Multigrain and Honey Loaf

A wholesome healthy loaf of bread, with oats, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, honey and both wholemeal flour and white bread flour. Another wonderful bread recipe from master baker, Dan Lepard. I like his method of "kneading" the dough, the fold and push method, repeated at 15 minute intervals, a few times. 

A few hours of advance planning is required, as the sponge is made at least 2 to 4 hours before the final dough is mixed. The sponge is made by mixing together, warm water, instant yeast and strong white flour, and left for at least 2-4 hours or even overnight. I left mine for close to 4 hours before mixing it with the rest of the dough ingredients. The porridge is made by mixing together, rolled oats, honey, flaxseed, sunflower seeds, and boiling water, then left to cool to room temperature. 

The dough is mixed by hand and it will be very sticky. But the stickiness will be reduced after three intervals of fold and push method. 

The recipe has the top sprinkled with some flour and then  slashed along the length. I have omitted both the flour and the slashing. The bread is baked in a preheated oven at 230C for the first 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200C and bake for another 20-25 minutes. The top is browning by the end of the first 20 minutes, so I have tent the top with foil.

Bread is moist with soft chewy crumbs, with a touch of sweetness from the honey and added texture from the wholesome seeds. Lovely toasted and spread with cold salty butter and my favourite jam, with a mug of  hot coffee, for breakfast.

The recipe can be found in Dan Lepard's book, Short & Sweet, page 39, or from The Guardian, here.

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Double Cheese and Chive Loaf

This is another fabulous bread from master baker, Dan Lepard, taken from his wonderful book, Short & Sweet. A fantastic book with bread, cakes, cookies, desserts recipes. I have made several recipes from this book and have great results. 

Double Cheese and Chive Loaf recipe is one of the variations from his basic White Farmhouse Tin Loaf recipe, where he has added Parmesan and Cheddar cheese, with some chives, to make an entirely new bread, resulting in this fabulous tasty loaf. He has other variations which you can find from guardian.com .

Instead of kneading the dough like you usually would, Dan Lepard uses his easy method of fold, push and turn, which is repeated at 15 minutes interval, thrice. A good idea  to get this book to learn about his simple method and other tips, plus tons of fabulous recipes!

I reduce the salt to half teaspoon, taking into account of the salty cheeses used. For the chives, I have used Chinese garlic chives from my garden pot. 

The bread bakes to a lovely golden brown and rises beautifully.

With moist, soft crumbs and tastes just fabulous, good to eat on its own. We had this loaf as a sandwich bread with slices of ham.

The holes where the diced Cheddar has partially melted. Nice!

The recipe can be found at guardian.com, with some other variations as suggested by the author.

Double Cheese and Chive Loaf
(Short & Sweet, by Dan Lepard)
For the sponge :
225ml warm water
1 teaspoon fast action yeast
175gm strong white flour

For the dough :
175gm strong white flour, plus extra for shaping and dusting
1 teaspoon fine salt
25gm unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the tin
50gm grated Parmesan
200-250gm Cheddar, cut into 1cm dice
a small bunch of fresh chives, snipped into 1cm lengths
oil for kneading

Get the sponge ready by pouring the warm water into a mixing bowl, stirring in the yeast and adding 175gm flour. Stir it together, cover the bowl and leave for 2-4 hours, or even overnight. When you're ready to make the dough, put the second batch of flour into a bowl, add the salt and rub the butter through until it vanishes, so there are no little lumps floating around. Add the grated Parmesan, diced Cheddar and chives. Pour in the yeast batter, mix the whole lot up into a big sticky clump of dough, then scrape the bits off your fingers, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave for 10 minutes. Knead the dough (fold, push and turn method), repeating after 15 and 30 minutes, then cover and leave for a further 30 minutes.

Butter and flour a large deep loaf tin, about 19cm long. Lightly flour the work surface, roll the dough into a rectangle 2cm thick that measures (from left to right) slightly less than the length of the tin; roll it up tightly and place seam-side down in the tin. Cover with a tea towel and leave until increased in size by half.

Heat the oven to at least 220C/200C fab/425F/Gas 7, thouogh if you can get it 20C hotter even better. Steam the oven if you like , dust flour over the dough with a small fine sieve or tea-strainer, slash the loaf down the centre about 1cm deep with a sharp blade or sharp serrated knife, and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 200C/fan 180C/390F/Gas 6, and bake for a further 20-25 minutes until the crust is the colour you like.

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Banana Blondie

These blondies are delightful, the white version of brownies, using white chocolate. They are moist, soft, tender, with a velvety texture from the melted white chocolate in the batter. I have reduced the sugar rather drastically, as the bananas and white chocolate are already sweet! On top of that, I have replaced the brazil nut toffee with chocolate chips, as suggested by the author. Originally, the recipe has given the instructions on how to make the brazil nut toffee, which is broken into pieces and added into the batter, but the author has mentioned that these can be substituted with chocolate chips instead, and I have opted for this easy way!

Chunky bananas and chocolate chips in a moist velvety white chocolate blondie.

The recipe below is the adaptation for using chocolate chips instead of brazil nut toffee. To make the brazil nut toffee, please refer to the original recipe here.

Banana Blondie
(adapted from "Short & Sweet", Dan Lepard)
225gm caster sugar (I use 100gm)
100gm dark chocolate chips
oil for the tray
100gm unsalted butter
200gm white chocolate
1 egg
2 bananas, peeled and chopped (about 200-250gm total)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
225gm plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with foil and heat the oven to 190C/170C fan/375F/gas 5. Heat the butter with the white chocolate in a pan over a low heat until melted then scrape into a bowl, add the sugar and beat with the egg, bananas and vanilla until smooth. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold through the butter mixture with the chocolate chips. Spoon into the tin and bake for 35 minutes until "wobbly" set and golden on top. Leave till stone cold before slicing.

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Deli Bread

I'm always on the lookout for good sandwich bread, and I have a few favourites ; Briarpatch Herb Bread, Golden Sandwich Bread, Sour Cream Sandwich Bread, Sister Jennie's Potato Bread, and there are a few more! They are all so different from one another, but they are all good!

When I saw this recipe Deli Bread, I know that it was just a matter of time before I try it. The first thing that attracted me to this bread is the caramelized onions. I love caramelized onions. And this bread uses a small amount of mashed potatoes and some caraway seeds. According to Dan Lepard, this is Saturday-night, Sunday-morning bread, as the dough is made the day before, keep refrigerated overnight, shape and bake the next day.  And chilling the dough overnight helps to develop a stronger flavour to the crumb. (for me, it is a Sunday-night, Monday-night bread, as we had it on a Monday-night, a sandwich-dinner).

Firstly, prepare the mashed potatoes by first boiling some potatoes in a small saucepan. I used Russet potatoes which I peeled the skins off, and while waiting for the potatoes to soften, I cooked the sliced onions until golden which takes about 15-20 minutes, pour the onions onto a bowl and let cool. By the time the onions are done cooking, the potatoes are already tender. Drain the potatoes and mashed it in a small bowl with a fork. I boiled only a third of a Russet potato and it yield about 75gm, so I used all of it (recipe uses about 50gm). 

While waiting for the onions and potatoes to cool, prepare the yeast starter by mixing the yeast with 50ml of warm water and 2 teaspoons of bread flour, and leave for 30 minutes. Combine all ingredients together (refer to the recipe instruction), and mix to a dough. 

The only changes I made was to reduce the salt to only 1 teaspoon which works out fine for me. 

Place the dough into a greased bowl, keep covered, overnight in the refrigerator.
The next morning, the dough has risen to almost double in size.
Turn it out onto a lightly oiled surface, knead lightly and flatten to a rectangle the length of the loaf pan. I've used a 9"x5" Pullman loaf pan, without the cover. Roll the dough up tightly like a swiss-roll and place in the greased loaf pan, seam-side down. (The baked bread did not rise as high as the Pullman loaf pan, so next time, I'll just use a regular loaf pan instead).
Cover with greased cling wrap and let rise till size increased by half, about 2-3 hours.
Just before baking, slash down the centre of the loaf.

Bake in a preheated oven at 220C for 35 minutes, reduce temperature to 160C and continue to bake for another 10 minutes. I tent the top with foil during the last 15 minutes of baking as it was already brown. I placed the pan on the third lower rack of the oven. 

As soon as bread is done, remove it from the pan and let cool on wire rack.

I like the texture of the crumbs. Smells really nice while the bread is baking, from the caramelized onions. The caraway seeds gives a lovely flavour and taste when you bite into it. My kids thought that I have used mint leaves as it has a light minty taste to it. The mashed potatoes provides the moistness and softness of the loaf. 

This is such a lovely bread for sandwiches. It has the right crumb texture as a good sandwich bread should be; moist, soft with firm crumbs.

Deli Bread
(adapted from "Short & Sweet", Dan Lepard, or from here)
2 teaspoons fast action yeast
200ml warm water
325gm strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
150gm onion, thinly sliced
50ml sunflower oil
about 50gm mashed potato
75gm rye flour (I use dark rye flour)
1-1/2 tsp fine salt (I use 1 tsp)
2-1/2 tsps caraway seeds
oil for kneading and preparing the tin

Mix the yeast with 50ml of the warm water and 2 teaspoons of the white flour, stir well and leave for 30 minutes. Place the onion and oil in a pan and cook on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring well. As soon as it's golden, pour into a bowl and cool. Combine the onions and oil, potato and remaining 150ml water with the yeasty mixture, then pour this into a bowl with the rest of the white flour and the remaining dry ingredients, mix to a dough and leave, covered, for 10 minutes. Finally, knead the dough once for 10 seconds, return to the bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight for about 12 hours.

The next morning, knead the dough lightly again and flatten on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 20cm x 15cm, then roll it up tightly like a scroll. Oil and flour a loaf tin, and drop the dough seam-side down into the tin. Cover and leave for 2-3 hours or until increased in size by half. Heat the oven to 220C/200C fan/425F/Gas 7. Flour the top of the dough and cut a slash down the centre, bake for 35 minutes, then lower the heat to 180C/160C fan/350F/Gas 4 and bake a further 10 minutes. Remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

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Sour Cream Sandwich Bread

If you are looking for a sandwich bread that has soft moist tender crumb and golden crust, this is one bread that you should try. This lovely recipe is from Dan Lepard, which you can get from guardian.com, here. According to Dan Lepard, the fat content in the sour cream is what gives the crust its tenderness, so don't be tempted by any low fat substitutes. This bread has incredible oven spring, so give this loaf plenty of headroom when you put the loaf in the oven to bake.

Just as he says, this bread rose really high during the first 15 minutes of baking! After about 30 minutes of baking, I tent the top with foil as it is beginning to brown before the cake is done baking. When I remove the loaf right after baking, I can feel the softness of the loaf! 

This is one outstanding loaf. The crumbs are soft, moist and tastes really good. I ate most of the slices with a generous spread of cold salted butter (my favourite way of eating white soft breads), with mugs of hot coffee, really good. And we had a few slices made into sandwich with mashed egg filling, and it makes such a good sandwich bread. A definite keeper recipe! It is now one of my favourite bread! 

This bread is really easy to make. There's not much kneading at all, the only thing is, to let the dough rest for about 10 minutes after a brief kneading and folding, and this is repeated two more times. The only changes I made was to use only 1 teaspoon of salt instead of 2 teaspoons, and the light saltiness is just right for us.

Lovely moist, soft, tender crumbs.

I got the recipe from Dan Lepard's book "Short & Sweet" a fabulous book that I've bought from last December's book sale. You can get the recipe from guardian's website, here. I highly encourage you to make this bread, you would be glad you did!

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