Lets talk about bread

Anyone that knows me personally knows that bread is my 'thing'. I've been making it since my first child was born.  It all began with a 2nd hand breadmaker, but when that died I made it all by hand.  These days I have a kitchenaid that I bought for the purpose of bread making and it does a fine job. 
But if you're here is probably because you have a Thermie, not a kitchenaid.

I love love love it when I find out someone has ventured into making their own bread.  I feel immensely proud and thrilled for them.  Its easy,  its yummy & its bloody cheap.

So I am going to share with you my basic bread recipe that I have thermied, but if you happen to not own one yet, message me and we will chat. I am always happy to convert someone to the bread making side!  

OK let's get to it. 
* Its from this recipe that the majority of my breads are based on* 

Like some of my other recipes this one can be flexible, but only parts of it.  It is important to always have the correct weight in water and flour. This guarantees you more consistent loaf. All the other stuff just changes the flavour, except the yeast but you can go either way a bit with no dramatic changes. 

Begin by weighing 420gms of warm water into your bowl, add 10 gms of sugar,  10 gms of yeast and 20 gms of butter. Whiz for 1 min on 37 deg, sp 1. 

Next weigh in 750 gms of bakers flour and 10 gm of regular salt. Wizz it on sp 6 for a quick 7 sec or until the noise changes and the dough is coming together.  Now on interval, sp1 let it knead for 5 minutes. 
While that's happening fill your thermoserver with hot tap water and let it sit and warm up.
I wouldn't recommend leaving thermie alone while the dough was kneading,  it can jump about a bit.  And although mine has never come close to walking off the bench,  you just don't want to risk a $2000 gadget hitting the floor!

Just before time is up tip the water out of the thermoserver and give it a dry and a spray of oil including the lid. When the 5 minutes is up, tip the dough out onto the bench.  It should come out fairly cleanly. Shape it into a ball and press it lightly into the thermoserver, put the lid on and pop it somewhere that's not to cold.  I usually put mine on the stove, it helps me not forget about it!   

After 30 minutes or so it should have risen to fill the whole thermoserver,  if it's quicker then that's fine,  if it's longer that's fine too! 

Tip it out and give it a quick knead to get out all the air that built up inside the dough.
Split the dough into 2 and begin to shape into loaves.  A good way to get a good high loaf is to roll the dough out flat then roll it up into a sausage shape.  After a few goes you'll find what works. But no matter what,  it will taste good in the end!
Put onto a tray lined with baking paper, spray the loaves with cooking spray and cover with glad wrap.

 Let the bread sit somewhere warm to rise to about double is size. 
Now there's some debate as to whether you should put bread into a hot or cold oven.  I like hot.  So I put mine into a 220 deg preheated (obviously take the gladwrap off first!) oven and cook for 20 min or so, nice and brown is great and it should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom. 

There's a 1000 teeny tweeks and problem solvers that I have in my head,  but it would be overwhelming for you and me to write them all in this space.  But do ask for help if you need it!

Soooo with a few ingredients you can make one of life's simple pleasures, hot fresh bread.  (don't be tempted to cut the bread when it's really hot,  it won't end up nice! Wait until it's just warm.. You can do it ;)  )

5 Seed Bread

 A lazy Sunday here....it began with the girls making us breakfast in bed and that set the tone for the rest of the day...Nothing impressive achieved, movies watched, plenty of baking done..and that's about it!

One of the things I baked today was the 5 seed bread from the EDC. It was an interesting adventure! 

To say that I love baking bread is an understatement, I have been doing it for about 15 years so I feel pretty confident when I get out the yeast ;) 

But somewhere in the middle of this recipe I thought 

'This is never going to work!'

My first problem was, there was a large amount of water in comparison to the flour, the second issue was that it was too much for the bowl and had trouble mixing ( I ended up getting in there with a spatula)  third problem was when it cooked it was WAY to big for my largest bakers tin.

But you know what? It tasted pretty damn good, and the texture was lovely even with all those seeds. 

So to save you and me and our thermies I will write the ingredients out here at 70% of the original recipe and I think that will solve the problem of the over loaded bowl and too big for the tin.

• 350gm of water
• 2 tsp of yeast ( or a smidge less, whatever!)
• 350gm of bakers flour
• 3/4 tsp of salt, just roughly is fine
• 35 gm of rolled oats
• 20gms each of sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds
• 20 gms of honey
• 20 gms of olive oil

Normally I wouldn't use olive oil in a sandwich type loaf (butter all the way!) reserving it for focaccia or pizza dough but in this case it helped keep the bread strong enough to handle all those seeds.

So, give it a go if your into a grainy bread. Its as good as any you will buy (probably better) and a whole lot cheaper!

You'll never buy wraps again!

Ok,  Firstly I have to post from my phone because my computer won't turn on!!! So everything might be higgeldy piggeldy..sorry!

Now let me tell you a story.  I was cleaning our caravan recently and found an open packet of wraps that I had left in the cupboard from our January holiday.  Expecting the worst I pulled them out and guess what?  They were in perfect condition. Absolutely perfect.  I can only imagine what must be in them to keep them so fresh feeling for so long!  Yucko! 

Now that I have freaked you out I have a recipe so you can make you own and you won't need them to last forever because someone will eat them because they are GOOD! (And cheap! ) 

Wraps

620 gm flour ( plus extra for dusting the bench)
50gm of oil
1/2 tsp salt
600gm boiling water

Put it all in the TM process on sp7 for 6 sec the 2 min on wheat.

Dump it all on the bench and if it looks like play dough your on the right track.
It will be hot,  so give it a min to cool then separate into 12 pieces. 
Roll out one at a time to as thin as you can, then cook in a dry frypan on a med to high heat flipping over before it burns.  It's an easy process.  It takes about as long to cook add it does to roll out the next wrap for cooking.  As always its trial and error, but it's #6 on my stove top! 

I plan on trying it out with garlic oil one of these days. We use these for lunch wraps, Souvalki wraps,  with curry... By themselves with dip.. You could cut them and toast them in the oven to make a chip... You could sprinkle herbs and spiced on them...