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Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

Pain de Campagne de Cottage Loaf

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on March 12, 2010| 7 Comments »

I’m feeling a tad guilty.

I was so excited about having a cottage loaf bake-off, that I forgot to mention how tricky the little buggers are to make.  I’ve managed to occasionally produce a passable sourdough loaf, but prior to today, all my attempts with commercial yeast have yielded amorphous blobs.  Like this one..

Since most people don’t use sourdough starters, I’ve been experimenting to find a yeasted version that would work in this unusual shape.

Tah-dah!  This wonderful recipe, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, produces a full-flavoured, well-defined cottage loaf.  It requires some preparation the night before, but this extra step infuses the dough with a delicious complexity lacking in most commercial yeast breads.

I’ve also picked up a very clever trick from Mr Reinhart.  By brushing the bottom layer with a little oil before joining the top layer on, it’s easier to achieve a clear separation of storeys, rather than the spaceship-shaped lump above.

Without further ado, here is my pain de campagne de cottage loaf…

Preferment (made the night before):

  • 140g (5oz)  plain (all purpose) flour
  • 140g (5oz) bread or bakers flour
  • ¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • ½ teaspoon instant (dried) yeast
  • 170g (6oz) water, at room temperature

1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flours, salt and yeast.  Add the water and mix to a sticky dough.   Scrape off your fingers and cover the dough, letting it rest briefly (about 10 minutes).

2.  On a lightly oiled bench, knead the dough briefly.  As the dough is quite sticky, it’s best to use the lift, slap and fold method (see video below) rather than pummeling the dough with the heel of your hand.

3. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover and let it rest at room temperature for about 1 hour, or until it swells to about 1½ times its original size.

4. Knock the air out of the dough, then place the preferment into an oiled container and cover with cling film (or a lid) and store in the fridge overnight.

Pain de Campagne:

  • All the preferment prepared above
  • 225g (8oz) bread or bakers flour
  • 45g (1.5oz) rye or whole-wheat flour (I used rye)
  • ¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon instant (dried yeast)
  • 170g (6oz) water, at room temperature

1.  Remove the preferment from the fridge 1 hour before making the dough.  Cut it into pieces with a knife or pastry cutter, and place them in a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the water and yeast, and stir together.  Now add the flours and salt.  Mix together with a spatula initially, then get your hand into the dough and squelch it all together, until well combined.  Scrape off your hands,  cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.

3.  Turn the rested dough onto a lightly oiled bench and knead briefly, until smooth.  It shouldn’t take too long if you’ve let it rest first.  I use the lift and slap French method of kneading, as described in the basic bread tutorial.

4. Oil the scraped out mixing bowl, and return the dough to it.  Cover with cling film and allow the dough to rise for about 1½ hours at room temperature. If it rises too fast, knock the air out of the dough halfway through.  Reinhart’s recipe specifies letting the dough prove for 2 hours, but mine was rising too quickly for that.  Once the final dough is double its original size, it’s good to go.

5.  Preheat the oven to maximum, and place a pizza stone in to heat up, if you’re using one. Turn the dough onto a lightly oiled bench, and divide it into two pieces – one approximately 600g and the other 300g.  Shape both of these into tight balls.

6.  Place each ball on a sheet of parchment paper, cover  loosely (I use a large plastic cake box) and allow to rise for about 15 minutes.  Brush the bottom layer with a little oil, then cut a cross in the top of the dough.  Cut a similar cross on the bottom of the smaller ball, and place it on the top of the larger one.  Now push your index finger or a chopstick into the middle of the loaf, working all the way down to the bottom and pushing outwards to “weld” the two layers together.  Cover again and allow the dough to prove for another 10 minutes or so, or until nearly double in size (be careful not to overprove).

7.  Slash the dough all around, cutting through both levels.  Mist the dough with water, then slide it into the oven (either on a tray, or with a pizza peel).  Turn the oven down to 220C (with fan), and bake for 20 minutes.

8. After the initial baking time, reduce the oven temperature to 175C (with fan). Remove the parchment paper, if possible (it’s not a big deal), rotating the loaf at the same time to allow it to brown evenly. Bake the loaf for a further 10 – 15 minutes, or until it’s baked through and sounds hollow when rapped on the base.  Allow to cool on a wire rack completely before slicing.

Pain de Campagne is a great recipe to have in your repertoire, and a very versatile dough for shaping.  Once you’ve got the recipe down pat, I’m sure you’ll find dozens of other bread shapes to make with it.

Your turn now – bring on the cottage loaves!

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Leek Cannelloni with Provolone Piccante

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , on March 11, 2010| 13 Comments »

Last Friday night, Pete made this delicious leek and ricotta cannelloni, based on a recipe from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes.  It’s a little fiddly, but definitely worth the effort!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe.

  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 1kg leeks, cleaned and thinly sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 250g fresh ricotta
  • 250g fresh lasagne sheets
  • 750ml homemade or bottled tomato passata
  • salt and pepper to season

Cheese Sauce

  • 1 small onion, peeled and halved
  • 3 cloves
  • 450ml full cream milk
  • 1 bay leaf
  • ½ teaspoon black peppercorns
  • 30g unsalted butter
  • 30g plain flour
  • 2 tablespoons heavy cream
  • 150g provolone piccante, grated
  • 1 egg yolk

1.  For the cheese sauce, stud the onion with the cloves and add to a pan with the milk, bay leaf and peppercorns.  Bring the milk just to a boil and then set it aside for 20 minutes to infuse.

2. For the filling, melt  the butter in a large pan and add the leeks, garlic, thyme and water and cook gently, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until the leeks are tender and the excess liquid has evaporated.  Transfer to a bowl to cool, then beat in the ricotta and season with salt and pepper.

3. Bring a large pot of water to boil and add the sheets of lasagne, one at a time, then take the pan off the heat and allow to soak for 5 minutes.  Drain well and leave to cool.

4.  Pour the tomato passata into a large ovenproof dish.  Spoon the filling into the lasagne sheets and roll them up snugly.  Place the rolls seamside down on top of the passata.  Preheat the oven to 200C.

5.  Finish the cheese sauce: strain the milk into a bowl.  Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the flour and cook over a medium heat for one minute.  Gradually beat in the milk, then bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Simmer the pan very gently, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick (about 10 minutes), then remove from the heat and stir in the cream, 75g grated provolone, the egg yolk and season to taste.

6.  Pour the sauce over the cannelloni, scatter over the remaining cheese, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.  In the photo below, six of the eight tubes are filled with leek and ricotta, and the remaining two with bolognaise sauce for Small Man.

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Chocolate Slab Cake – in Metric

Posted in Recipes, tagged , on March 9, 2010| 39 Comments »

The chocolate slab cake, which I posted about nearly a year ago, has been the most widely made recipe on our blog.

I think that’s because it’s easy to make and results in a large quantity of chocolate cake, without the need for any fancy icing or too much fuss.  It’s perfect for a party, and has the simplicity of a packet mix (almost!), but with really great ingredients – Belgian chocolate, real butter and eggs, and no funny preservative numbers.  Because it’s based around a devil’s food cake recipe, the resultant crumb is moist and tender, and as an added bonus, it slices cleanly into neat portions for sharing.  Here it is cut into baby 3cm squares, so you can see what I mean…

Pete describes it as the chocolate cake equivalent of those little wrapped bars of vanilla ice cream we used to buy when we were kids – unpretentious and comforting to eat in large quantities.

For me, it’s a communal cake, which is why I love baking it so much.  I made a slab yesterday, and a piece has gone to the neighbours, another piece is on its way to the school music department and a third piece will go to my friends at the cheese shop when I make my way over there later on today.

Joanna in Bristol asked me for metric measurements, so I weighed up my ingredients as I was making this yesterday.  Here they are…

Cake

  • 440ml  boiling water
  • 170g dark chocolate, chopped finely (we use Callebaut callets)
  • 110g unsweetened cocoa
  • 300g plain (all purpose) flour
  • 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sifted
  • good pinch salt
  • 285g unsalted butter, softened
  • 380g brown sugar
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Icing

  • 100g dark chocolate callets, or finely chopped chocolate
  • 100g unsalted butter
  • 100g icing sugar, sifted (it’s important to sift, or you’ll get lumpy icing)
  • 60ml milk

I’ve also updated the lists on the original post, which has the instructions for putting the cake together.  I hope you’ll try it out.  In our house, having one of these cakes on the go makes everyone feel just that little bit better.

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Dulce de Leche Brownies

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , on March 6, 2010| 15 Comments »

These brownies, based on a recipe by David Lebovitz, were the perfect vehicle for the dulce de leche we made a few weeks ago.  They’re made in a saucepan rather than a mixing bowl, and were much better the second day – it’s definitely worth making these the day before you need them.

  • 125g unsalted butter
  • 170g dark chocolate, finely chopped, we used Callebaut 54% callets
  • 25g Dutch-process cocoa, we used Callebaut
  • 3 large (59g) eggs
  • 200g white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon homemade vanilla extract
  • 140g flour
  • ¾ cup dulce de leche (DL uses 1 cup, but I didn’t want to open another jar!)

1. Preheat oven to 175C with fan.

2. Line a 20cm square brownie pan with a sheet of parchment, folding the corners so that the paper fits in neatly and comes up the sides of the pan.

3. In a medium sized saucepan, melt the butter.  Add the chocolate and stir over very low heat until melted.  Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth.  Add the eggs one at a time and mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula, then stir in the sugar, vanilla and finally, the flour.

3. Scoop half the batter into the prepared pan.  Drop spoonfuls of the dulce de leche over the surface of the batter, then drag a knife through to swirl it in slightly.  Use about a third of the dulce de leche, reserving the rest for the top.

4.  Spread the remaining brownie batter over the top, then repeat the dollop and swirl process with the rest of the dulce de leche.

5. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the brownies are browned and the centre no longer feels too squidgy.  David describes it as “just-slightly firm”.

6.  Allow the brownies to cool completely before cutting.  Because we used homemade dulce de leche (which was quite soft), the caramel sections of our brownies were oozy and luscious.  They really are better on day two, although it was hard to keep the boys away from them for that long!

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And to go with the Plum Sauce…

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , on March 5, 2010| 8 Comments »

Last night we made spring rolls, filled with pork mince, shredded vegetables and vermicelli noodles.  The mixture was stir fried with a little light soy, before being rolled in spring roll wrappers and deep fried…

Thinned with a little water, Pete’s plum sauce made the perfect accompaniment to these!

. . . . .

We marinated belly pork in plum sauce, soy, sherry, a little cornflour and sesame oil, then braised it in pan.  Not quite the right cut of pork for this dish, but delicious nonetheless!

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