We have moved!

We've said goodbye to Seasonal Matters here on blogger and we've upped sticks and moved over to our brand new shiny blog thing at Very Berry Handmade.

Do join us there if you like, for the usual mix of craft, food, gardening and drinking. If you get your skates on, you can enter our thrilling Housewarming Giveaway!

Garden Labours

We decided not to grow much this year, because we're trying to change the garden round a bit, extending some patio and the vegetable patch, while trying to plant a new bit of lawn. There's a lot to do, especially as all the buildings that were here before our house was built are still mostly lurking beneath the surface. Coming across this kind of thing -



- can certainly slow you down a bit! And here's just one of the piles of bricks and assorted rubble we've dug out of the ground:



As well as trying to get the layout of the garden more how we'd like it to be, July has been a month in which things have started to happen. And finally we've had some wildlife coming back. Stacks of hoverflies this year, which is good and during July, we've seen some bumblebees back again, like this chap:



They love the white & pink oregano & marjoram we've got flowering at the moment. Not as many butterflies as last year, but we've seen a few speckled woods about the place:



There have also been a couple of spectacular peacocks that have resisted the camera's attentions, but hardly any commas or painted ladies that were pretty frequent visitors last summer. We did find this splendid caterpillar though:



Turns out it's the vapourer moth caterpillar - gaudy in its youth, more sober and brown when it grows up.

Plants too have been quite different to last year. Barely any plums at all - just 4 or 5 on the whole tree - when last summer we were worried that the crop was going to break the branches! The loganberry has been ok, but it's the blackberries that we're going to have a glut of:



With the very late cold weather we had, I think it's done for anything early and it's the late crops that will hopefully be ok. We're really hoping for a glut of tomatoes, to which we've dedicated the greenhouse. They started to go orange and red a couple of weeks back:



And there are plenty more potentially:



As I'm writing this, it's absolutely bucketing down outside, but the weather has been better so far for ripening toms - we're hoping for a sunny late summer and autumn so we can turn the tomatoes into sauce for freezing. The variety we went for this year is Amish Paste, a cooker rather than an eater - not much juice at all, mostly flesh and they have the most wonderful flavour when cooked. Very pleased with them.

As we are with our main bean variety this year, the wonderfully-named Cherokee Trail of Tears, which has been putting out lots of beans for the last few weeks:



Both of these come from the excellent Real Seed Catalogue people, who have a wonderful selection of interesting varieties on their website. Highly recommended. The variety of slow-bolting coriander we grew from them (Leaf Selection) has been really good too.

I must do our recipe for Chakchouka here soon, as it's a great way to use up seasonal vegetables. It's a tomato-y, harissa-y vegetable stew which you finish off by cooking eggs in it. We started with the recipe in Annie Bell's excellent Evergreen (abebooks link) and it's very adaptable: so far this summer we've used the beans in it, as well as our first turnips (Purple Top Milan). They are very lovely things:

When you're thinning things like turnips, you can use the leaves for greens, using them like spinach. Great wilted down with some garlic & olive oil. Our onions (Senshyu Yellow) and garlic (Lautrec Wight) too went into the last dish of Chakchouka:

First time we've grown these. The sight of onions sitting on the top of a bed is very satisfying.

Also this year we did our courgettes (Nero di Milano) a bit differently, turning over a whole raised bed to one plant, which is doing really well, far better than last year's, which had to share the space with salad leaves. We got the seeds for these from Wiggly Wigglers.



So, considering this was kind of a non-growing year, we've managed to get a few things on the go. The challenge now is to really push on with all the earth-shifting jobs so we can get planting in Spring next year. Along with everything else, like foraging for sloes for the Christmas sloe gin (great for a fizz or a martini), getting the 'Rumtopf' (using brandy) going with some seasonal fruit and maybe getting back to baking again soon as well!

Gooseberry Fool Recipe

We've finally got something of a harvest from our collection of gooseberry bushes this year.  We have one called Invicta which is a green-skinned variety, and 2 Hinnonmaki Red, which are, unsurprisingly, red-skinned.  We also have another bush picked up cheap from our local diy store, but I'm not sure what it is yet - it's only a baby and hasn't fruited this year.


To celebrate the harvest we had gooseberry fool as our Sunday lunch treat today.  Here's the lovely simple recipe that we used, which is based on the one in Good Things by Jane Grigson.

Gooseberry Fool


350g gooseberries 
50g butter
sugar to taste
300ml double cream


Top and tail the gooseberries (a yawn but it'll be worth it in the end).  Place in a lidded pan with the butter over a low heat and cook until the gooseberries are soft.  Stir and a squish the gooseberries.  DO NOT sieve the gooseberries - the skins are a vital part of the flavour of the fool, and you really don't notice them in the finished dish.  Add sugar a tablespoon at a time until the fruit is sweetened to your taste.  Set aside to cool.


When the gooseberries are at room temperature, lightly whip the cream until it has very soft peaks, then gently stir in the fruit.  Pile the mixture into a dish/dishes and put them in your fridge until you need them - or, if you can't wait, eat straight away.  If you have the time and inclination, some crunchy almond or shortbread biscuits  are delicious with this.


If you are lucky enough to have a good supply of gooseberries this year, and you really hate topping and tailing, then I recommend this delicious recipe for Gooseberry Curd.  Yum..

Our Granola

I had a busy afternoon stocking up on breakfast bits and pieces.  I made a sourdough loaf, some rhubarb and orange compote and a batch of our own-recipe granola.  It's so straightforward to make I have no idea why people eat the shop-bought stuff (which can be so sugary with nasty dried fruit); the other great thing is that you can pretty much choose what you put in it.  Here's our standard recipe - but we often make changes depending on what we have in.  Another great recipe is Andy's Fairfield Granola from Nigella Lawson's Feast - very delicious, but a bit more luxurious than ours.


House Granola
400g rolled oats
50g pumpkin seeds
50g sunflower seeds
30g sesame seeds
150g whole unblanched almonds
75g Freedom Syrup (or any other syrup - rice or maple maybe)
150ml water
150ml cold pressed rape seed oil (or mild oil of your choice) 
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
freshly grated nutmeg (around 1/2 tsp)
250g raisins


Preheat your oven to 190C/Gas Mark 5.  Mix all the ingredients, apart from the raisins, in a large bowl.  Spread the mixture thinly into 2 large shallow baking or roasting tins.  Bake for around 25-30 mins until golden brown, turning everything over after about 15 minutes to make sure everything gets nicely crunchy. Try not to handle the granola too roughly - otherwise it will become a bit crumby.  When it's done, take it out of the oven and leave to cool on the trays.  Divide the raisins between the 2 trays and stir them in.  Transfer your granola to a airtight container - the quantities given above exactly fill a 2 litre clip top Le Parfait jar.  


I can't tell you exactly how long this keeps for - we've never managed to keep a jar for longer than a week, but it still tastes nice and fresh then, so I'd imagine that it would keep for a couple of weeks.  It is delicious served with plain old milk, or with yogurt and fruit compote or sliced banana.  I don't need to tell you how nutritious the ingredients are - it's also really filling too. I hope you give it a try and enjoy it as much as we do.

Sourdough Rhubarb Kuchen

I have a passion for those delicious German cakes that consist of a base of rich bread dough, a lovely layer of fruit, and a sweet crunchy buttery topping.  I've made some delicious versions over the years - Nigella Lawson has a really good Apple and Blackberry Kuchen in Nigella Bites, for instance - but I'm so into making naturally leavened bread these days that I really wanted to create something with a sourdough base.  I was also curious to see if it was possible to make an enriched sourdough, using egg and milk in the dough.  I think it works very well - but here's my recipe - have a go and tell me what you think.


Ingredients
(these are the totals - check the recipe to see how much you need to use at each stage)


100g wheat sourdough starter (mine is made according to the instructions in Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley)
100g plain wholemeal flour
200g strong white flour
1egg
80g milk
3g salt
250g rhubarb
100g plain flour
75g butter
100g granulated sugar


Stage 1
First you need to wake up your sourdough starter.  Put 100g of starter in a bowl and add 50g of strong white flour and 50g of plain wholemeal flour and 60g of lukewarm water.  Cover and leave in a warm place for 3-4 hours.


Stage 2
Mix together 150g strong white flour, 50g wholemeal flour, 3g salt, 1 egg and 80g milk and knead until you have nice soft dough (7-8 minutes, or quicker in a mixer with a dough hook).  Then add all the leaven from the first stage and knead together until soft and elastic.  If the dough is very sticky after a couple of minutes kneading then add an extra spoonful of flour.  Now cover the bowl and leave the dough to rest and relax for an hour.


Stage 3
Whilst your dough is resting prepare your toppings.  Wash and slice 250g of rhubarb thinly (0.5cm slices) on the diagonal, then put aside.  In a small bowl rub together 100g plain white flour (or wholemeal if you prefer) and 75g butter until you have a lovely lumpy crumble-type mixure.  Stir in a generous 100g of sugar - granulated is fine here and gives a nice crunchy texture.  You do need quite a bit of sugar to counteract the sourness of the rhubarb - if you are using a sweeter fruit (dessert plums would be delicious for instance) then use less sugar.  Line a large baking tin or tray with baking parchment.  I use a roasting tin that measures 30x25cm that works really well - I push the dough right up to the edges.


Stage 4
Chuck your dough onto your prepared tray and press it out so you have a rectangular shape that measures around 30x25cm - it really helps to wet your hands first!  Cover the surface with rhubarb and then sprinkle your crumbly topping over the top.  Put the tray into a large carrier bag (making sure the bag is nowhere near your kuchen or you will have a very sticky incident) and leave for about 2 hours to rise and become puffy.  About 90 minutes into the rising time pre-heat your oven to gas mark 5/190C.


Stage 5
Bake for around 40 minutes until the bread base is cooked through and the crumble topping is golden brown.


Leave to cool and then slice into squares & store in an airtight tin.  This is delicious for breakfast and keeps well for 2 or 3 days.

Baking again - Lardy Cake

Goodness me, is that April and May nearly gone already? It's all been a bit quiet on the baking front recently. Not only have we been brought low by a couple of nasty colds, but I've been trying to get back on with brewing - a nice bitter, and a mild to be ready in about 3 weeks - and Ali was working flat out to put together stock for her first craft fair. Read more about that over on the Craft Matters blog.

Then there's our new Facebook shop opening, again more on this over at Craft Matters. Special offers there for a limited time...

In addition to all this activity, having gone through a few of our old cook books to find some interesting recipes, I've had a few un-blogworthy disasters... So finally, it's third time lucky with a great recipe for lardy cake from the Dairy Book of British Food I last dipped into just before Easter.

Lardy cake is not something for those worried about their waistlines, and probably comes under the category of occasional treat rather than everyday staple! It's traditional to the West Country and the version I made did compare quite well to a memory of lardy cake from a holiday in Devon several years back.

So here's the recipe:

450g (1 pound) strong white bread flour
1.5 tsp dried yeast (or fresh yeast: 15g or 1/2 oz)
1 tsp salt
75g (3oz) lard, diced
75g (3oz) butter, diced
180g (6oz) dried fruit: sultanas, currants, raisins, whatever you fancy.
50g (2oz) candied peel, chopped (optional - if not, bung in some more sultanas)
50g (2oz) sugar

Sprinkle dried yeast into 300ml warm water with a pinch of sugar & leave somewhere warm for 10-15 mins until frothy. Or blend fresh yeast with 300ml lukewarm water.

Put flour & salt in a bowl and rub in 15g (1/2 oz) of the lard until all the lumps are incorporated in the flour. Make a well and add the yeast & water mix. Then beat together to make a dough which leaves the bowl clean. You don't want it too sticky: add flour or water to get the right consistency.

Then either turn out onto floured surface & knead for 10 minutes or put in a food processor with a dough hook on the lowest setting for 10 minutes. It needs to be smooth and stretchy.

Put the dough into a bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and leave it somewhere warm for an hour until it has risen to about twice its original size.

Then turn out the risen dough onto a floured surface and roll it out into a rectangle about 1/2 cm thick, a bit like this:



Dot the dough with a third of the butter & lard and then sprinkle it with a third of the dried fruit (and peel if you're using it) and sugar:



Now fold it into thirds: fold the bottom third into the middle and the top third over the bottom third and you end up with something like this:



Turn the dough through 90 degrees and sprinkle it with another third of everything:



And then fold it into thirds again. Rotate once more, repeat the sprinkling and folding and then squish the parcel down gently with the rolling pin until it's the right size for your tin:



Now cover it loosely with a polythene bag and leave it to prove in a warm place for about 30 minutes. Halfway through this period pre-heat your oven to 220C (Gas Mark 7). The cake should puff up like this:



Score the top with a sharp knife in a criss-cross pattern and bake for about 30 minutes until it's golden on top. Check it after 20 minutes and if the top is browning too quickly, cover it with some foil for the rest of the time. Take it out of the oven to cool:



It's especially delicious sliced while still warm, or cool it on a wire rack and wrap it up to last for a couple of days. The book suggests spreading it with butter! That seems a little excessive...

Quick Rye Pancakes

These are a popular breakfast treat here. I like them particularly because they don't use any raising agents like bicarbonate of soda or baking powder - they rely entirely on egg whites to give them their light fluffy texture.

The recipe is taken from John Seymour's classic work The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency - although he calls them dropscones. I call them pancakes because I am sure that if I called them drop scones my boys wouldn't touch them. They're pancakes in the American sense of the word - small, thick and fluffy.. Seymour's introduction to the recipe always makes me smile, because he sounds like such a nice chap. He says:

These really are mouth watering, and if you, or your lady, can make them when your kids have their friends round, so much the better.

Seymour was a hugely influential figure in the self-sufficiency movement who passed away in 2004. You can read more about his fascinating life on his family's website.

Anyway - to the recipe. Seymour's version specifies using all rye flour, but I use half plain wholemeal because of my fussy fussy children who don't like pancakes 'with bits'... They're equally delicious (to bit eaters!) either way.

Rye Pancakes

100g rye flour (or 50g rye and 50g plain wholemeal flour)

2 eggs

pinch of salt

around 150ml milk

Grease a griddle or large frying pan and put it on to pre-heat.

Separate the eggs with the whites in a small bowl and the yolks in a larger bowl.

Add the other ingredients to the yolks in the bowl and mix together thoroughly.

Beat the egg whites until they form peaks. Then first fold one tablespoon of the egg whites very gently into the main mixture. When this has loosened it a little, very gently fold and stir in the rest of the egg whites.

Add a large tablespoon of this mixture to the griddle pan - you'll probably fit three or four on. Cook for about a minute, then turn and cook the other side for about a minute.

Keep them warm in a little foil parcel & then serve with jam, honey, maple syrup, sliced banana, whatever you like, really.

Hot Buns

Just time to make March look a little more respectable by slipping this recipe in before we end up in April. I'm not quite sure where this month has gone, really, but this is a nice one to finish it with.

It's a lovely recipe for hot cross buns, as I didn't put the crosses on them I've called them 'hot buns'. I used the recipe from The Dairy Book of British Food, published in 1988 by the now-defunct Milk Marketing Board for 'British Food & Farming Year', apparently.

I'm sure you used to be able to get MMB cookbooks from your milkman - one of the reasons I'm fond of this one is that my mum gave me a copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery when I left home for university many years ago (it's still in print, from these people now). My dad gave me the rather more dashing Len Deighton books. But the dairy one was a good, basic book and its yellow cover still reminds me of my first steps in cooking. They make a nice change: a lot of the recipes are a bit of their time, but they're refreshingly free of all the aspirational lifestyle-y guff that pads out so many of today's cookery books.

Anyway, that's enough blather - here's the recipe. It's pretty much as given in the book, except that I included sultanas instead of currants (as our two kids prefer them) & left out the chopped peel (as our two really don't like it). I also cut down the salt - the original recipe calls for a teaspoon.

Here's what you'll need:

1.5 tsp dried yeast (or 15g fresh)
300ml lukewarm milk
450g strong white bread flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50g caster sugar
50g butter
80g sultanas
1 egg, beaten

For crosses:
50g plain flour
25g butter

For the glaze:
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp caster sugar

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. If, like me, you're using dried yeast, then sprinkle it & mix into the milk with about 1 tsp of the sugar & leave it for 10-15 minutes somewhere warm.

Put the flour, salt, spices & sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter into chunks, add it to the bowl, and rub it in. An easy way to do this is to give it a gentle whizz in a mixer. Then add the dried fruit & the peel too, if you're using it.

Make a well in the centre, add the beaten egg & milk and yeast mixture and stir it together until you get quite a soft, sticky dough.

Turn this out onto a well floured surface. I tried this one in the mixer with a dough hook, but it didn't work as well as kneading by hand. So knead it for about 10 minutes until it's soft but not sticky (leaves your hands clean) and it's nice and stretchy. I ended up adding quite a bit of flour as I kneaded.

Put your dough into a clean bowl (big enough for it to double in size), cover with a polythene bag or wet tea towel and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour. It should start like this:



And then double in size to this:



Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead again, this time just for about 3 minutes.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. I am rubbish at this, as you can tell below. I always end up with a noticeable variety of sizes.. Not that it really matters. Then form each piece into a bun shape (try tucking the edges under and then shaping with your hand) and put them on floured baking parchment on a baking sheet with plenty of room for expansion.

Leave for 30 minutes in a warm place, with a polythene bag tented over the top, and they'll roughly double in size:



While they're rising, pre-heat your oven to 190C (gas mark 5).

You can make crosses to turn them into hot cross buns. Rub together the 50g of plain flour & 25g of butter until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Add enough water to bring it together and knead gently. Roll it thinly and cut strips that you can make into a cross shape - wet them slightly on the back to attach them to the top of your buns.

Bake them at 190c (gas mark 5) for 15-20 minutes until they're a nice golden-brown colour.

While they're baking, make the glaze by heating the milk, water and sugar together. So that when they're done you can brush each one as you transfer them to a wire rack for cooling:



I made these last night for breakfast this morning. They were delicious both warm and cold and were very popular indeed.

Baking Day: Rice Bread

This recipe is taken, with a couple of minor tweaks, from Jane Grigson's classic English Food, Grigson herself adapting the recipe given in Elizabeth David in English Bread & Yeast Cookery. It seems to have been very popular in nineteenth century England, as Jane Grigson says: "Lady Llanover said it was by far the best bread for sandwiches, in particular for chicken sandwiches".

We wanted to make this with brown rice, because it's nice and nutritious and our two really like the flavour. And it got a big thumbs up when we gave it to them this lunchtime with some home-made hummus on it. The grown-ups had cheese & mustard sandwiches and now there's hardly any left at all..

But on to the recipe. Here's what you need:

85g (3oz) long grain brown rice (uncooked weight)
8g (1/4 oz) dried yeast (or twice that quantity fresh yeast)
15g (1/2 oz) sea salt
500g (18oz) strong white bread flour

Some olive oil for brushing

The first thing to do is to cook the rice. 85g is about a half cupful. Put this in a pan and add a cup of water. Bring to the boil then cover and cook very gently on your lowest heat for about 40-45 minutes. It may take longer and you might have problems with it sticking to the bottom of the pan, so check it towards the end, stir and add more hot water if necessary.

Some time while the rice is cooking, combine the dried yeast (or twice as much fresh yeast) with a little lukewarm water until it has dissolved.

Measure out the flour and dissolve the salt in about 150ml (1/4 pint) of very hot water in a measuring jug. Add another 100ml of cold water once the salt has dissolved (ie. get 250ml or 8 fl oz of lukewarm water). If you want to use less salt, I'd probably go for about 8-10g.

Add the hot, cooked rice to the flour and fork it in a bit.



Add the salted water and the yeast mixture and combine together until you've got quite a soft, sticky dough. We used the bread hook on our Kenwood and ended up with this:



Cover it over with a polythene bag and leave it somewhere warm for about an hour and a half, until it's doubled in volume. Like this:



Knock it down and knead it gently for about 5 minutes (again, we used the Kenwood). Add more flour if it's too sticky - you want it leaving the bowl clean and so it doesn't stick too much to your fingers.

Next, oil the bottom of a 1.5 to 2 litre bread tin a little and line it with some baking parchment. Brush the inside of this with a little olive oil and tip in the dough, pressing it gently into the sides. Cover with the polythene bag again and leave it somewhere warm until it rises up to the top of the tin. After about a quarter of an hour, pre-heat the oven to 230C (gas 8); after a further quarter of an hour or so it should look like this:



Gently remove the bag and place it in the oven. Cook for 15 minutes at 230C (gas 8), then lower the heat to 200C (gas 6) and cook for a further 15 minutes. Take it out of the tin at this point and then cook it upside down for another 5 minutes. Put it on a rack to cool.

It's a very tasty bread indeed, with a lovely flavour and texture from the rice and a great crust. And it does make great sandwiches - cheese, egg or cold meat would all be equally yummy. The boys said it was v. tasty with hummus and even with some butter and honey.

** Just a little update on this one - we've also made it replacing half of the white flour with strong stoneground wholemeal flour with delicious results. It's possibly even more delicious.

Splat Buns - or Baps to You and Me..

Woops - missed last week, naughty! We did actually make some Barm Brack, but I wasn't particularly happy with how it turned out so didn't bother to blog it. That's one for a bit more experimenting I think.

This week's recipe is from the brilliant Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley. I can't recommend this book highly enough - since reading it I've finally got my head round how making bread actually works. I haven't by any means made every recipe in the book, but the fact that I can now make wheat and rye sourdoughs with ease and have a sourdough leaven happily living in my fridge, makes it worth every penny we paid for it. Can't tell you how my manky, evil-smelling sourdough starters I have thrown away in the past...

This recipe for Baps is also an absolute winner. It never fails - everyone who has tried them has been impressed and there have been many requests for the recipe. So I thought it was about time I got round to it.

Some notes on the recipe:
Whitley suggests using all strong wholemeal flour - we do this sometimes, but we usually white flour too, so that's what I've give quantities for here. We've also tried it with half wholemeal spelt and half strong white flour - this makes delicious baps which rise a little more quickly.

Whitley is very specific about his water temperatures - which is extremely comforting when you are beginning with sourdough, but I haven't found it vital with baps, so I'm not bothering with that here. One more thing - he specifically says that the dough should not be kneaded after it's first rise - but we have found that if it is kneaded fairly thoroughly at that stage (err, thrown around the room - why do you think we call them splat buns?) it actually seems to give the baps a much better final texture.

Splat Buns (Baps) based on a recipe by Andrew Whitley

5g dried yeast
390g lukewarm water
300g stoneground strong wholemeal flour
300g strong white flour
5g salt
30g butter, lard or olive oil

Put the lukewarm water in a large bowl (or your food mixer bowl), add the dried yeast and stir it around with your fork to dissolve it. Add the flour, the salt and fat (we always use farmouse butter from Westry Roberts - gorgeous stuff). Knead (or use your mixer) until, as Whitley puts it 'the gluten [is] properly developed' - that is until the mixture is no longer very sticky, and springs back when you poke it.

Then cover your mixing bowl with a damp cloth (another Whitley no-no - but it works for me...) and put it in a warmish place for 1-2 hours. Towards the end of that period get some flour ready in a small bowl, flour your work surface a little bit, and get a baking tray ready (just lined with baking parchment/sprinkle with flour).

Then get the dough and bang it around a bit (it helps to get some help from small children at this stage, but it's not vital) and divide it into 12 equal-ish sized pieces. Mould each piece into a ball, pulling the dough round tightly to form a smooth rounded top and then dip them in a little flour before putting them on the baking tray, about 2cm apart (see picture).

Then put the whole tray in to a large carrier bag (Bag for Life again), making sure that the buns are in no danger of touching the bag, even after they've risen. Put this into a warm place for the buns to rise for about 30-45 minutes.

Sometime during this period pre-heat your oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8 - (it really depends on how long it takes your oven to do this - it'll become second nature). When the buns have risen so that they are just touching each other - see picture - put them in the oven for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 210C/Gas 7 for a further 7-12 minutes.

When you're happy that they're done, remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Hope you enjoy these baps as much as we do. If you want to see Whitley's original recipe then it here on Google Books. There's also a recipe for overnight baps (which have an even better flavour & are more easily digested) included here in his article Let's Have Some Decent Bread in Resurgence Magazine.

Our Breakfast Buns

This is another recipe using buttermilk so I hope you've found your supply by now! This recipe has an interesting twist - the flour is soaked overnight in buttermilk before being baked. I first encountered this idea in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Her theories are a bit too complicated for me to go into now (buy or borrow her book - it's well worth a read) but one of her ideas is that soaking grains before use (as practised in many traditional cultures) makes them more easily digested and makes their nutritional content more easily available.

We call these Breakfast Buns at home because that's when we usually have them - they make a great weekend treat. The recipe is very much like that for buttermilk scones - but they are more moist and lighter than ordinary scones. They keep better too - although if your family are anything like mine, there wont be any left to keep. They also, I assume because of the soaking process, need considerably less bicarbonate of soda than ordinary scones require.

Our Breakfast Buns

325g plain wholemeal flour (spelt makes a brilliant alternative)

90g chilled butter, in cubes

200ml buttermilk (maybe a little more)

100g (very approximate!) plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

pinch of salt

Put the flour in a large non-metallic bowl. Add the cubed butter and rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs (see picture). Or use a food mixer of course!

Add the buttermilk and stir in with the flat blade of a knife (this bit is definitely better done by hand rather than machine). You are aiming for a mixture like a very wet bread dough - if your mixture isn't sticky, add a little bit more buttermilk. You need something that looks like this:

Cover the bowl with a plate, clingfilm or a plastic bag and leave overnight at room temperature.

The next day, put your oven on to 220C (Gas 7). Line a baking tray with baking parchment and get a round pastry cutter ready - I use a 6cm cutter. Add the salt and bicarbonate of soda to the dough and then add enough plain white flour to make the dough into a rollable state, like this:

I find the amount required can vary wildly - start with a couple of tablespoons and add more as required. Start mixing with a knife and continue with your hands.

Flour your work surface and use your hands to flatten the dough into a round disc about 2.5cm (1 inch) thick. Cut out rounds with your pastry cutter and transfer to your baking tray - they can be pretty close together - like this:

Keep cutting and re-rolling the dough until it's all used up - I can usually get around 14-17 buns from the mixture.

Put them in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool a little on the tray then transfer to a cooling rack. Eat quickly with lots of butter, and spread with honey, jam or (especially) marmalade.

It's Shrove Tuesday today and we forgot to have pancakes this morning - so we'll have some after dinner I think. Our boys prefer thick American style pancakes - which is good because I am useless at making the thin kind - I think you need a really good frying pan too. We like to use the banana and buttermilk pancake recipe, as blogged here by Kit in South Africa, from Nigella Lawson's Feast - they're quick and easy to do, and I like to tell myself that the banana is getting a little bit of extra nutrition into their tummies. And, of course, it's another use for buttermilk... It really is a useful thing to have in your fridge!

It's cold outside

But the forced rhubarb is with us again. A really welcome splash of colour in the doldrums of the year. Those nice people at Northern Harvest brought us some today.

Irish Wholemeal Soda Bread

A very tasty, non-yeasted, quick to make loaf this week. Soda bread is a traditional bread in Ireland, and is brilliant if you need bread at the last minute, because it only takes an hour to make from start to finish.

Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is used as the leaven (raising agent) rather than yeast, and buttermilk is the traditional liquid component. Buttermilk can be hard to get hold of, but once you have some, it is very easy to maintain a supply (see below for information about this).

The 1st time I made soda bread the result was pretty unpleasant - it was very heavy and really tasted nothing like the wonderful versions I had had on holiday in south-west Ireland. This, much more successful recipe, is taken from Rick Stein's Food Heroes - Another Helping. It has more white flour than the recipe I used first time round, I've learned an important lesson - it's important not to over-mix the dough, as Rick Stein points out, very little kneading is required.

A final note before you get started - you need ordinary plain flour to make soda bread - bread flours are no good for this because the gluten content is too high.

Wholemeal Irish Soda Bread

275g stoneground wholemeal flour

275g plain white flour (plus a little extra for kneading)

1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1 tsp salt

450ml buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 230C/Gas Mark 8. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre, pour in the buttermilk and mix together (note: I use a knife and then my hands) to make a soft but not too sticky dough. Add a little more buttermilk if the dough seems a bit dry.

Turn the mixture out on to a lightly floured surface and knead lightly and very briefly into a round. Flip the dough over and gently flatten in into a disc about 4cm (1 inch) thick. Lightly dust a large baking sheet with flour (note: I use baking parchment), place the dough on it and then, using a large knife, cut a large cross in the top, almost all the way through the dough. Stab each quarter once in the centre with the point of the knife.

Bake the loaf on the middle shelf of the oven for 15 minutes, the lower the oven temperature to 200C/Gas Mark 6 and bake for a further 20-25 minutes, until it sounds hollow when you tap the base. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before serving.

*****

Soda bread is very definitely best eaten on the day it was made - although it isn't bad toasted the next day (although the slices can be an odd shape for a toaster!). We like it with soup or cheese, but it is particularly good with fishy things like gravadlax, smoked salmon and my personal favourite, rollmops.

Buttermilk

I think a bit of confusion surrounds buttermilk. There are 2 products called buttermilk - one is the by-product of butter making - the liquid that remains after cream has been churned into butter. This is pretty much unobtainable, although we've been lucky enough to get it at Farmers' Markets in the past. The second, more widely available version, is a cultured milk product similar to yogurt. It's available in bigger supermarkets - the brand I have seen most frequently is Yoplait.

Once you have bought buttermilk it is easy to keep a supply on hand indefinitely. All you need to do is add a little buttermilk to ordinary milk (in the proportion 1 part buttermilk to 4 parts milk) and leave at room temperature for around 12-18 hours. You can use a bowl covered with a plate or cloth for this, but the easiest container for this is a a clip-top preserving jar (the type with a rubber sealing ring). Once the mixture has thickened you can transfer it to your fridge where it will keep for a week to 10 days.

There are other uses for buttermilk besides this delicious bread. To make creme fraiche just add 3 tbsp of buttermilk to about 200 ml of double cream. Leave at room temp and after 12-18 hours you will have a delicious creamy creme fraiche. Or, leave 1 litre of buttermilk at room temperature in a large clip top preserving jar until it separates into curds (solid white stuff) and whey (liquid). Line a sieve with muslin or folded kitchen paper and pour in the buttermilk. Then tie up the white solids in the cloth and suspend overnight to let more liquid drip out. After the curds have drained you will be left with absolutely delicious creamy curd cheese. Try this mixed with garlic and fresh herbs and spread it on your soda bread. Scrumptious.