.

These are the ones from How To Be A Domestic Goddess, except without the walnuts (didn't have any; also I have recently been converted to the way of the nut-free brownie thanks to some absolutely delicious ones brought around by a friend of mine one day).

I have trouble achieving the right cooking time for these; I think my pan is not quite the right size, plus our bottom-heating oven is a bit funny (don't get me started) and I worry about burning them, which ironically often leads to them being undercooked.

However, this time I gave them their 25 minutes, then turned the oven off and left them in there (following consultation with the Stressed Chef) for about another 15 minutes. Result: perfection. Squidgy, chocolatey, rich, but - surprisingly - not too sweet. If you are a fan of brownies this is definitely one to try. Along with all the others, of course.

 A treat this yummy deserves a pretty plate, don't you think?

This Week's Baking - Wholemeal Oat Yoghurt Bread

A lovely friend came over for dinner the other night, and - having had a very busy day and insufficient time to cook - I served her soup from the freezer. Soup not even made by me; it was my mum's minestrone soup which she had given us a gallon of a week or so before. It is terrific soup; but in order to maintain my self-respect I felt that I needed to actually make something myself.

So I did a bit of a cupboard and fridge hunt... I had wholemeal self-raising flour and yoghurt and a little bit of buttermilk... I figured I had the makings of a soda-type bread, but which recipe to use? Google to the rescue; I searched for 'yoghurt bread' and found this recipe for Whole Wheat Yoghurt Bread. So then I took the plunge and reworked the recipe to incorporate the ingredients that I had on hand:

3 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
150ml buttermilk
350ml plain yoghurt

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Mix together the buttermilk and yoghurt.
3. Stir dry ingredients together thoroughly in a large bowl. Add the buttermilk/yoghurt mixture and mix until most of the liquid is incorporated. The dough will be raggedy, not smooth.
4. Turn all the bits out onto a clean work surface and knead together. If the dough still seems a bit dry (mine did), wet your hands and knead it a few times to incorporate a little more water, but don't over moisten.
5. Shape into a round and cut a cross on the top. Place on a sheet of baking paper or a baking tray dusted with flour.
6. Bake at 180C for an hour - should be golden brown all over and sound hollow on the bottom. Best allowed to cool thoroughly before slicing.

We didn't wait though. The bread was very tasty although it seemed a little doughy in the middle - but I think that's because it was still so hot. Another 5 minutes in the oven probably wouldn't have hurt though. Beautiful with the soup  (thanks mum!). It was also excellent toasted the next morning. None left now!

This Week's Baking, Part Two - Sourdough Rye Sandwich Loaf

I think this might be the best loaf of bread I've made, ever.

waiting to go into the oven...

I don't have time to go into blow by blow detail on the making of it... but I will say that 'air-kneading' (throwing the dough in the air and whacking it on the bench) provided plenty of entertainment for Pippin!

The recipe is from Wild Sourdough. This particular loaf uses approximately equal quantities of starter (rye in this case, though the recipe calls for white) and plain flour, resulting in a loaf that is about 50% starter. This means (apparently) that it rises well, in a shorter time, and has a denser crumb, but a less complex flavour.

looks like a treasure chest!

It is still plenty tasty, though. The texture is incredible, moist, tender. This is the sandwich loaf that supermarket or Bakers Delight loaves can only fantasise about being. I love the flecked look from the rye flour. It's got a nice slightly sour tang. I think it could possibly have done with another 5 minutes or so in the oven to dry it out a touch more... but it's damn good as it is.

Pause for consideration: This bread is, like, a MIRACLE. It is flour, and water, and a little bit of salt, and that's it! Nothing else! And it still rose properly and everything! WOW!!!! I am in awe of the power of sourdough!

Hallelujah!

This Week's Baking, Part One - Peanut Butter & Oat Slice

I came across this tasty-sounding slice recipe in a recent Taste.com.au newsletter decided to bake it up for our snacks this week.

A few things went wrong... but it ended up not mattering!
- didn't have enough coconut. So I added cacao nibs instead. Win!*

 - accidentally added way too much honey, as a result of a brain snap that had me thinking it was a good idea to pour the honey out from the 1-kilo tub (instead of doing something sensible like scooping it out with a spoon)...into the same bowl as the peanut butter was already in. Whoops. So there was about 100g of honey in the slice instead of 60g. However, it is by no means oversweet, so that was ok too.

- got caught up with Pippin and overbaked the slice by about 10 minutes, resulting in a slightly drier texture than I think it should ideally have, but it's certainly not a disaster, especially because the edges are really nice and crunchy now.

It's really yummy. I'll be making it again. Very simple and potentially quite versatile... you could use different combinations of nut butters and seeds (or chocolate bits or dried fruit even as well). Substantial, comforting and, despite the additional honey, no sugar crash from this one.

Stay tuned for some sourdough baking news! Things have been going well so far!

*yes, we are the kind of people who just happen to have more cacao nibs than desiccated coconut in our pantry. It's just how things are round here.