Bready Lovely

Welcome back! Since I was last on here telling of my cooking tragedies and triumphs, I have taken delivery of a rather fabulous food mixer (even though this means I cannot afford anything to put in it). Like a child with a new toy, I have been playing with it at every opportunity and this week we have  fresh pizzas (not a new recipe), hot cross buns -- definitely a new venture -- and ciabatta rolls. So this week I'm focusing on all things bread.

Hot cross buns. Cooking bready things with yeast in inevitably takes an afternoon, or if not longer, but is something which I am finding increasingly satisfying. If this year teaches me nothing else it has taught me that the preparation and eating of fresh bread is more satisfying than any trip to a baker, and a food mixer will save you from tennis elbow. Enough whimsy. The process ran something like this: mix, knead, prove, knead, divide into 12, mark with a cross and leave on a baking sheet for another prove, bake and then immediately paint with sugar syrup. I overruled Delia on the amount of spice in these and was very glad I did: one rounded teaspoon of mixed spice just wouldn't show up.  The recipe made nice sticky buns, although I can't help but wonder whether strong flour (the recipe uses plain) would have produced something less dense. Also as you can see, my crosses didn't show up and I marked them so deeply some buns went into the oven quartered. Delia suggests that if you want to make a more distinctive cross then to put it on with a flour and water paste. I suggest you do that if you want any cross at all.

On Friday, I made this ciabatta recipe. I was really, really convinced that straying from the BBC (and other mainstream) cooking websites had cost me dear. The dough was more like a batter, looked like baby sick (see pic) and was borderline impossible to shape. I lost a third of it as it stuck to everything and was hard to scrape up: it's consistency was rather like something from a joke shop. BUT it turned out nice ciabatta rolls which had an aerated texture and did not need to sit overnight, as many ciabatta recipes require. I had a wonderful time eating one with jam seconds after it came out of the oven.

I am in two minds about the next recipe, shooter's sandwich. It's apparently an Edwardian recipe for something to keep the gentlemen going when they are out huntin', shootin', and fishin'. Anyway, you make this sandwich the night before by filling your bread with two rare steaks separated by a layer of cooked mushrooms and onions -- the recipe said shallots, but I maintain that when they're used in a filling which contains Worcestershire sauce you can't tell the difference. Having filled the bread, the sandwich is then squashed under a board and kept somewhere cool. The writer specifies not a fridge, but Sam and I don't live in a country pile with a larder, we live in a centrally heated flat, and I didn't want to give us food poisoning, so in the fridge they went, and they came to no harm. We ate them with pickle and salad, and they were tasty and satisfying. They'd be splendid on a picnic. However, we came to the conclusion that they would be nicer as a sort of hot Beef Wellington sandwich: there is no need to eat them cold, as Edwardian gents would have done, unless you ARE on a picnic, of course.

So now I've racked up 30 recipes. Next weekend Sam and I are holding a Mothering Weekend extravaganza and our respective mothers and my Grandma will be dining on experimental recipes. I hope you like the new look of the blog -- if you're on Twitter, I've set up a profile where I'll be tweeting as I cook my recipes each week, and you can also now follow this blog without having to have a Gmail account.