Tag: Bread

Braving Brioche

They say you should do one thing every day that scares you.  Well, this week we are jumping ahead to the letter H in the A-Z of cooking and I am doing something that terrifies me.  The reason for the leap from E to H and the sudden boldness on my part will become apparent in the next post….Huh…instead of a cliff hanger ending I think I just gave you a cliff hanger starting!  Anyway, want to know what scares me?  That third episode of Limetown still makes me shiver  but cooking wise, one of the things that frightens me is bread.

Brioche1And not only did I made bread this week but ooh la la, I made French Bread!  Brioches to be exact.  And they were very good!  They looked kinda like brioches, they smelled like brioches, and they tasted like brioches!  I cannot tell you how pleasantly surprised I was because the manner of making seemed odd.

I have never made brioche before but maybe, possibly this is how it is done.  It seemed to work!

You made your bread dough then divided it into 12 pieces which you rolled into balls.  Then you pinched off a small ball of dough from each of those so you then had  24 balls, 12 small and 12 larger.  The recipe then called to make a hole in the large ball and stick the small ball inside.  I found it easier to flatten the large ball and wrap it around the small ball.

BriocheThen into the baking pan for a rest and rise:

Brioche CollageAdd a glaze, pop in the oven and a short while later:

BRIOCHE!!!!

Brioche2If I’d known brioche was going to be this easy I would have been making it for years!  I love that high shine glaze!  And to copy a phrase I learned from the Great British Bake Off, the bread also has “good crumb”.

Even though I had specifically made these for another purpose, I couldn’t resist having a little taste.  Brioche and apricot jam for afternoon tea?  Yes please!

Brioche and Jam

As for the rest of them?  Stay tuned.  You’ll see in a couple of days!  And it’s worth the wait!  Meantime, get your brioches ready!

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Brioche

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 tbsp plus 1tsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp hand hot water
  • 2 tsp dried yeast
  • 200g plain flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 50g butter, melted and cooled

Egg Glaze

  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp water
  • pinch of sugar

Instructions

  1. Dissolve 1/2 tsp of sugar in the water. Sprinkle over the yeast and whisk it in with a fork. Leave in a warm place for 10-15 minutes or until the mixture is frothy.
  2. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Mix in the rest of the sugar, the yeast mixture, the eggs and butter.
  3. Mix by hand until the mixture leaves the side of the bowl.
  4. Knead on a lightly floured board for 5 minutes.
  5. Put the dough in a warm place and leave to rise for about 1.5 hours or until it has doubled in size and springs back when lightly pressed.
  6. Preheat your oven to 230C.
  7. Divide the dough into 12 portions. Break off a small bit of each portion and roll into 12 small balls.
  8. Roll the remainder of the portions into 12 larger balls.
  9. Poke a hole in each of the larger balls with your finger and place the small ball inside. Close the hole by pressing the dough together.
  10. Place the balls in your baking tin and leave to rise for about an hour or until light and puffy.
  11. Mix the ingredients for the egg glaze together and brush over the brioches.
  12. Place in your preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Have a great week!

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Retro Food For Modern Times – The Best Bread and Butter Pudding Ever

Winter finally hit Melbourne this week…it’s been zero degrees or very close to it for a number of mornings now. That’s cold!!!!  So, given I hate winter why am I so damn happy?  Because this weather is perfect for making one of my favourite retro foods – bread and butter pudding.

Best Ever Bread and Butter Pudding
Best Ever Bread and Butter Pudding

Mind you, even though it has been crazy cold, look at my pictures of Sunday morning.  Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eye. Who could be miserable on a day like this?

Winter Morning
Sunday Morning
Frosty Morning
Frost on the Grass

Another thing that will never make you miserable is this totally awesome Bread and Butter Pudding.  I mean it, this baby ROCKED!  It was perfect for this cold weather; retro comfort food at its most glorious!

So, what makes a truly great bread and butter pudding?  I put it down to the three B’s…

Lets start with the bread.  Bread and butter purists would tell you to use plain white bread. Remember last post I said that we don’t subscribe to minimalist notions here at Retro Food For Modern Times? Well that goes double for Bread and Bread Pudding.  I like to use a fruit loaf or a sweet bread like a brioche. I have also been known to use a chocolate chip hot cross bun.  Or an Almond Croissant.  Basically, I like my bread to come loaded with deliciousness before I even start!

In this instance, I had a panettone sitting in my pantry.  I’m going to make a confession here.  I have no idea where it came from. That’s the weird thing about panettone.  I can’t recall ever buying one.  Or being given one.  And yet, from time to time they appear.  Maybe my house is haunted by an Italian Grandmother who whips them up whilst I’m at work.  If so, she also does a nifty line in packing and packaging!  This was also a gluten free version so ghost nonna, if she exists, seems to be fairly on trend.

Butter.  Please use proper butter.  Not that other abomination.

Booze – I drenched the dried fruit in Pimms and left it to soak in overnight. And made an amazing whiskey caramel sauce to go with the pudding

The base recipe for this calls for sultanas.  I had some dried fruit medley left over from when I make the Plum Wonderful so I used that.

Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread and Butter Pudding

The recipe I used as a base called for Apricot Jam.  I’d previously made a chunky Apricot Spread by boiling down some dried apricots in apple juice so I used this instead.

Apricot Spread
Apricot Spread

On it’s own, the pudding was kind of  fabulous, but what sent it into the realm of super-awesome was the whiskey caramel sauce.  This was all sorts of delicious and brought some toasty, almost coffee-like flavours into the mix.  Honey and whiskey is truly a match made in heaven and I had the remnants of a lavender honey from another recipe which just added another layer of tasty goodness.

Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread and Butter Pudding

Please, please, please make this.  You will not be disappointed.  Or if you are…you probably did something wrong – not that there’s a whole lot that could do wrong with this – it’s also super easy to make!

Bread & Butter Pudding Recipe

Whiskey Caramel Sauce RecipeApricot Spread Recipe

I’m going to be spending my week enjoying the glorious sunshine despite the icy temperatures!

Enjoy your week, whatever you do.

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Retro Food For Modern Times – 7 Days Of Eating For Love And Beauty… Part 1

I figured after the alcoholic debauchery of the last post, it was time for some restraint and a bit of  detoxification.  So, I spent the last week eating for Love and Beauty.  Not exclusively mind you but at least one dish per day…and, it was pretty good.  Actually, it was better than that – I felt great!  I was full of energy, more alert, I was focussed, I steamed through tasks at work, I lost about a kilo in weight, my skin looked great, a cute boy held a door open and winked at me…seriously this shit worked!  Imagine if I lived like this…I’d be invincible!

So, this is how the week went down.

Day 1 – Balinese Rice

I know this dish better as a Gado Gado and it is delicious.  Mind you, peanut sauce is a bit like bacon…or cheese for me….you could drizzle it over a stick and I would not only eat it but ask for seconds…

I chose to keep my vegies and rice separate because I liked the way it looked on the plate, but you could choose to mix them as suggested by the Swami.

The colours in this are so pretty and fresh as well!

Balinese Rice with Peanut Sauce
Balinese Rice with Peanut Sauce

Balinese Rice Recipe

Day 2 – Vitality Bread
I baked bread!

No wait…

I.  BAKED.   BREAD.

You have no idea how happy this made me.  It looked like bread, it tasted like bread, the entire house was filled with the delicious aroma of freshly baked..happy days!

Vitality bread
Vitality Bread

You also have no idea how my heart sank when Mark said  “Wow, this bread is great, you can bake a loaf every week.”  That won’t be happening anytime in the foreseeable, but I will bake more bread…I really want to do a walnut loaf.  But not every week. Life’s too short and yeast is a temperamental little fucker.

Vitality Bread 2
Vitality Bread 2

In the interests of full disclosure, there were two failed attempts before the loaf of success.

Here is how not to go wrong baking bread.

When they say mix the yeast with warm water…don’t use boiling.  Yeast doesn’t like heat.

When they say leave for one and a half hours, don’t think “Well overnight will be even better” and go off to bed.  Particularly, in winter.  Yeast also doesn’t like cold.

See what I mean? Yeast.  It’s the Goldilocks of food.

Vitality Bread & Butter
Vitality Bread & Butter

Vitality Bread Recipe

Day 3 – Chive Relish Sauce

Chive Relish Sauce
Chive Relish Sauce

I’m not sure what the original recipe for this would be like…minus any pictures from Eating for Love and Beauty, I didn’t really have a guide.  Mine turned out like an Egg Salad.  It tasted great with the Vitality Bread so I’m not complaining  but I suspect it might have been meant to be a bit more mayonnaise-ish.

Chives Relish Sauce

Excuse the plastic wrap, I took this to work for lunch and took the picture at my desk whilst eating on the fly!

Chive Relish Sauce with Vitality Bread
Chive Relish Sauce with Vitality Bread

Day 4 – Lover’s Blush

It’s Rhubarb, fool!

Maiden's Blush - A Rhubarb Fool
Maiden’s Blush – A Rhubarb Fool

So much for my (bad) Mr T.  impersonation…this is super delicious!

Mind you, in my mind, rhubarb belongs in the Pantheon of Foods That Can Do No Wrong (Bacon, Cheese, Peanut Sauce…) so there was more than likely not going to be a downside with this recipe.  I did substitute some Amaretti’s for the wheaten biscuits though and added some orange zest for extra zing!

This was just lovely  – tangy, sweet, creamy…and (relatively) healthy.  And just look at that gorgeous colour!

Lover's Blush

I’m going to be spending the week doing more eating for Love and Beauty, I have some salads, an eggplant dish and another (jello) dessert! on the menu.  In my spare time I’ll be planning how to use my newly bestowed Eating for Love and Beauty super powers to take over the world, for good, not evil.  Enjoy your week whatever you do!

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