Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

On Easter Sunday, my folks came over for dinner and I roasted two small lamb shoulders in the Römertopf bakers.

Seasoned following these Jamie Oliver instructions, the lamb was a huge hit – so much so that it was almost all eaten before I remembered to take a photo. There were only a few pieces of roasted butternut/trombie pumpkin (homegrown) and a little of the lamb meat left…

I thought the leftover pumpkin might make a nice substitute for potatoes in our stottie cakes (the original version is a Dan Lepard recipe from The Handmade Loaf)…

• 500g bakers/bread flour
• 180g peeled roasted pumpkin/squash, mashed (original recipe uses 300g of mashed potato, but this was all I had leftover from dinner)
• leftover garlic and herbs from the roast
• 10g dry yeast
• 10g fine sea salt
• 300g water

This is quite a sticky dough – you might need to add a bit more flour if it’s too hard to handle. Start by squelching all the ingredients together to form a dough – I included a couple of cloves of peeled roasted garlic and bits of oregano and rosemary leftover from our Easter dinner.

Scrape off your hands and place the dough in a large mixing bowl. Cover and allow to prove for about an hour until roughly doubled in size. Then flour your bench and turn the risen dough out. Use a scraper if necessary (if the dough is too sticky) and fold the dough onto itself a few times. Divide the dough into four pieces.

Shape each piece into a ball and place it on a sheet of parchment. Lightly spray a piece of clingfilm with oil and fit it snugly around the dough ball. Allow to prove for a further 30 – 40 minutes. Preheat the oven to 240C with fan and position pizza stones in place if you’re using them.

Once the dough has risen…

…flatten it out under the clingfilm with your fingers…

Peel off the clingfilm and dust the top of each circle of dough with flour…

Turn the oven down to 220C with fan and bake each round, either on a pizza stone or on an oven tray. After a few minutes the dough will start to puff up – carefully open the oven and remove the parchment paper if you can. Flip the dough over (I use my welding gloves) and allow it to brown on the other side. Repeat again and bake until the stotties are golden…

I served these for lunch topped with homemade hommus and the leftover roast lamb…

The boys loved these, even Small Man who’s not normally a fan of pumpkin. And I loved the fact that none of our Easter leftovers went to waste!

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you might have twigged to the fact that I only use a few different dough recipes. These form the basis of most of our breads, and can be tweaked with different flavours and shapes to produce enough variety to ensure that my family never get bored with them.

Our basic sweet dough recipe started off as the one from Richard Bertinet’s fabulous beginner’s book Dough. Over time, we’ve changed it up a bit – we now use dried yeast, less salt and UHT (long life) milk. I initially blogged it as a Pain Viennois recipe, but it’s been used so many times and in so many forms since then that I think it warrants another tutorial.

This morning, I turned the dough into three faux brioche loaves. They’re extremely popular, particularly with the little folks in our neighbourhood. One of the loaves went straight out the door to Baby M, and the wolves will eat the other two for lunch. Pete thinks this is perfect toddler food – it’s rich in milk and eggs and carbs – and unlike proper brioche, it only takes a couple of hours from start to finish!

These days I always make a large batch (double the original recipe), and it still never seems to be enough. Here’s the sized up ingredients list…

• 1kg bread/bakers flour
• 20g dried/instant yeast
• 14g fine sea salt
• 80g caster (superfine) sugar
• 120g unsalted butter
• 4 large (59g) eggs
• 500g full cream milk, at blood temperature, or UHT milk, unrefrigerated

Note: UHT milk has a long shelf life and is purchased in cartons from the supermarket shelf.

1. Whisk together the dried yeast and bread flour in a large, wide mixing bowl.  Add the salt and sugar and whisk in well.

2. Add the unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, then rub the butter into the flour mixture until well crumbled.

3. Add the eggs and milk, then mix together with a spatula or a clean hand until it forms a shaggy dough.  Cover with a tea towel and allow to rest for 20 minutes.

4. Uncover the bowl and give the dough a brief knead. I usually fold the dough onto itself a few times using a scraper.

5. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and allow to rise until doubled in size (about an hour in our mild climate).

6. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and using your dough scraper, give it a couple of gentle folds. It’s now ready for whatever your imagination has in mind for it. I turned this batch into faux brioche by dividing it into three and then placing the shaped loaves into lined (and greased) tins to prove.

One loaf was made with three large balls of dough, another with seven smaller ones. The final loaf was plaited. The dough was covered and allowed to rise again as the oven preheated to 200C with fan (about half an hour).

Once risen, the loaves were brushed with egg wash…

…and baked until dark brown (20 – 25 minutes)…

Our backyard eggs produce a golden, tender crumb…

. . . . .

Here are some of the other recipes we’ve used this dough for over the years…

Jam Doughnuts – one of the most popular posts on our blog…

. . . . .

Bacon Slices – the dough is equally versatile for both sweet and savoury…

. . . . .

Hot Cross Buns – with just a few additions, these are a perfectly simple Easter treat…

. . . . .

Pain Viennois – one of the first recipe we blogged using this dough…

. . . . .

Blackberry Crown, also known as Monkey Bread…

. . . . .

Dinner Rolls, inspired by Pamela at Spoon Feast…

. . . . .

Hearts and Scrolls, for Hallmark Day…

. . . . .

I hope you’ll give this simple and incredibly versatile recipe a go. I can’t wait to see what you make with it!