Posts in Category: Bread Recipes
Quick and Easy Soda Bread
Timeline 1:00
First of the Foundation Series
Want to bake your first loaf of bread? Make this soda bread just before supper for a toasty accompaniment that features a soft, chewy crumb and crunchy crust. Bake a loaf in under an hour with a bowl, measuring spoons and cups, and a baking sheet or pie pan. No mixer needed – the only tool is your hands. This recipe can be made with buttermilk, regular, or even almond milk to create a vegan loaf. Enhance this recipe by adding seeds or dried fruit for interest.
Maple Syrup Butter Tarts
The Beauty of Maple Syrup Tarts
Whether arranged artistically on a special tray for brunch or grabbed as a late-night treat with a glass of cold milk, Maple Syrup Butter Tarts are irresistibly yummy. Perfect as an easy-to-pick-up dessert in a buffet line or an accoutrement to a hot beverage at tea time, these tarts add a touch of nature to everything you serve.
Plus, they are sweetly easy to make — and remember, the fresher the syrup, eggs and butter, the better. Enjoy!
This is a wonderful recipe for kids to make. While the picture shows using a hand mixer, this simple recipe can be made just as effectively using a flexible spatula, whisk and spoon.
This recipe is featured at the 2018 Sunderland Maple Syrup Festival.
Sourdough Potato Bread – Adding sourdough to an existing recipe
This is a recipe I developed yesterday with Pam Beach. This was an interesting example of taking my potato bread recipe and integrating sourdough starter. This is not as complicated as it sounds. If you look at my sourdough starter directions, I use a 100% hydration formula meaning the starter is equal weight of flour of water. WEIGHT – not volume. You really need a scale to do this. (As I said to Pam – get over it 🙂 )
There are two kinds of sourdough recipes: ones without any commercial yeast and those that use commercial yeast also. This is the later. The purpose of the starter is to act as the sponge for additional flavour. This makes the recipe quick as dough rises slowly when it relies on the starter yeast only.
Potato Bread with Sundried Tomato
Potato Tomato Timeline 3:50
This week I am playing with two dried ingredients: potatoes and tomatoes, as in Instant Mashed Potatoes and Sundried Tomatoes. While many will turn up their nose at potato flakes, I love them for baking. They are convenient, low-cost, easy to use and have a long shelf life. Sundried tomatoes come in two form: dry and in oil. I prefer the dry ones because the hydration phase releases wonderful flavours to the water. I use Aurora sundried tomatoes in the 85g/3 oz resealable bag. Normally I use 50g but for convenience I use 1/2 of the pack, 43g/1.5 oz.
Cheese Dinner Rolls
Rolls Timeline 2:20
Once you make dinner roll dough and ferment it, you have many choices in how to make your rolls. You can divide and put the dough balls in a muffin tin. I also like to then cover in a cinnamon sugar to make a sweeter variation. I love this recipe as it is easy to make and so yummy. The total time from start to rolls out of the oven is only 2 hours 20 minutes.
In this recipe I form the dough into 8 boules, then place in an 8×3 round pan. After proofing an egg wash and cover in grated cheddar cheese and bake.
First Leaven Sourdough Recipe
Leaven Timeline 7:10
The First Sourdough Recipe used a combination of the wild yeast in the sourdough starter and some commercial yeast. This recipe is good for when your starter is not mature yet. The sourdough is acting mainly as a poolish or pre-ferment to give more taste and flavour to the loaf. Now my starter, Fido, is getting very feisty and bold. Twelve hours after a feeding, it has doubled in size and is very frothy. Another difference is time. This recipe takes 7+ hours while adding some commercial yeast lowers the time to 3 1/2 hours.
First Sourdough Recipe
First Sourdough Timeline 3:30
So far on my adventures into making sourdough bread:
Fido
My starter, Fido pronounced Fi-Dough, has been growing for a week now so it was time to make my first loaf. Sourdough bread comes in two varieties depending on the source of the leavening agent, ie source of the yeast. Regular bread uses commercial yeast while Leaven Sourdough uses only the wild yeast in the starter. Many sourdough breads use a combination of the wild yeast from the starter as well a boost with commercial yeast. In that case the starter is there more for flavour rather than to raise the dough. This recipe is from King Arthur Flour and is their recommended first sourdough. I tweaked the metric recipe some as well as optionally adding raisins.
Fido – Our Sourdough Starter
Our latest addition to the family is Fido, pronounced Fi-Dough. Hint, hint. Fido is not a dog. Fido is my new sourdough starter. One of my favourite websites, King Arthur Flour, had an excellent article on setting a new years resolution of starting your own sourdough starter. This is a resolution I could get into.
My First Challah
Timeline 2:35
My First Challah is a great first bread to make. One, it is not complicated and two, it looks amazing. Fleischmann’s Bread World – Easy Challah was one of the very first bread recipes I made. Using a 9×5 loaf pan is easier than braiding the dough and once you make a loaf you can always do a proper braid. There is nothing pan unique about the recipe. The pan is just an nice step for the first timer.
FYI – The picture above is of my first challah. The structure is far from perfect but it tasted wonderful and amazed people. I moved quickly to braiding the dough to make a traditional Challah with the same recipe.