HOMEMADE BREAD RECIPE

QUESTION : Have you ever tried making bread?

The butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker… I certainly know which job I would choose!!! Which perhaps explains why every time I entered the local boulangerie (lovely French word for a bakery), a little voice inside my head would say ”why are you not making this yourself…. ”

You may have heard some of the feeble deterring arguments:

• Essential = 1 state of the art, high tech oven with steam function
• 3000 types of flour to choose from
• Yeast : dried or fresh??? It has a life of its own…
• Kneading : a little or a lot, by hand to hand combat or machine
• it is easier just to buy it…..

But this is all just rubbish, poppycock I tell you!!! Anyone who has had the pleasure, no, the sheer blissful joy, of waking up to the smell of fresh homemade bread, to the taste of a warm, soft slice with a little, butter, jam or olive oil  …. knows that it is more than worth the little extra time and effort.

And it is EASY TO MAKE!!!! No word of a lie, the secret is out of the bag. The basic recipe that I work with is 500 grams of flour to 300mL or water and then I play around with the types of flour used and sometimes add extra cracked wheat, oat flakes or seeds!  The possibilities are endless.

So it is best to just throw caution to the wind and try your hand at what has been a time honoured tradition for centuries (even before the Kitchen Aid …. yes this era did actually exist).

SWEDISH BREAD

{FULLKORNIGHT FORMBROD} Warm fresh homemade bread has this way of inviting you in, to pull up a chair, and grab a knife and then a slice, or maybe two… true comfort food to be shared. As was this recipe, given to me by my close friend Nina, a Swede from Stockholm, whose mother, Elisabeth has been making this bread since she was a little girl.

Now Nina was not a bread baking girl herself, that is to say not until this past Christmas…. when I got her roped into the kitchen, and not even my own kitchen but that of her mother’s….. as when I saw Elisabeth a month earlier I took the  opportunity to ask her about baking Swedish bread, and she said not to worry, that Nina was coming home for the holidays, and would come back an expert.

As she did! And further family help was on the way, as Sophie, Nina’s sister brought the authentic Swedish ingredients (vetekross - cracked wheat & grahamsmjöl- wholewheat flour etc.) directly from Stockholm, to England to Paris and finally to Geneva, where this past weekend Nina and I made the recipe together. So impressed was I with the outcome - thick crunchy crust, soft, yet dense centre of cracked wheat, that I just made another loaf just to post the results this evening.

So a big thank you to Nina, Elisabeth & Sophie - I truly believe that I was Swedish in another life!

POTATO BREAD

Can you believe that it is the end of the month already! It just crept up on me… which means that Christmas is only a few short weeks away, as is all the wonderful festive cooking & baking. And to get my kneading muscles in shape - Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups blog , host of this months DARING BAKERS challenge, has set us the task of making ‘Tender Potato Bread’.

  I was really looking forward to this challenge, as lately I have found myself drawn to making bread - I don’t know if it is the cold weather or the need to bake that is the root, but the results have been encouraging! So far I have my mother-in-law’s recipe for ‘tresse au beurre’ (like a braided/platted brioche bread) and a Swedish rhye bread under my belt. There was a small incident in which the Swedish dough took on a life of its own and starting climbing out of the bowl… the bowl was too small, the yeast was too strong, and well I was too slow. However the situation was saved just in the nick of time & all turned out well, including two lovely golden loaves.

So when it came time to tackle the DB challenge, I was ready. To personalise the recipe (within the allowed modifications of course) I created a savoury pesto & pine-nut version, brushing the tops with a light egg wash to give them that lovely gleam, and then sprinkled them with pine-nuts - the ones I bought in Barcelona at E&A Gispert this summer and had been saving!!! I also halved the recipe, which scaled down nicely, producing fifteen small rolls, but for the purpose of this competition I have posted the original recipe.