It’s Real Bread Week

There is a movement to celebrate ‘Real Bread’. It is encouraging people to buy bread from a local, traditional master baker that bakes real bread or even for people to make their own bread. For those interested, you can find out more from the Real Bread Campaign.

Cinnamon brioche loaf

Making your own bread is easy. People often think it’s very time consuming, but that’s mostly the time needed for proving the dough. Basically that’s when you leave the dough to do its own thing, rising in a warm, humid place.

Currants buns

I’ve been making bread since I was 19 years old. I spent the year before I went to university employed in the labs attached to a flour mill and part of my work schedule was to bake bread three times a week.

Walnut loaf

Over the years I have experimented more and more, and, I as I like nuts there have been more and more nutty loaves of various shapes and flavours.

Almond loaf

And, of course, I can’t finish without mentioning the influence of the Great British Bake Off, along with judge Paul Hollywood, which has done so much to promote yeast cookery for the home baker. I would never have ventured into Italian breads without seeing it on the GBBO and it has been well worth it. Olive breadsticks are a bit tricky (and sticky) but absolutely delicious and well worth the effort every time.

Winter, Seville Oranges and Marmalade

Homemade marmalade made with Seville oranges.

Every year during January and February Seville oranges (Bitter oranges) arrive in our local fruit shops and supermarkets. I’m not sure if it’s because I recently saw the film ‘Paddington’ (and he does love his marmalade sandwiches), but this year I decided to make some marmalade.

Paddinton loves his marmalade.
From the film ‘Paddington’.

Of course, alternatively it could be having all the glamour of the Tudors every where you look, that I unconsciously made a few connections – Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots – marmalade! It’s one of those English things we were told at school that the word marmalade comes from Mary Queen of Scots when a French cook concocted a preserve from Seville oranges for a sickly Mary – ‘Marie est malade’. Not true, (doesn’t surprise me) a far more accurate history of marmalade suggests Henry VIII would have known the preserve which was imported from Portugal and made from quinces. Then it appears that gradually this recipe was adapted to use other fruit including bitter oranges.

Split marmalade teacake toasted, buttered and topped with marmalade.

I used a BBC Good Food marmalade recipe which I’ve made before. And, in for a penny in for a pound I found an interesting recipe for ‘marmalade’ teacakes (light yeasted buns with dried fruit). It was really a basic teacake recipe with 150 grams of HOMEMADE marmalade dissolved in the milk that is added to the flour to make the dough. The finished teacakes looked nice and were pleasant when toasted and buttered, but I couldn’t specifically taste the marmalade flavour unless a bite included a chunk of shredded peel. Well, you know, why not spread with extra marmalade!

Fun, but also enriching

Well, this week in UK telly land sees the final of the Great British Bake Off. Not to everybody’s taste, but I have enjoyed this pleasant and rather quaint diversion from all the bad news filling the airwaves.

The GBBO has also nudged me into having a go at baking off-piste shall we say. That is I’ve been experimenting and devising new combinations for old recipes. My latest weekend bake was a version of sticky buns.

Yeast cookery isn’t too difficult it is mostly about not being in a hurry. These sticky buns are made with an enriched dough studded with stem ginger and hazelnuts and baked with a coating of my buttery, caramel sauce. It’s the caramel that gives these buns the glossy, sticky finish.

Enriching a dough means adding butter, sugar and eggs which makes a softer, heavier dough. However, the addition of fat and sugar also slows the action of the yeast and therefore the proving time has to be longer. But the waiting is worth it when you sample the finished sticky buns.

The bite of the stem ginger cuts through the sweetness of the sticky caramel coating.