Tag: bread

Bread baking part 2

So today we are having pizza for dinner and I have taken some pictures as I went along to show how simple it is! Excuse some of the pics- battery ran out so I used my phone for some of them!
I used a recipe from The I Diet , but I have adapted it a bit (made it veggie, removed some of the stuff, swapped the toppings over).
Step 1- Put flour, yeast, salt and tsp oil in a bowl. Mine has 90g strong white flour and 90g strong wholemeal flour.


Step 2- Pour in warm water (I use some from the kettle and some from the cold tap) and mix together a little bit. This needed about 140ml water.
Step 3- Tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and don’t panic when it looks messy! Stretch it about a bit (this works the gluten in the flour) and keep on kneading it, After about 5 minutes you should have a ball of lovely smooth dough.
Step 4- Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for around an hour.


Step 5- Pre-heat the oven. Flatten the dough into the pizza base shape that you want (I like on massive super pizza that I can slice once it comes out the oven), then go crazy with toppings! I spread red pesto over the base then covered it with sliced pepper, sliced courgettes, and light mozzarella.
Step 6- Put in the oven only once the oven is super hot. Cook for about 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the edges look brown.
Step 7- Remove from oven, slice up and serve with a massive salad. Yum! I did mean to put some fresh basil on it after (from the window-sill) but I forgot. Oops.

I also experimented today with the blondies from Rachel Allen’s Bake. I have read that you can swap some of the fat in a recipe for apple sauce. After those muffins I made the other week I decided to try it with a different recipe. So I used 50g butter and 50g apple sauce. I also reduced the sugar and used a little agave nectar instead, and used wholegrain spelt flour. They are very tasty still, although I think I would cook them for a little less time as they were a bit more like cake and less like brownie. I do like brownies that are nice and squidgy.

While we are on the subject of food, I made some delicious fake frozen yoghurt today, and I even took a photo! In my mini chopper I put 80g frozen raspberries, whizzed them up a bit, then added 100g Rachel’s low fat cherry yoghurt, whizzed it up some more, and served. I did think it might need some sweetener as the raspberries can be a bit tart, but actually it was good. There is sugar in the yoghurt so that’s probably why it was ok.

I haven’t been up to much else that is of any interest; I did some work, I went on a walk, I went in the garden (the apples on the tree are getting big eeeee- one is the size of a cherry tomato!), I did some housework. I have been drinking lots and trying to get everything ready for my half marathon tomorrow. Wish me luck.

9 miles in the sunshine

This morning I had 9 miles planned and woke up to lovely sunshine- hooray! But recently I have been getting headaches after my runs so I made sure I had a lot of water to drink before I left. I had my breakfast and then made some foccacia dough. I bought a book called “The I diet” (I for Italian) recently and have made a few things from it. It has quite a few veggie recipes and the veggie chilli and pizza recipe ( I leave off the ham) are really tasty. But it always takes ages to make bread (well, to wait for it to rise) so I started first thing.

On my run I took a bottle of water with me, but it felt like such hard work, plus by the end I could feel all the water sloshing around in my stomach- not so good! Also half way I had to stop and loosen my laces because my feet had gone numb- I think perhaps that feet swell a bit in the heat and so they had made my shoes too tight.

When I got home I was starving so I had the other half of a banana (had half on my cereal) and a Nak’d gingerbread bar (amazing- have not had one for ages).

After my shower I finished making the foccacia- in the recipe book you basically make a pizza dough, cook it in the oven then top with cherry tomatoes and basil. But I didn’t have any tomatoes (I thought I did) so instead I took it out the oven 5 minutes early, spread it with some sundried tomato paste, a little basil puree, and some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and then warmed it through for another 5 minutes. It tasted so lovely (just what I fancied after my run) and went well with Covent Garden Plum Tomato and Mascarpone soup (I do normally make my own soup but it was on offer!). Delicious!

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Cinnamon Raisin Bread
I have been getting into baking bread recently (without the use of a bread making machine). I love Dove’s Farm Malthouse Flour, and often make bread by adding rosemary, sundried tomatoes or other flavours. I have some cream cheese that needs using up, so decided to make cinnamon and raisin bread (I love anything to do with cinnamon!). So here goes:

Cinnamon and Raisin Bread
In a bowl I put 200g Malthouse flour, 1 level tsp yeast, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, and some cinnamon. I mixed it all together then slowly added around 150ml warm water (I add a bit, mix it in, add more if it needs it and so on).
While the dough was still “craggy” I put it on the board and kneaded it for ages. Then I left it to rise covered with a tea towel. Meanwhile I put about 30g raisins in a bowl and poured on warm water (to plump them up) and also sprinkled some cinnamon in there for good luck. You can never have too much cinnamon.
Once the dough had risen (about an hour or so) I kneaded in the drained raisins. I added a little more flour as the raisins made it go a bit soft. Then I left it to rise once more while the oven warmed up.
It baked in an oven (around 200C) for 25 minutes, making the whole house smell amazing.
Once cooled I sliced it and spread with cream cheese. It tastes similar to a bagel- yum.