Sunday treat

Once in a while we will go to the small Sunday market in the town (Ballina) nearby, mainly because of the bakery food truck.

Very well made sourdough bread, but the draw for us are the pastries: croissants, cinnamon rolls, lemon cube etc, a feast for the eyes and stomach. It is run by a French family, hence the skill and perfection.

Natto with sauce

After successfully making natto, we are having a small portion at breakfast. The flavour is a big strong and I tried mixing it with basil vinaigrette. Was told that tomato paste is a good candidate for the job. 
Indeed natto with my last year’s tomato sauce is a good combination, so is savoury raspberry sauce. Probably we are so used to Heinz bean and find beans in red sauce more tasty. 

Air fryer buttered sourdough bread

 

To revive sourdough bread, the best way is to spread butter on both sides and grill. Air fryer did the job in 10 minutes, turn over half way, perfect golden, crispy on the outside soft inside toast.

Pizza gathering

Nice to have friend over for a meal together, created some pizza based on what I have in the garden. 

1. Pizza with confit garlic sauce, scallion and sesame

2. Pizza with tomato sauce, when ready, top with semi-dried tomatoes, fresh basil in olive oil 

3. Pizza with miso cream sauce, fresh pea and Spanish Iberia ham mince, cheese and sprinkle with chive flower before serving

4. Pizza with mustard cream sauce, honey fermented garlic slices for the crunch and sweetness, lamb mince seasoned with 5 spices powder, chili powder, salt and pepper, lastly coriander. 

Butter croissant and pain au chocolate

What a pleasure to find perfectly made croissant and pain au chocolate, good balance of crispiness and bread dough texture. They are from Sunflower bakery in Limerick, they sell it at the Sunday market in our nearby town. They also make very good sourdough bread with different types of flours. Sure with such skill the owner is not Irish, but French, not a surprise. 

Summer pizza

Finally a bit less windy day and make a quick decision to enjoy pizza, only 3 types with leftover for breakfast the next day. 

 

Pizza with pesto and sesame - good colour, crispy and tasty

 

  

Pizza with tahini, smoked eggplant and carrot - topping a but too thick and hard to cook through

Pizza with tomato paste, chorizo, salted lemon, fresh pea and cheese - the most tasty and satisfying one. 

Crushed potato rosti

Saw this way of preparing potato on social media and very curious to try it out. It worked and the rosti is crispy outside and soft inside, good simple method. 

With cooked potato, use potato crusher to flatten each potato evenly to around 1cm thick, sprinkle salt on both sides and sear on pan until crispy.

Blue potatoes

While I am on a diet of having less carbohydrates, I still grow potatoes, but half are blue potatoes, at least more nutrients than white ones. Also I boil a batch at a time, keeping them in the fridge to use in the next few days, apparently re-cooked potatoes have less spike on Glycemic index. 

The left side is variety Bleuet, totally deep blue inside, the right hand side is variety Purple Rain, with patches of purple blue and cream flesh. I planted 6 of each and Bleuet is much more productive. 

When small both are mid way between waxy and floury, if kept in the ground longer and hence bigger, they become more floury. 

Sourdough pizza and biscuits

I have improved my recipe of sourdough discard biscuit, making it lighter and more crispy. 

1 part sourdough discard

2/3 part olive oil
pinch of salt
seeds like sesame, flax, caraway etc
enough wholemeal Spelt/Buckwheat etc flours to knead to a not very sticky dough

Roll dough between baking/silicone papers until very thin, use pizza cutter to cut into biscuits size. Rest for a few hours to rise the  dough slightly and for seeds to have time to soak to deactivate Phytic acid. Bake at 170˚C until dry, around 30 minutes, if very thin.


For quick garlic pizza:

Pour sourdough discard on baking sheet, spread to even thickness, spread gently mixture of garlic blended with olive oil, salt and miso. Bake at 200˚C until golden, around 15 minutes. 

Sourdough seaweed sandwich and gnocchi

2 simple ways to use sourdough discard:

Seaweed sandwich - place a sheet of  seaweed on baking tray, pour sourdough  discard on top, spread even, place another sheet of seaweed on top, bake at 170˚C until cooked, around 20minutes.

Gnocchi - make a broth as you like it, here is with veg and meat, while simmering, add small spoonful of sourdough discard into broth. Simmer until it cooked through, around 5 minutes, this gnocchi has  a soft texture.

Sourdough soda biscuit

Thought of another use of sourdough discard, to make crispy biscuits. Super easy to make and able to keep, and I love crispy snacks.

Mix sourdough discard with 2 tbsp olive oil, flour, baking powder and salt to make a dough, I added turmeric powder as spice too. Roll flat in between 2 silicone sheets, or baking paper. Use pastry roller to cut into size, use fork to poke holes.

Rest in the oven for 2 hours to rise, bake at 200˚C for 10 minutes, lower to 100˚C for an hour to dry.

Sourdough discard dishes

Carry on using sourdough discard to make small portion of carbohydrate dish most days, bit of a challenge to exercise my brain.

Sourdough cake

Mix sourdough discard (around 150gm) with an egg yolk, pinch of salt, 30gm melted butter, honey to sweeten, gently fold in whisked to hard peak egg white, bake at 170˚C until cooked through.

Sourdough gnocchi 

Mix sourdough discard with almond flour to for a thick paste, season with salt and porcini powder,. Put small spoonfuls into gently bubbling broth, boil until cooked through, a nice chewy texture.

Sourdough focaccia with dill

Mix sourdough with salt, oil and fresh dill, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, place in oil baking dish, bake at 180˚C until cooked through, around 20 minutes.

Baking bread with a lot of steam

I made spicy raisin loaf using sourdough starter discard. Thought of trying another way to bake it to see if I can get easily a better result. It worked, the bread rises well and have the beautiful cracked top, without much effort.

For the loaf, I add a lot of raisin into sourdough discard, season with a big pinch of salt, a lot of mix spices (freshly grounded cardamon, caraway and cinnamon powder etc). Pour mixture into lined loaf tin, wrap in plastic bag and rest for a couple hours, for the raisin to soften.

In a cold oven, add a tray of around 150ml boiling water at the bottom rack, place loaf tin on the rack above, turn to 200˚C and set time for the normal baking time for that size loaf plus 8 more minutes, the time normally for heating up the oven, around 28 minutes for this loaf. 

With the steam inside and the loaf warming up  slowly without the top dried up by high heat, the bread rises gradually and form the crack by its own force. Beautiful tasty fluffy bread.

Purple potato with pesto

Mixing steamed potato with pesto is beautiful to look at and has very rich flavour. I like to steam whole for around 15 minutes (medium small size), rest in the pan for another 5 to let the starch swells up for the perfect texture.

Sourdough bread

I have been making sourdough bread for a couple of years, at first with varying degrees of success, sometimes well risen, sometimes flat and dense. Even if well risen, at the first day the bread texture is soft and fluffy, then becomes dry and hard, not totally satisfactory. 

This year I made a few experimental changes and eventually, during the last 6 months, able to make consistently good loaves, no failure at all. Here below are my key points:

1.Use a good sourdough starter - even though it is possible to make a starter from flour and water yourself, it is much easier to get a good result if you ask a sourdough bakery for a small amount of starter. A good starter helps a lot.

2.The starter is better to be fed with white flour, not wholemeal. The best is to refresh it everyday, like in the bakery. For me this is not possible as I do not eat so much bread. The next best is after the refreshed starter has risen, keep in the fridge until the next use. If going to be used in next 3 days, can simply take it out in the morning to warm up before use. If the starter stayed in the fridge more than 3 day, better to refresh once before making bread.

3.In refreshing the starter or making dough, use more water than normal, to a level that it forms a wet dough, sticks to your fingers and is much better to knead with a plastic kneading tool. This is sourdough starter mixes with 180gm water and 280gm flour. The dough rise better with more water. I now use half to totally wholemeal flour.

4.After adding water and flour, also add a good pinch of salt and a generous tablespoon of olive oil. I notice the texture of bread is much better after addition of oil, especially the days after, with toasting, the bread is back to fluffy soft, not hard dry.

5. First knead around 20 times with the plastic tool, cover the bowl with a well fit glass lid, leave near a warm area, my room temperature is around 20-24 degrees and is enough to rise the dough. The best is to come back after every hour to give it 20 times kneading with the tool.

6.You will notice the dough starts to soften and expand, after typically 3-4 hours, it will be soft and loosen enough to place in baking paper lines baking tin, wrap in big plastic bag and keep in the same warm area to rise to final size of loaf. This will take another 3-4 hours.

7.When reached the final height of loaf (roughly 4 times original size of dough), spray the top with a lot of filter water and bake at 220˚C for 15 minutes, lower to 200˚C for 15 more minutes, perfect loaf ready.

Summer pizza

June, should be the month where we can officially call summer starts, but the weather actually turns cold. Still with friends over, it is nice to sit outside for alfresco dinner, making pizza.

Pizza with scallion marinated in olive oil and salt, and sesame

Pizza with confit garlic paste, very thin fennel marinated in olive oil and salt, when baked, add anchovy, semi dried cherry tomato and fresh basil on top.

Pizza with tomato sauce, Kailan stalk, red bell pepper, chorizo, cheese, when baked add fresh coriander on top.

104。2024年4月24日 愉快的晚上

新認識的朋友有對十一歲的孖生姐弟，首次邀請到來吃飯，決定做薄餅，最安全。

十一歲，個子仍然細小，活潑可愛口齒伶俐，可以圍枱談話而不用說小朋友話題，難得是並不老積，就似在那個關口，懂事但仍然有童真。

二人都留心又好奇，開工做第一件薄餅時已主動走來看如何弄，燒焗時又計時間，看要待多久才取出來。

第二至五件薄餅，搓餅皮都由姐弟輪流爭著做，上手快，知道在家中已經會自己煎蛋煮麵，母親教導有方。

放入爐內焗薄餅時，會到草地走一圈，看準時間快上枱前就自動回來。

且喜歡吃，由第一件薄餅直落到甜品朱古力brownie 都沒有挑剔全吃下，最後姐姐坦白說太飽，想吃多件，但實在不能，嬌笑問能否打包！

知道他們剛到西班牙旅行，問吃了什麼，弟弟深情地說iberico 火腿香氣濃美味沒法擋，他那眯着眼沉醉的樣子好可愛。

姐姐說唯一不喜歡的是八爪魚，沒有味道，只得質感。

小小人兒的腦袋，分析能力一流。

 with scallion, olive oil, salt and sesame

with confit garlic, thyme, olive oil, and semidried cherry tomato (pity sugar of tomato burnt)

with fennel bulb, olive oil, when cooked add anchovy and fennel fond

with tomato paste, chorizo and asparagus

 

with tomato paste, goat cheese and carrot, add parsley when cooked

Sourdough derivatives

After coming back from HK, asked a friendly bakery to get a bit of their sourdough starter to restart home baking. It is a very vigorous one, far better than what I used last year. 

As the house is cool at less then 20˚C, I decided to keep it in the oven with the door ajar and the light on. This provides around 25˚C environment, which turned out to be perfect to keep the sourdough starter active. 

I rise the bread dough also inside the oven with light on, with very predictable result and timing, nice loaf every time.

As I have to refresh the starter everyday, I used the discard to make simple carbs for lunch. Simply add a little bit more flour to form a small dough, add seasoning and seeds, rest till lunch in the oven and bake/steam/fry etc. 

sourdough seaweed caraway biscuit

sourdough scallion sesame seed foccacia

sourdough dessicated coconut bun

sourdough almond flour pita bread

Giant sourdough hot cross bun

 

 

 Last minute decision to make hot cross bun, for breakfast, hence go for a big loaf instead of individual small buns. 

Using sourdough starter to prepare the dough, using coconut milk instead of water, added raisin, goji berry and spices like cinnamon and Garam masala. Bake as normal, 10 minutes before finish, pipe a cross like decoration using a mixture of butter, flour and sugar.

Bruno hotpot and pancake

Winter is the best season to use Bruno to enjoy slow cooking and eating, and food stays hot too.
Simple hot pot with mushroom soup and beef, and pancake with homemade marmalade, satisfying.