Armenian Flat Breads

These have intrigued me ever since seeing them on the Great British Bake Off, so I thought I would try this variation from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou' book 'How to make Bread'.

It was a very simple dough to make. This is a flat bread designed to be very thin and crispy and therefore doesn't require any yeast. The olive oil gives the dough a smooth, shiny look. The only tricky bit was stretching the dough without it breaking, as you need it to be as thin as possible, but to be honest it didn't make any difference to the end result.(Tip: rub your hands with olive oil before stretching the dough as it makes it a little easier to work with)

We ate this with a G&T pre dinner, all very sophisticated! They were delicious, these ones had poppy and sesame seeds on top, I think the next batch I'll try with Parmesan.

Aussie Damper Bread

When I saw Lorraine Pascale prepare this loaf, I immediately thought of one of my trips to Australia where I spent a few nights sleeping under the stars at Uluru (Ayers Rock). I was taught how to make this bread by my guide as it is one of the simplest loaves to make and requires little preparation.

At the campsite, we mixed up the dough and placed it in an earthy pot with a lid and then buried the pot in the ground amongst some of the hot coals from the fire. About 45 mins later we had a delicious loaf. If I remember rightly, at the time of eating, a sandstorm swept through the camp and we ended up with a very sandy BBQ but you get the drift.

Hopefully if you give this a go at home, you won't have to contend with sand, but its a great place to start if you are keen to bake but unsure where to start. The recipe uses self raising flour, so no need for yeast and also doesn't require time to rise and prove. Lorraine suggests it's a good dipping bread in olive oil and a nice fruity balsamic - who am I to disagree. Give it a go.

Cobtastic

This is probably the best looking loaf I have made...tasted good as well. A trusted recipe from Paul Hollywood.

Spanish Rolls

Sometimes you want to just keep it simple. So these simple rolls made with plenty of olive oil hit the mark for a saturday lunch.

Pudding Club - White Hart, Cuckfield

It's the morning after the night before and I think we can safely say the inaugural Pudding Club was a roaring success. All entrants did themselves proud and produced some seriously delicious puddings.

Those present were;

Alfred - who produced a sublime Lemon Tart, which wouldn't have looked out of place in the finest patisserie. The highlight was undoubtedly the home made pastry. Judges comments included "WOW!", "Great pastry" and "very lemony".

Ben - Ben stuck to a real crowd pleaser with his White Chocolate and Raspberry cheesecake. Despite warm temperatures in the pub which threatened to melt the cheesecake, the dessert was awarded first place by the independent panel of judges. This dessert also probably won the most calorific content.

Simon - Despite stating he hadn't made a pudding in years, Simon produced a memorable Butterscotch and banana trifle with Madeira. I loved the boozy hit of the Madeira and the great texture of the sponge fingers. I think the rest of the pub enjoyed this one in particular.

Doug - At first glance, the simple tupperware box placed on the pub table didn't look that promising. But by the end of the evening, Doug's moist and fruity Bread Pudding was the only one that was completely polished off. Delicious. I'd like the recipe please.

A special mention must go to Andy who joined us for a pint after a week of very little sleep. Good effort!

And here are the photos to enjoy...onwards to Burgess Hill!

Rustic Spanish Loaf

I am a big fan of Spain and all things Spanish. It stems from childhood holidays spent camping on the Costa Brava amidst pine trees that clad the rugged coastline. I then spent a life changing year studying in Granada and ever since then, I have taken every opportunity to enjoy the Spanish way of doing things. They seem to have a great work/life balance and take great pleasure in the simple things in life such as great food and drink. Although it has recently become apparent that they probably enjoyed themselves a bit too much and should have taken more care of their finances!

Which leads me onto this bread which uses a 'starter' dough in the mix which you prepare the day before. This gives the bread a wonderful flavour, much like a soughdough. Don't be put off thinking that this all seems like a lot of faff, having to prepare dough the day before. It's really very simple and doesn't take much time. Bread making is the kind of hobby you can fit around your lifestyle...even when you have a 10 week old baby in the house!

Anyway, I have just enjoyed this loaf for saturday lunch. Delicious. All it needs is a generous covering of butter. That's it. Nice and simple.

German Potato Bread

I have found my new favourite bread! Again, the Hairy Bikers baked this loaf whilst on tour in Germany and I was intrigued to find out what it tasted like, especially as the dough is made with mashed potato.

We have just enjoyed this for lunch and it was the softest loaf I have ever made with a fabulous crust. I hadn't expected it to turn out so soft having used potatoes in the mix plus not a lot of water. I made it into a ham and cheese sandwich but I would imagine you could eat this bread with pretty much anything and not be disappointed. A great dipping bread for soup. Absolutely delicious.

My new paddle

I have discovered a great new site http://bakerybits.co.uk/ and treated myself to a bread paddle to help lift the bread in and out of the oven. It works a treat. Great for pizzas too.

Chocolate Marble Cake

I usually stick with savoury baking, leaving my wife to take the glory on the cake front. But I thought I'd give her a run for her money and give this marble cake a go. What's more, a group of us new dads have formed a 'Pudding Club', so I thought I'd better get in some practice.

It was a fairly simple recipe but the most important thing about the cake is to get the chocolate swirls when you cut into it. I think I managed it :)

Scandinavian Rye Bread

I have had to put my baking tools away for a while recently, after the birth of our daughter Phoebe. But in the last couple of weeks I have hopped back on the baking bicycle, having been inspired by the Hairy Bikers and their recent trip around Europe. They went in search for the best local breads, some of which looked so good I bought the book and got baking.

I started with this Rye Bread which looked great in the book and equally delicious on the TV. What I liked about it the most was the subtle flavours imparted by the caraway seeds. I ate this with cheese and pickle but it was just as good on its own with lashings of butter!

Plait Perfect

Having watched many bakers on the telly plait their loaves, I thought I would give it a try. I soon discovered they made it look far easier than it actually was! Tasted great though. More practice needed.

Soda Bread

I tried this once before, but with whole milk instead of buttermilk and it wasn't very successful. So I wanted to give it another bash using buttermilk this time.

What I like about this type of bread is that you can be eating it barely an hour after you started mixing the dough as it doesn't contain yeast so therefore doesn't require any rising or proving time. Bonus! So this is a great place to start if you are just starting out on your baking odyssey.

One of the keys with this is to mix the dough fairly quickly and to make quite a deep slash across the dough before putting in the oven. This helps it to cook all the way through.

We ate this for breakfast, still nice and warm with butter and jam. Absolutely delicious.

Focaccia forever

I've been a bit down since my not so great attempt at macaroons so I thought I would perk myself up with a real favourite, a delicious yet very simple focaccia. It's basically the same recipe you would use for a basic white loaf with the addition of olive oil. I also find you don't need quite as much yeast as the dough doesn't need to rise as much as a normal loaf.

What I love about focaccia is all the tasty toppings you can add. A few classics would be rosemary and rock salt, cherry or sun dried tomatoes. You just need to prod these softly into the dough just before you bake it.

I'd planned to bake this to accompany a new Italian meatball and macaroni dish on a saturday night. The type of comfort food you tend to crave during the winter months. One of the keys to a great focaccia is not to use a too peppery olive oil in your dough mixture. Just try and use a light and fruity one.

As the photos show, it turned out really well. It will keep for a couple of days in an airtight container and is delicious as a light lunch with some ham, cheese etc. A real winner.

Macaroon madness

Macaroon's have always seemed well beyond my baking capabilities. When ever you see them being cooked on TV by a celebrity chef or one of the Masterchef programmes, the chef in charge always points out how tricky they are to make and that it takes years to perfect the art. What's more, if you ever buy any in cake shops or fancy patisseries, you'll discover how expensive they are.

Anyway, I recently gave them a go and soon realised why they command a high price in shops. These are not for the faint hearted. The key to this recipe is making the Italian meringue part of the recipe which requires you to pour boiling sugar syrup into your whisked egg whites. I'll admit it took me a couple of attempts!

Then once you have mastered this part of the recipe you need to make sure you whip the meringue sufficiently so you can spoon into a piping bag. Again...not straighforward. It's fair to say I struggled with the piping bit, especially as my mixture wasn't firm enough so my kitchen looked like a bomb site after I had finished. I had more mixture pouring out of the top end of the bag than the nozzle end!

But it was worth it in the end. Plus as I will repeat during this blog many times I'm sure, the proof is in the tasting and not necessarily the presentation and they were delicious.

Herman the German

If I'm honest, I'm more of a savoury baker. I'd prefer to make different types of breads as opposed to cakes and the like (donuts not included). However, on a recent trip to see friends up north, I was presented with a small tupperware container of a yeast mixture with some instructions which ended with you baking a cake about 10 days later.

Now, I'm not a hugely patient person but I thought this sounded interesting and well worth the effort, especially as we had tried some of the cake our friend had baked which was superb. Oh yes, the cake was called Herman!

So off we set, back home with our precious cargo, trying carefully not to spill it en route. Over the course of the next week or so, we followed the instructions carefully, stirring it most days, feeding it, talking to it (I made that bit up). Then the big day arrived...bake day. Just before you bake Herman, you add other ingredients including apple, sultanas, cinnamon etc, in fact it's up to you what you add at this stage.

The resulting cake is below and turned out really well. We even passed on the starter mixture to family, who promised to keep the spirit of Herman alive.

Fancy a bit of Rye?

I thought it was about time to push the boat out and try something a little different. Not only include rye flour but also some bold new flavours. So, following instruction from Richard Bertinet I made my first attempt at smoked bacon and red onion rye bread.

If you try this yourself make sure you allow the bacon and onion mixture to cool properly, otherwise the dough mix goes a bit sloppy...and no one likes a sloppy loaf! A quick note on using dried yeast. I usually use the dried sort that you can mix straight into your dry mixture, however I find you generally have to allow a little extra time for the dough to rise. So I gave this a good hour and a half for the second dose of proving.

Anyway, you'll see by the pictures, it turned out really well and tasted delicious which is the main thing. It really lends itself to eating with smoked cheese and chutney. Plus it makes for excellent cheese on toast, using a really mature cheddar if you can get your hands on some. I'll definately bake this again.

Raisin and Oat Bread

After having bought some wholemeal bread flour, I thought I would try my hand at something a little different as well as incorporating some extra ingredients.

I find kneading the dough a little easier when you have brown and white flour combined. When I first started this baking affair and mixed up my first batch of dough, it was like working with porridge. I only realised after a few attempts that this was how it was meant to be and that once you had worked the dough for 10 mins or so it does start to come together.

Anyway, so back to this recipe (still following the advice of Richard Bertinet), Raisin and Oat bread sounded nice and perfect for breakfast I was told. He was right, it was delicious. Quick tip when you add nuts or fruit - make sure you add them towards the end of the kneading, otherwise you will end up with bits of raisin all over the kitchen...ceiling included!

Hollywood

Any amateur baker probably watched the BBC show 'The Great British Bake Off', come on don't be shy, I know you did. I am not ashamed to admit that I didn't miss an episode. I was hooked from the start by the wise words of Mary Berry and the cutting remarks of baking guru, Paul Hollywood. Now I must confess that before I starting baking bread I had never heard of Paul. For a start I thought that can't be his real name. It turns out that he is master baker to the rich and famous, supplying artisan breads to top restaurants.I loved the way he was playing the part of Simon Cowell of the baking world, never shy of knocking the wind out of the keenest baker. Mary Berry on the other hand was the exact opposite. She could have been your grandmother, kind and considerate but she knew exactly what she was talking about.

Anyway I digress, the reason I tell you all of this is is that this inspired me to look up Paul Hollywood and see what all the fuss was about. So I had some friends coming round for the weekend and wanted to bake a loaf that would work for breakfast as well as a side for dinner. So I tried his 'Cob' recipe. A cob is a beast of a white loaf and if you didn't eat it, it could easily be used as a weapon. Anyway I have baked this a few times now and it has been delicious every time. Crusty on the outside but nice and fluffy on the inside. It's great for toast too.