Twist it up

Bread is always a wonderful gift for a dinner party host or hostess. Even the pretty crude rosemary rolls I brought to my sister's for dinner were well received when used to mop up her delicious lasagna. This twisted loaf is filled with green pesto, but you could use red pesto or tomato sauce and cheese for a pizza version. We served up the bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and everyone tore in. 

Once I'd kneaded my second batch of dough (the first was a flop, made with out-of-date yeast),

I rolled it out, spread pesto all over (fresh, as ever, is best, but the jar stuff does the job), and rolled it up lengthways. I sliced it down lengthways and then, on a baking tray, twisted the two halves together. This makes a right royal mess but looks beautiful once it's done. Try it to take to a dinner party this weekend!

Chorizo and Sun-Dried Tomato Bread

April showers seemed to have arrived a little early: the drizzle at home is continual and gloomy. I'm fairly sure it's pathetic fallacy to complement my dissertation-writing experience. To bring a little sunshine into our life, I baked a Mediterranean combo bread. This is based on a recipe by the lovely Molly, whose optimism is fairly apparent across her blog. The bread doesn't need kneading (nice little homonym there for my language buddies) and is made in a big ol' casserole dish (known as a bizarrely-named 'Dutch oven' in the USA, which sounds like a euphemism). The dough rises overnight (so remember to get started on Saturday for a lazy Sunday morning).

This bread did not solve all my problems, but it alleviated them for a while. Try it toasted with eggs, dipped in soup, or just with some oozy butter. This week is to be filled with writing, nursing Pappa H and looking forward to Porto in just over a week! Let me know of any sites to see!

Flat Breads

I'm trying to be a little more adventurous with my cooking, so for our latest dinner party I made a Moroccan tagine - lamb, dried fruit and goregously spiced sauce - and cous cous. The meal was topped off with the most exquisite Speculoos cheesecakes by Amy. For those of you who have not been lucky enough to spend an extended period of time in France, Speculoos is a spread made from what Amy refers to as 'hairdresser biscuits' or, in other words, Biscoff/Lotus cinnamon biscuits. 

Anyway, flat breads are super simple and impress people more than store-bought Naan. A pile of flour, a couple of tablespoons of oil (we have some fancy orange healthy stuff at the moment thanks to leftovers) and some milk, and a sprinkle of any spices you like. Mix it up, roll it out, and fry in a dry pan for a couple of minutes.

Soda Bread

My family friend Phelim has promised again and again to teach me to make soda bread. He is Irish, so knows how, and a wonderful man who hosts dinners in his lovely garden in summer complete with old records and Irish ditties. I have so far not taken him up on the offer (be assured, I will), but in the meantime I used a recipe from Pastry Affair to have a go myself. This rosemary concoction makes the house smell sublime. It's a little salty but would be a dream with some goats cheese and roasted cherry tomatoes, or dipped in oil and balsamic.

Soda bread and other non-rising loaves are so easy to make. I hopped out of bed, made the dough, whacked it in the oven and was back under the duvet twenty minutes later. Then a half-hour nap before warm bread for breakfast. The dream. 

Cinnamon Spice and All Things Nice

After Sunday’s cheat bread, Tuesday morning called for the real deal. After a (very) lazy Monday, I decided that Tuesday would be my Monday and we would celebrate this by starting the day with cinnamon whirl pull-apart bread (I halved the quantities and it still made a gigantic loaf). Cinnamon whirls have always been my treat of choice from the bakery (alternating with iced buns in summer), and to this day I feel spoilt when I eat them. So as I was determined to start my Monday (Tuesday) well, I figured this was as good a way as any, accompanied by a steaming cup of coffee in my favourite Anthro tea cup made in my Moka from Italy (thanks Gem). Win-win.

Cinnamon is my favourite spice: I’m partial to a sprinkling with apple on my porridge, with any kind of latte but particularly chai, and in biscuits and banana bread. It is indulgence without the calories (kind of), which can only be a good thing in my book, and it’s kind of warming. My cinnamon bread featured cinnamon carried all the way to me from Jerusalem by Mr Hook, which I figure must make it more special than your standard Tesco dealio. As we wanted it to be baked for breakfast, I made the dough the night before, let it rise, and then put it in the fridge under clingfilm. It almost doubled again and was perfectly ready to use in the morning. 

Keep Rolling

I would so love to catch the smell of baking bread in a bottle.

My dad went through a year-long phase of baking bread in the machine overnight so that we would awaken to the scent wafting through the house, calling us from our cosy beds to trip across the chilly landing and into the kitchen for breakfast. Still warm, the bread would instantly melt the butter and I’d bite straight in while it oozed into the pores. It was the kind of bread that you could still squish into dough and I loved it.

My dad’s phase might have passed (sad face), but our love of good bread has not. On my last trip away, I arrived home with red onion and gruyere focaccia as a souvenir. Most recently, my housemates and I knocked up some bread twists for a gigantic Burns’ Night dinner party (18 guests in a 3-person house). We cheated – if you can call it that – and used ready-made bread mix; we are students, after all. We mixed and kneaded and plaited together, and watched the flour and water become dough, and the dough rise, and the risen dough become golden rolls, tappably hard on the outside and soft and white on the inside. Served with our cock-a-leekie soup, made with homemade chicken stock (it was a pretty old-fashioned weekend…), the rolls soaked up the goodness and made for a pretty exceptional centrepiece on our tartan table.