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.