Learning To Sourdough

 Learning how to make sourdough bread has long been on my to do list as I just love the taste and texture of it. I've bought it many times but there is nowhere locally that I can buy this wonderful bread and so I end up buying it at artisan bakers whilst out and about. Nothing wrong with that but it's usually rather expensive and I just had to get to grips with actually making it.

I had no idea how to start this sourdough journey and so ended up scrolling endlessly through recipes and blogs and finally stumbled upon a fabulous Youtube tutorial which broke down the whole process into manageable chunks - 

- Thank you so much to Culinary Exploration on Youtube for making this so doable !! 

So many videos but it was easy to find one that I could follow and I could stop it at each stage to catch up etc. It does take some getting used to as it's a world away from usual bread making, the taste at the end of the day is worth it but.....this is a summer exploit for me as my kitchen is on the whole really quite cool and I have struggled to make this work in such a cold kitchen.

Here is a link to this amazing blog, I really haven't found anything that touches this as a complete newcomer, come the summer I'll be back making sourdough for sure.

Culinary Exploration the Blog

Greek Produce

 Coming from a country where - certainly in my area- so much fresh produce seems to be less than fresh and pretty much always wrapped to the enth degree in plastic, I'm always amazed by fresh produce markets on my travels. 

Travelling through Greece for the last few years it does my heart good to come across the fruit and veg markets where the smell is divine. I took this photo for Sam whilst on holiday last year to Kefalonia. As a committed vegan, so much of his diet relies on good fruit and veg and while he lives in an area with much more to offer than me, it's still a roll of the dice how fresh it really is. 

You can almost smell the tomatoes :) 

This lovely market was just along the waterfront at Argostoli by the Kefalonia sign, I could barely walk past it without buying something.

Vegan Bread Pudding

 I made a lovely traditional ( kind of ) bread pudding a couple of weeks ago and wanted to treat Sam - vegan for the last five years - to as best a vegan bread pudding that I could possibly knock up for him. This shouldn't have been difficult as bread pudding has always been one of those dishes that relies on pretty much whatever you happen to have in the kitchen at that time. 

I don't think that I've ever made it the same way twice honestly and its variously luxurious or wartime ration like depending on the ingredients available. 

It was quite interesting to judge this recipe as I made a fully non vegan recipe for bread pudding on the same day, it would be handy to trial them side by side.

Ingredients

• 500 g  / 17½ oz wholemeal (whole wheat) bread
• 600 ml  plant based milk
• 1 Tbspn mixed spice
• ½ Tbspn ground cinnamon (or more mixed spice)
• 500 g   mixed dried fruit e.g. sultanas, raisins, candied citrus peel
• zest of 1 unwaxed/organic lemon
• zest of 1 unwaxed/organic orange
• 50 ml / ¼ cup neutral-flavoured oil ( I used light olive oil ) 
• 100 g / ½ cup unrefined ('golden') caster sugar or coconut sugar
• 2 Tbspn Demerara sugar
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Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan) / 350F / Gas Mark 4

In a large bowl break up the bread and pour in the milk, add spices and fruit and leave until the bread has broken down - about 30 minutes.

Add lemon and orange zest, oil and sugar to the mix ( I added the juice of the lemon and orange at this stage too ), give it all a good stir and add to a 20cm / 8 inch square lined tin. Sprinkle with the demerara sugar - this gives the pudding a lovely crunch.

Bake for approx 1 1/2 hours or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the pudding. Leave to cool - if you can , the temptation to try this too soon is overwhelming.

This was absolutely delicious and very well received by Sam - yum !! It didn't last long I think.

It didn't taste as luxurious as the non vegan pudding but it was still a fabulous recipe and I'll deffo make it again. 

Kentish Gypsy Tart

 Anyone brought up in Kent will know this  - beyond sweet - sticky tart. A very welcome staple of school dinners in the 1960's and 1970's this would have us unusually rushing to the dinner hall. I have other memories of school dinners that were not so positive, I still can't eat beetroot to this day even though its good for me!

Its easy to make and I've never heard a bad word about it with the exception maybe of the likely hood of losing a few fillings along the way.

Ingredients

300gms Plain flour plus a little for dusting

150gms butter

1 Medium egg beaten

410g tin very cold evaporated milk

280g Dark muscovado sugar

Preheat oven to 190c / Gas mark 5

Place a metal baking sheet into the oven ready for your tart tin

Sieve the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until it feels like fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg and enough cold water to bind, wrap in cling film and place in the fridge to firm up. 

After half an hour or so, roll out the pastry to line a tart/pie tin, leave any excess over the edges as this can be removed a little later, cover with baking parchment and baking beans/ceramic beans/rice  and bake for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove the paper and beans and bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

Leave to cool and take off the extra pastry from around the edges.

Pour evaporated milk and sugar into a large bowl and whisk for a good 15minutes until thicker and foamy ( it won't go very thick at this stage ), pour into tart case and bake for 20 minutes.

It will be sticky and set at this stage, leave to cool and when quite cool pop in to the fridge overnight to set well.

Fight family off as they realise what they missed at school dinners all those years, yes it's terribly sweet and sticky but absolutely delicious. 

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Amazing Biscuits

 Its rare that I post anything other than recipes these days and I would kind of like to get back to a mix of recipes and lifestyle content. This is the perfect place to start as I've been holding onto this link with a view to buying this very product for far too long. 

I think these will be bought for valentines day next year and I will certainly drop a review on here after consumption.

This company has great credentials and I really don't know why I haven't ordered earlier, busy life I guess, stuff just drops off the radar! 

Anyway, this company is Honeywell Bakes and they operate from Northamptonshire in the UK, lets make 2025 the year that I try all the wonderful companies products to review.

Lovely one for all dads on Fathers day, many a dad loves a full English breakfast.

Another lovely example for Mothers day.

Can't wait to try these in the new year.

Bread Pudding

I remember making bread pudding so many times but so many years ago. It was really time that I had a go at making it again. Of course , we used to make this with quite meagre ingredients back in the day , and it can still be made this way, I wanted a rather more luxurious take on this old fashioned bake and stumbled on this recipe after what seemed like hours of searching

Thanks to Traditional British regional food and recipes for this wonderful recipe.

Bread Pudding

100g butter, plus extra for greasing 

500g sultanas/mixed dried fruit ( I use whole glace cherries too )

100g whisky (optional)

600ml milk

150g soft light brown sugar

1 orange, zested

2 tsp mixed spice

2 tsp ground ginger

500g stale bread

2 eggs, beaten

50g demerara sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Grease and line the base of a 20cm square cake tin.

Put the sultanas/mixed fruit and whisky into a bowl, swirl around, then set aside to soak for 30 minutes. This is optional but it gives great flavor.

Put the milk into a saucepan along with the soft light brown sugar and butter, and set over a medium heat. Heat until the butter has melted, then remove from the heat, stir in the orange zest and spices, and leave for another 15 minutes for the the dried fruit

Break up the bread until it forms breadcrumbs -  don't worry too much about how fine it is as it becomes soft and breaks up in the liquid anyway -  then add to the liquid and mix well. Add

the eggs and whisk to combine. Pour into the prepared tin and press down lightly into the corners, then sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Bake for 1 hour until golden brown and just set.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack, then turn out and cut into squares to serve.

This was a fabulous recipe, I did add almost a whole pack of glace cherries as I love cherries but otherwise I mostly kept to the original recipe. Utterly delicious! 

Vegan Cheese Scones

 I was trying to come up with a good idea for a bready type accompaniment to go with the lovely Greek beans recipe as I was making them for my vegan family and hit on a cheesy scone idea. Now I've made cheese scones but never attempted vegan scones before so this was going to be an experiment.

I've tried making vegan sponge with little success honestly so I was a little apprehensive as to how these were going to turn out!

Ingredients:

225 g self-raising flour

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50 g dairy-free block margarine

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125 g vegan cheese ( grated )  

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½ teaspoon salt

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2 teaspoon mustard powder

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1 tablespoon chives, finely chopped

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60 ml oat milk

Big pinch pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan) / 400°F / Gas Mark 6

After measuring out the flour into a largish bowl, place in the salt and the cubed vegan butter and rub in lightly until fine breadcrumbs. Stir through grated cheese, chives, mustard powder and pepper until all mixed together. Pour in the milk and add cold water until the dough comes together without being too sticky.

Bring dough together into a bowl and just bring together onto a floured board. You can roll the dough out at this stage but I just pressed it down gently to about 1.5cms thick, press out rounds of dough gently and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Brush just the tops of each scone with a little oat milk and place in the oven for approx 20 minutes.

Once out of the oven ( and after a suitable resting time - two rather hot minutes :) ) , it was time to try these little monsters. OK, they were probably better not scalding hot honestly, and served warm with a little vegan butter they were certainly rather good. 

The cheese flavour is a little mild for me so I think I'll experiment next time with a spoonful or two of nutritional yeast and see how that compares. For a first go though they were better than ok.

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