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Tell you what, I'm really enjoying baking bread. I can say quite definitively that I'm no longer afraid of working with yeast - instant or fresh. I've actually got into the rhythm of baking two loaves of bread (sometimes three) pretty much every other Saturday. They're mostly a mix of white and wholewheat bread for everyday use, and sometimes I bake a third loaf which might be a flavoured one, to go with soups and suchlike.
The bread loaves get sliced - and I'm getting pretty good at cutting even, thin slices, even if I do say so myself - divided into half-loaves and fed to the freezer, stored in bags labelled with the date of baking. That way I get to rotate recycle use up the bread, oldest ones first. Yep, I'm THAT organised. It's kind of disconcerting, even to me. Or especially to me, because only I know just how alien this behaviour is to me.
Now that you've all been made aware of my weekend baking activities and the resulting follow-ons - which information I'm sure has been of great interest, by the way - let's get to the sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread that is today's recipe. By rights it should have been posted two months back, because that's about when I made it... but never mind that. The bread is really nice with soup, but I was happy to eat it by itself, with no adornments, because it was that tasty. Can't say better than that, can I?
By the way, if you don't like a strong garlic flavour, use less of the roasted garlic paste... and if your thing is to wilt every living thing within a 10-metre radius with your breath, by all means use MORE garlic paste, as much as you want. At least Dracula won't get you.
Recipe for: Sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread
Ingredients:
3-1/2 cups (15 oz) strong white bread flour
2-3 tbsp olive or other oil of choice
2 tbsp double concentrated tomato paste
1 tbsp roasted garlic, roughly mashed
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes in oil (but leave out the oil)
1 htsp salt
About 300 ml warm water
1/2 tbsp instant yeast
Method:
1. Place the flour in a deep bowl and mix in the instant yeast and salt.
2. Then add the roasted garlic, tomato paste, and chopped sundried tomatoes
along with 250 ml of the warm water and mix together till the flour begins to form a rough dough. Cover and let it rest for 10 minutes to absorb the water.
3. Now knead again, adding as much of the remaining 50ml water as required, to make a dough that is not exactly sloppy but also not hard or dry either.
4. Pour 1 tbsp olive oil on your worktop (make sure your worktop is clean first!) or kneading board and spread it around a bit. Turn the dough out onto the oil and start kneading, pushing the dough away from you with the heel of your hand, turning it a quarter, then repeating the pushing/turning movement. Add more oil to the worktop if the dough starts sticking again, and continue kneading. Occasionally scrape your hand clean of dough.
5. After about 8-10 minutes, the dough should be elastic and only a little tacky. Now grease a large bowl (I use Pam spray, but you can use more oil if you like) and place the dough in it, turning it around to completely coat it in the oil. Cover the bowl and place in a warm place for the dough to rise and more or less double in volume. This can take between 1-2 hours, or even longer - there's no way to accurately predict how long it might take, so I can't give you a precise time.
6. Once the dough is risen, punch it back down. Sprinkle a couple of tbsp extra flour on your workspace and put the dough on it. Shape it into a round ball, place on a baking tray (flour the top of the dough lightly if you like) and cover with a clean tea-towel. Let the dough rise again for 45 min to an hour. Use a sharp knife to slash a 1-cm deep cross into the top.
7. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F and put the dough in to bake. Let it bake for 25-30 minutes - the top should be a nice golden brown and the bottom should sound hollow when tapped.
Remove the loaf to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely. Serve sliced, with soup.
(Adapted from King Arthur Flour)
First off, I have to apologise for the delay in posting my version of this month's challenge - actually, last month's, now. In my defence, my laptop was on a dreadful go-slow, and on top of that, the Internet connection at home was unavailable all of last week as we'd changed over from AOL to BT... and the engineer from BT could only come last Friday to actually install whatever he needed to install for us to go online. So now we have a superfast connection... but my laptop has not received the memo yet, methinks. It's extremely frustrating to work on photographs when it takes 5 minutes to save every change that's made. But this post had to be published, and I didn't want to risk being thrown out of this group for a perceived lack of participation. (I but jest, I know Aparna is very forgiving!)
Anyway, those of you who are still dropping by my blog might be wondering who's been writing my posts for me. I wonder that myself, because the last few posts show every sign of having been dashed off by someone who didn't know how to write, who didn't want to write in the first place and who had a dozen different distractions. That was me. Distracted and reluctant. And it showed in my writing - hastily done for the sake of doing it, not because I was enjoying the process. I'm still in the reluctant phase, so this probably isn't going to be a long post. I just wanted to make my excuses for the quality of my posts lately. I know I can do better, and I probably eventually will.
On to the bialys. I've made them twice - they're pretty easy to make, but the reason I made them the second time is because the onion filling got burnt practically to cinders. My first mistake was to cook the onions for too long on the hob, and my second mistake was to leave the overcooked onions to cool in the frying pan itself. That was a rookie mistake, really. So the already overcooked onion simply got incinerated when they spent 20 minutes in a 230C oven. The bialys tasted great, so Pete and I ate the bready part after I'd chiselled off the charred onions.
This anecdote is merely to emphasise that it's very important to cook the onions till just soft and no more. And remove the cooked onions to a bowl where they can cool.
The second batch of bialys was spectacularly tasty. You can add chopped, cooked smoked bacon to the onion mix for the non-vegetarians, like I did. Believe me, those bacon bialys just vanished.
Recipe for: Bialys
Ingredients:
For the dough:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cup warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour (use bread flour if you can find it or all-purpose flour + 1 tbsp vital wheat gluten)
1 tsp salt
Milk for brushing the dough
For the Onion Filling:
1 tbsp oil
3 medium onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3/4 tsp garam masala
Salt to taste
Method:
1. Make the dough first. Put the yeast, sugar, salt and flour in a large bowl. Mix well and then add the warm water in a steady stream. Knead until the dough comes together as a mass and then let the dough rest for 10 minutes. This will help the dough absorb water. Knead again, adding a little more water or flour (not too much) if you need it, until your dough is smooth and elastic but not sticky.
2. Shape tre dough into a ball and put it in a well-oiled bowl, turning the dough till it is well coated. Cover and let it rise till about double. This should take about 2 hours. If you’re not making the bialys right away, you can refrigerate the dough overnight at this point. When ready to make them, keep the dough at room temperature for about half an hour and then proceed with the rest of the recipe.
3. In the meantime, make the filling. Heat the oil in a pan, and add the cumin seeds. When the crackle, add the onions, and sauté over low to medium heat. Sprinkle a little salt and continue sautéing until they become soft and turn golden brown in colour. Add the garam masala and stir well. Keep the caramelised onions aside to cool.
4. Sprinkle your work surface lightly with flour and place the dough on it. Divide it into 8 equal pieces and shape each one into a roll by flattening it and then pinching the ends together to form a smooth ball. Place the rolls on a lightly greased baking sheet and cover them with a towel. Let them rise for about one hour (about 1 1/2 to 2 hours for refrigerated dough) till pressing with a finger on the top leaves a dent.
5. Work on one piece at a time, while you keep the others covered so they don’t dry out. When the rolls are ready, pick them up one at a time and using your fingers, form the depression in the middle. Hold the roll like a steering wheel with your thumbs in the middle and your fingers around the edges. Pinch the dough between your thumb and fingers, rotating as you go and gradually making the depression wider without actually poking a hole through.
6. Remember not to press on the edges, or they will flatten out. Once shaped, you should have a depression about 3” in diameter with 1” of puffy dough around the edge, so your Bialy should be about 4” to 5” in diameter. Prick the centre of the bialys with a fork so the centre doesn’t rise when baking.
7. Place the shaped dough on a parchment lined (or greased) baking tray leaving about 2 inches space between them. Place the caramelised onion filling in the depressions of each Bialy. Brush the outer dough circle with milk. Bake the bialys at 230C (450F) for about 15 minutes till they’re golden brown in colour.
Cool them on a rack. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.
Original version of the recipe on Fine Cooking
Aparna's post on her blog My Diverse Kitchen
Let's get one thing clear from the start - making croissants was not my first choice, nor even my hundredth choice. In fact, it didn't even figure as a fleeting choice on my "would like to try" list. But I made them. I made them because it was the recipe for February in the "We Knead to Bake" challenge. There is no way that I would have tried this otherwise, none. I cannot stress that enough. I wish I could say that I enjoyed the three-day process so much that I wanted to do it all over gain... I COULD say it, but it would be a big fat lie.
Do you think this might be a bit of a negativity overkill?
Ok, to be fair, I'm glad I tried the recipe. Glad that Aparna made me go way outside my comfort zone (it took me a week to make my way back - ha ha). Glad that I know how much hard work goes into making the flaky, buttery, delicious croissants that I love. Glad that there are bakeries and cafes where I can walk in and simply buy a croissant. And, most of all, glad that faced up to my croissant demon... and if I didn't quite vanquish it, at least I can say truthfully that I didn't just give up.
My croissants were reasonably good, more than edible (jeez, all that butter - why WOULDN'T they be tasty!), and the ones with chopped chocolate filling were actually extremely moreish. I only did a few of those, though, perhaps about 4. The rest were plain croissants. While Pete liked them, and so did I, I just felt that the end result was not good enough for the effort that went into making them. I guess I'm just being picky, and I guess that's because I do love a well-made, fresh, flaky croissant.
I think I need a tame croissant baker who would be at my beck and call for baked goods. Any takers?
Recipe for: Classic croissants
Ingredients:
For the dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour, and a little more for dusting/ rolling out dough
1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp cold water
1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp cold milk (I used 2%)
1/8 cup granulated sugar
20gm soft unsalted butter (1.5 tbsp)
1/2 tbsp plus scant 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
For the butter layer:
125 gm cold unsalted butter
Or 1 egg for egg wash
Finely chopped dark or plain chocolate for filling (optional)
Method:
Day 1 - Make the dough (and refrigerate overnight)
Combine all the ingredients for the dough in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. You can also use a food processor with the plastic blade, or do this by hand.
Mix everything on low speed for 3 minutes, scraping the sides of the mixing bowl once if necessary. Then mix further on medium speed for 3 minutes. Lightly flour a 10-inch pie pan or a dinner plate. And place the ball of dough on this.
Gently shape the dough into a flat ball by pressing it down before storing it in the fridge, this makes rolling out next morning easier. Making a tight ball will strengthen the gluten which you do not need. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour and wrap well with plastic so it doesn’t dry out. Refrigerate overnight.
Day 2 - Make the butter layer
The next day, cut out 2 pieces of parchment or waxed paper into 10” squares each. Cut the cold butter into 1/2-inch-thick slabs. Place these pieces on one piece of parchment/ waxed paper so they form a 5- to 6-inch square. Cut the butter further into pieces as required to fit the square. Top with the other piece of parchment/ waxed paper.
Using a rolling pin, pound the butter with light, even strokes. As the pieces begin to stick together, use more force. Pound the butter until it flattens out evenly into a square that’s approximately 7-1/2”. Trim the edges of the butter to make a neat square. Put the trimmings on top of the square and pound them in lightly with the rolling pin. Refrigerate this while you roll out the dough.
Laminate the dough
Unwrap and lay the dough on a lightly floured work surface. Roll it out to a 10-1/2-inch square, and brush off the excess flour. Take the butter out from the refrigerator —it should be cold but pliable. If it isn’t refrigerate it till it is. This so that when you roll out the dough with the butter in ti, neither should it be soft enough to melt, or hard enough to break. Unwrap the butter and place it on the square of dough in the centre, so that it forms a “diamond” shape on the dough.
Fold one flap of dough over the butter toward you, stretching it slightly so that the point just reaches the middle of the butter square. Bring the opposite flap to the middle, slightly overlapping the previous one. Similarly repeat with the other two so that the dough forms an envelope around the butter. Lightly press the edges together to completely seal the butter inside the dough to ensure the butter doesn’t escape when you roll out the dough later.
Lightly flour the top and bottom of the dough. With the rolling pin, firmly press along the dough uniformly to elongate it slightly. Now begin rolling instead of pressing, focusing on lengthening rather than widening the dough and keeping the edges straight.
Roll the dough into an 8” by 24” rectangle. If the ends lose their square shape, gently reshape the corners with your hands. Brush off the excess flour. Mark the dough lightly equally into three along the long side. Using this as a guideline, pick up one short end of the dough and fold 1/3rd of it back over the dough, so that 1/3rd of the other end of dough is exposed. Now fold the 1/3rd exposed dough over the folded side. Basically, the dough is folded like 3-fold letter before it goes into an envelope (letter fold). Put the folded dough on a floured baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze for 15 to 20 minutes to relax and chill the dough.
Repeat the rolling and folding, this time rolling in the direction of the two open ends (from the shorter sides to lengthen the longer sides) until the dough is about 8” by 24”. Once again fold the dough in thirds, brushing off excess flour and turning under any rounded edges or short ends with exposed or smeared layers. Cover once again with plastic wrap and freeze for another 15 to 20 minutes.
Roll and fold the dough exactly in the same way for the third time and put it baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap, tucking the plastic under all four sides and refrigerate overnight.
Day 3 - Divide the dough
The next day, unwrap and lightly flour the top and bottom of the dough. Cut the dough along the longer side into halves. Cover one half with plastic wrap and refrigerate it while working on the other half.
“Wake up the dough up” by pressing firmly along its length with the rolling pin. Don’t widen the dough but simply begin to lengthen it with these first strokes. Slowly roll the dough into a long and narrow strip, approximately 8” by 22”. If the dough sticks as you roll, sprinkle with flour.
Once the dough is about half to two-thirds of its final length, it may start to resist rolling and even shrink back. If this happens, fold the dough in thirds, cover, and refrigerate for about 10 minutes; then unfold the dough and finish rolling.
Lift the dough an inch or so off the table at its midpoint and allow it to shrink from both sides and prevent the dough from shrinking when it’s cut. Check that there’s enough excess dough on either end so that when you trim the edges to straighten them, you have a strip of dough that is 20’ inches long. Now trim the edges so they’re straight. Cut the dough into equal sized triangles, marking them off first if you prefer, before cutting.
Shape the croissants
Now work with one piece of triangular dough at a time. Using your rolling pin, very lightly roll (do not make it thin but only stretch it slightly) the triangle to stretch it a little, until it is about 6” long. This will give your croissants height and layers. You can stretch it by hand too, but if you don’t have the practise, your stretching could be uneven.
Using a sharp small knife, make a 1/2- to 3/4-inch-long notch in the centre of the short side of each triangle. The notch helps the rolled croissant curl into a crescent.
Place the triangle on the work surface with the notched side closest to you. This is the time to add your filling, if you're using any. With one hand on each side of the notch, begin to roll the dough away from you, towards the pointed end.
Flare your hands outward as you roll so that the notched “legs” become longer. Roll the triangle tight enough but not too tight to compress it, until you reach the “pointy” end which should be under the croissant.
Now bend the two legs towards you to form a tight crescent shape and gently press the tips of the legs together (they’ll come apart while proofing but keep their crescent shape).
Shape all the triangles like this into croissants and place them on a greased or parchment lined baking sheet leaving as much space between them as they will rise quite a bit.
Proof the croissants
Brush the croissants with milk (or a mix of milk and cream). If you use eggs, make an egg wash by whisking one egg with 1 tsp water in a small bowl until very smooth. Lightly brush this on each croissant.
Refrigerate the remaining milk/ milk+cream (or egg wash) for brushing the croissants again later. Place the croissants in a cool and draft-free place (the butter should not melt) for proofing/ rising for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. They might need longer than 2 hours to proof, maybe as much as 3 hours, so make sure to let croissants take the time to proof. The croissants will be distinctly larger but not doubled in size. They’re ready if you can see the layers of dough from the side, and if you lightly shake the sheets, the croissants will wiggle.
Bake the croissants
Just before the croissants are fully proofed, pre-heat your oven to 200C (400F) in a convection oven or 220C (425F) in a regular oven. Brush the croissants with milk/ milk+cream (or egg wash) a second time, and place your baking sheets on the top and lower thirds of your oven (if regular) or bake one tray at a time in the convection oven.
Bake them for about 15 to 20 minutes till they’re done and golden brown on top and just beginning to brown at the sides. In a regular oven, remember to turn your baking sheets halfway through. If they seem to be darkening too quickly during baking, lower the oven temperature by 10C (25F). Cool the croissants on the baking sheets on racks.
Serve warm. This recipe makes 10 mini croissants.
This is yet another Dan Lepard recipe, kind of - that is, I took his basic never-fail white loaf recipe, substituted quick-rise with fresh yeast, changed the flour content to 2:1 white to wholewheat, substituted 1 cup water with 50ml Greek yogurt thinned with 50ml water and, as a final touch, added 1 tbsp vinegar because I'd read somewhere that it helped keep the loaf soft for longer.
Perhaps I should have made one substitution at a time per loaf, rather than all the substitutions in one loaf - because I can't say for sure if it was the yogurt or the vinegar or the combination that actually made the loaf come out so well! What I CAN say for certain is that this was a lovely, lovely loaf - rose well, baked well, sliced well, toasted well...
I might be blowing my own trumpet here a wee bit, but... it might just be that I've got my bread baking mojo back!
Recipe for: Fresh yeast white-wholewheat loaf
Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups strong white white flour + 1 cup strong wholewheat flour
30gm fresh yeast OR 1 tsp dry instant/quick-rise yeast
1 tsp sugar
1-1/2 tsp salt
200 ml warm (NOT hot) water
50 ml Greek yogurt + 50 ml water
1 tbsp vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
a little oil for kneading
Method:
1. Check that the yeast is alive by crumbling it into the warm water along with 1 tsp sugar, and whisking it. Leave it for 15 minutes. If it's starting to bubble, it's alive and can be used successfully. (If you're using instant yeast, skip this step and go straight to step 2, adding the instant yeast to the flour.)
2. Put the flours in a bowl and whisk in the salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast starter along with the yogurt and vinegar. Mix to form a rough dough. Cover and let it be for minutes.
3. Now oil your worktop or kneading board lightly, and scrape the dough onto it. Knead lightly for 10 seconds, then let it rest for 10 minutes. Do the kneading/resting procedure twice more, for a total of three times, oiling the board and/or your hands as required.
4. After the fourth 10-second knead, put the dough back in the bowl, cover it, and let it rise for 45 minutes to an hour, or until it has doubled.
5. Lightly flour the kneading board. Punch down the dough and return it to the kneading board, rolling it gently or patting it into a rough oblong. Now roll it up tightly along the long side, and place it seam-side down on a floured tray. You can also place it in a lightly greased 7" x 5" loaf tin. Either way, flour the top of the loaf, cover it with a clean tea towel and leave it to rise for another hour or so. When the dough looks like it has more or less doubled, or when it is about 2 inches above the rim of the tin, make a 1cm deep cut down the middle with a sharp knife, or three diagonal slashes - whichever way you prefer it.
6. Preheat the oven to 200C/425F. Just before putting the bread in to bake, place a tray of boiling water on the oven floor. The steam will help the crust become a rich colour. Bake the bread for about 35-40 minutes. The bread is done when the top turns golden brown and the bottom sounds hollow when it is tapped. Let cool before slicing.
I've been on a baking binge over the last 2 weeks - only on the weekends, though, because weekdays are just not long enough for baking bread if you're not demonically organised, which I am not.
Ever since I discovered Dan Lepard's recipes in The Guardian, I've gone through some 300-odd recipes in his column published over the past so many years, and scouted out all the bread recipes that seemed interesting and easy. And printed them. And now I'm trying to bake them all, one by one.
The saffron bloomer got made twice. Then this one, which is really good. There's also a wheat & rye cider loaf, and a loaf made with fresh yeast... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Those recipes will follow in due course.
For this loaf, it was serendipitous that I had half a carton of sour cream in the fridge. It may have been just a teensy bit past its use-by date, but I didn't say that and you didn't read it. Besides, we're both alive, so there was no harm done.
I've never been so pleased with bread I've baked - this loaf could have come from a proper bakery, I kid you not. I SO like Dan Lepard, because he says there's no need to knead like a maniac to get good bread, and believe me, that man speaks true. I'm all for an easier life, and he does make it easier. I may have said that before, but it remains true nevertheless.
Recipe for: Sour cream loaf
Ingredients:
125g (4 oz or 1/2 cup) cold sour cream
1.5 tsp salt
2 tsp caster sugar
1 sachet (7g) fast action yeast
550g (1 lb 4 oz) strong white bread flour, plus more for shaping
Oil, for kneading
Method:
1. In a large bowl, mix the sour cream with 150ml cold water and 100ml boiling water.
2. Add the sugar and yeast and whisk it together, then mix in the flour and salt until it forms a rough ball. It will be quite sticky. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to sit for 10 minutes.
3. Lightly oil your working area (worktop or kneading board) and gently knead the dough on it for 10 seconds. Put the dough back in the bowl and let it rest covered for 10 minutes.
4. Repeat the 10-second-kneading/10-minute-resting procedure twice more, oiling the worktop again if required to stop the dough from sticking too much. After that, leave the dough covered in its bowl for an hour or so, until it has doubled in size.
5. Butter the base and sides of a large, deep, 8" (19cm) loaf tin. Line the base with non-stick baking paper.
6. Lightly flour the kneading board now and place the punched-down dough on it. Pat or roll it out into 1 2-cm thick rectangle that's the length of the loaf tin, then roll the dough up towards you as well as you can. Place it seam-side down in the loaf tin, flour the top lightly, cover with a towel and let it rise for 60-90 minutes until it is doubled again.
7. Bake at 200C (180C/350C for fan-assisted or convection ovens) for about 45 minutes till it is golden brown on top and sounds hollow when you tap the loaf on the bottom (you gotta remove it from the baking tin for this, so definitely use oven gloves!).
Let cool before slicing.
I made this bread quite a while back, while in the grip of severe “baking bread from scratch” fever. That’s how these things get me – I start out all fired up, rather like a milk cooker which has lost its pressure valve and therefore can’t regulate the outlet of excitable steam and therefore bubbles over when the enthusiasm level heats up too much… and then the fire goes out.
Ideally, what I need is some sort of pressure valve that will let off the excess enthusiasm, or at least regulate the letting off of it so that it doesn't bubble over and extinguish itself...
How about that, I’ve just had an epiphany in front of everybody!
Anyway, I’m not really sure what makes this a Greek white bread, but that’s what the recipe said when it popped into my inbox, and that’s what I’m saying as well. Maybe it’s the olive oil? But the Italians and Spanish use olive oil too, so maybe not. Well, whatever. After all, What’s in a name? That which we call a bread by any other name would taste as sweet (sorry, Shakespeare) – or as nice, at any rate. This bread isn’t sweet, but it IS nice.
PS. The fire hasn’t actually gone out as regards baking bread by hand… but it has fizzled a little. I’m sure something will occur to turn the heat up again, and then just watch out! The bread will rise again.
Recipe for: Greek white bread
Ingredients:
3-3/4 cups of strong bread flour
1 1/2 cups of lukewarm water
2 tsp dry yeast
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
water for brushing
sesame seeds
Method:
1. Dissolve yeast in the warm water.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine 1-1/2 cups of flour, salt, oil, and yeast with water, and mix until thoroughly blended.
Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes in a warm, draught-free place till it's somewhat bubbly.
2. Add 1-1/2 cups of flour to the yeast mixture and combine with hands to form a cohesive dough.
3. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead in as much of the remaining flour as needed until the dough is smooth, elastic and non-sticky.
4. Shape into a loaf
brush with water and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
5. Put the shaped loaf on a nonstick cookie sheet, and place on the middle rack in a cold oven for 15 minutes.
5. Turn on oven to 425°F (220°C) and bake on the middle rack for 30 minutes or until golden. Let cool before slicing.
It’s nice to be baking bread, because now I feel a bit emboldened to try recipes I’ve had since forever but never bothered making because – well, because I didn’t bake bread. It’s only recently that I’ve ventured into this area of baking, with so far – touch wood! – a reasonable rate of success. Who knows, I might yet get to be a Daring Baker and build whole edifices of cake (although I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath waiting…).
Anyway, last weekend I made up my mind to bake curried vegetable-stuffed buns. And, in a breathtaking bit of daring derring-do (I felt like Errol Flynn at his most swashbuckling, to tell you the truth), I added fresh methi (fenugreek) leaves and omam (ajwain/carom) to the bread dough.
It all worked perfectly.
PS. I’m not going to gush any more than that this time, in case I alienate the few readers I have who expect me to be matter-of-fact, restrained and factual in writing about my recipes and their outcome… do I even have any such readers?
*sigh*
Recipe for: Curried vegetable-stuffed methi buns
Ingredients - For the stuffing:
1 medium potato, boiled, peeled and roughly mashed/crumbled
½ cup finely chopped green beans, cooked
1 cup sliced spinach
¾ cup finely sliced shallots (or onion)
½ tsp sambar powder
½ tsp garam masala
½ tsp red chilli powder
¼ tsp asafetida powder (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds
¼ tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste
2 tsp oil
Method – the stuffing:
1. Heat the oil in a skillet and add the asafetida, the cumin seeds, turmeric powder and garam masala and fry for 30 seconds.
2. Add the sliced shallots
and fry for 3-4 minutes or till they start turning soft.
3. Then add the spinach leaves and sauté till they wilt.
4. Next, add the mashed potato and mix in,
then the cooked green beans.
5. Sprinkle the sambar powder, chilli powder and salt in to distribute it evenly.
6. Let cool completely. The stuffing should be as dry as possible, so let it cool uncovered, so that condensation does not drip back in.
Ingredients - for the buns:
1 cup methi leaves, washed, dried and chopped, sautéed in ½ tsp oil till wilted, then cooled
3-1/2 cups strong white bread flour
2-1/2 tsp instant dry yeast
½ tsp carom/ajwain/omam seeds (increase to 1 tsp if you really, really love the taste!)
1 cup water
½ cup buttermilk
2 tbsp melted butter
Salt to taste
Method – the buns:
1. Mix 1 cup bread flour, 1 cup water and the yeast in a large bowl so that there are no lumps. Let this stand, covered with plastic wrap, for 1-3 hours in a warm place, till it becomes bubbly.
2. Now stir 2 cups of the remaining flour,
the buttermilk and sautéed methi leaves, melted butter,
ajwain/carom/omam and salt into the starter.
Mix with a wooden spoon till the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
3. Turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured surface and knead, adding the remaining flour a tbsp at a time, if required.
The dough should be springy, smooth and elastic when done (takes 6-8 minutes of kneading by hand).
4. Now grease the bowl lightly with butter or oil, and put the dough in, turning it around once or twice so that it is coated. Cover with plastic wrap and pop back into your warm place. (Mine was again the oven.) Leave it for 1-1/2 hours or so till the dough is doubled in volume.
5. Punch the dough down lightly,
turn it out onto the kneading surface, knead very briefly, and divide into tennis-ball sized rounds. (This makes about 9 large buns.)
Roll each round into a circle of about 5” diameter.
6. Place 2 tbsp of the filling in the centre of the circle,
then fold the circle closed.
Pinch the folds to seal the stuffing in,
then place the ball seam side down and sort of roll it in place to make sure the seams are fully closed.
Underside of filled dough ball after rolling in place to close the seams.
Repeat with remaining balls of dough and filling.
8. Place the filled dough balls on a baking sheet covered with non-stick silicone paper (or lightly grease the sheet if, like me, you’re out of non-stick paper)
and let rise for 20 minutes.
9. Put the tray in a cold oven and turn it on to 200C. (The rolls will rise further as the oven heats to the required temperature.)
Bake the filled rolls for 30 minutes or so, till golden brown on top. If they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom, they’re done.
10. Wrap the rolls in a clean tea towel if you like the crust to be soft. If not, let cool on a rack till just warm. Serve the buns as a snack by themselves or with soup.
