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Fresh from the Oven: White Tin Loaf (or not)

This month's Fresh from the Oven challenge was for a white tinned loaf from the lovely Dan Lepard (The Handmade Loaf).  Yet another FFTO challenge that I'd had my eye on for a while, but hadn't gotten around to baking!

This one was SO GOOD when I baked it last week, that I made it again today.   It's amazing.  So soft, so buttery, so sweet.   It's like cake - but a cake that you can make into a sandwich.

So imagine my devastation when today, when I came to write my blog post about my new favourite bread recipe, and found out that I'd baked the wrong bl**dy recipe.   There are two simple white loaves with milk in them in Dan's book.  The one we were SUPPOSED to bake was the Quick White Loaf on page 63.   I baked the Simple Milk Loaf on page 46.  Gutted.

The two are quite similar - the one I baked uses 100% milk as it's hydration, (instead of part water, part milk), and has butter and syrup in it.  It's dead easy to make, but has a long-ish fermenting period - so I stayed in today and baked it along side a plain white sourdough.

So here I am, on the eve of the Fresh from the Oven challenge deadline, with the wrong loaf.   To top it all off, today's sourdough became really vigorous during the final two hours of rising, and blew up and out of my new cane proving basket - which is all yucky and sticky now.  Oh, and because of the rain, the TV isn't picking up ITV, so I can't even watch the XFactor results.  I'm off to go sulk now.

Here's a photo of the milk loaf though - it's wonderful:

Can I eat dried yeast straight out of the jar?

To the person who came to my blog by searching for "Can I eat dried yeast straight out of the jar?" Um.... no. Yuck.

Sweetcorn Relish

BBQ season is over now, but I still had a glut of sweetcorn from my vegbox.  Luckily, this stuff keeps for a while in the fridge, so I'll serve it with sausages or fishcakes on a week night.  Here's this lovely corn relish recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine.

BBC Good Food Masterchef Live at Kensington Olympia

Hot diggidy!  Another big huge food exhibition.  And once again I blagged free tickets from work to go!  (Thanks, Nora!) 

This time it was the BBC Good Food Masterchef Live show at Kensington Olympia in London.  I couldn't believe my eyes when we walked through the entrance - that place is enormous! We didn't even know where to begin!  (Certainly not at the coat-check with the 20 minute long queue!)  There were rows upon rows of booths from various producers and food companies.  Michelin starred restaurants offering samples of their food.  Theatres, masterclasses, tastings, and a Japanese food pavilion.  (Heaven!)  

Me being a Canadian girl and all, I was a little overwhelmed with the ridiculous crowds.  It was a bit like being on the Victoria Line during rush hour, but with no one knowing where they're going.  Hoards of middle-class foodies trying to keep hold of their English civility while being crushed in a crowd, grabbing samples of organic Wiltshire smoked cheese and brightly decorated cupcakes.  There wasn't enough room to bring a cat, let alone swing one.  I kept having to find empty corners to stand in and breathe. 

 But the excitement of it all more than made up for it!  I saw James Martin in the flesh. John Torode, THE John Torode was right beside me!  Harumi Kurihara was cooking before my very eyes!  We ate the best Udon noodles outside of Japan at the Oishii pavilion. We met loads of lovely people, and ate loads of lovely food.  We bought bottles of oil, fresh buffalo mozzarella, hot sauces, coffee beans....

There was an overwhelming amount of ethical organic blah-dee-blah going on.  I'm as in to this as anyone else right now, but one company really impressed me as we were walking around: The Coffee Fairy.  These lovely girls sell coffee beans direct from farmers in a town in Nicaragua, where the founder spent time teaching English.  You can sign up for a coffee subscription, and all the money goes towards helping schools in the area.  They haven't been around for very long, but they've already raised enough money to buy all new desks, and re-do the toilets in the school. 

This really got me excited!  I've never been a fan of fair-trade.  Companies like Sainsbury's and Tesco make a big deal out of fair-trade because they know they can pull on our heart strings and make us spend more money.  And maybe the farmers do get a better deal.  But the supermarket sure isn't making any sacrifices!  They've got the same big profit margin on the fair-trade coffee as they do on the cheapo stuff.  (Maybe bigger).  The responsibility is left to the consumer alone to pay more.

So I loved this idea. Martina Gruppo imports the beans direct from the farmers, and sells it in London at a fair price.  Apparently the stuff is great.  I wouldn't know - I'm a tea girl.  But the sample I tried was pretty drinkable, even for a coffee-phobe like me.

The Oishii Japan pavilion was fantastic.  It was Harumi Kurihara (the Japanese Martha Stewart) and her entourage of about 30 chefs and tourism commission people from Japan.  We bought a bowl of Udon noodles to share, that brought back great memories of our honeymoon in Japan.  The Husband even ordered in Japanese, much to their squealing delight!   

I missed the best bit of the whole day though.... lovely Nora from work represented the Good Food Channel in the Invention Test!  She'll be blogging about it soon, so I'll stick a link up of her successful salmon and Hollandaise sauce, which Greg Wallace declared good.  Go Nora!

 

Traditional Cornish Pasties

I remember Cornish Pasties from my childhood being really, really good things.  They were one of the naughty things I was allowed to eat when we came over to England on holiday, along with scotch eggs and sausage rolls.  But since moving here, they are no longer something that tempts me. 

I think it's because of that rubbish "Cornish Pasty Shop" place that's popped up everywhere lately. One of the boys from work and I normally end up on the same train back home after a night of post-work revelry.  And despite the fact that he spent most of his childhood in Cornwall, he still *insists* on going to this disastrous excuse of a fast-food counter at the end of a bender.  A couple of times I've been desperate enough to participate - and always regret it.  For three pounds, you too can buy a nasty, dry piece of pastry with some questionable chunks of cheap meat and a vegetable or two stuffed meagerly inside.

Real Cornish Pasties aren't like that.  To remind myself of how good they once were, The Husband and I cooked up a batch of these little beauties.  Using organic veg, a small amount of organic beef, and hand made pastry, we created some pasties that put the "Cornish Pasty Shop" to shame. 

Traditional Cornish Pasties

• 8oz flour
• 4 oz butter
• iced water
• 3/4 lb stewing steak, cubed
• 2 large potatoes, cubed
• 1 turnip or sweded, cubed
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 onion, chopped
• freshly ground salt and pepper

Place the flour with a pinch of a salt in a bowl.  Rub the butter into the flour.  Use a very small amount of iced water to help mix the dough into a ball. Place the ball into the fridge and chill until ready to use.

Place the steak, potatoes, turnip and onion in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. 

Divide the pastry into 6 balls and, on a floured work surface, roll each out into a round.  Sprinkle the round with flour, and place a mound of mixture on each.

Seal the pasties by damping the entire circumference of the pastry circle with water and the pull both sides of the pasty to meet the top.  (I needed two people to complete this step - thank goodness for The Husband!  He actually ended up rescuing me and doing all the shaping!)

Press together where the sides meet, and crimp the pastry all along the half moon shape.  Apparently the wives of the tin miners made the pasties into this shape to fit into their lunch boxes!

Coat the pasties with flour on the worksurface, and place the pasty on a well greased baking tray.

Bake in the oven at 190° for 10-15 minutes, then turn the oven down to about 180°, and bake for another 45 minutes to allow the meat and veg to cook.

These are so easy to make, and delicious straight out of the oven!  I might pack a few in a lunchbox the next time I go for an after work drinking session. 

Back at Panary this week

Right now, I'm sitting in a lovely B&B in Shaftesbury, Dorset.  In the morning, I'll be starting my three day course at Panary, Paul Merry's bread school.  After my apprentice day in August, I've been itching to get back here and learn more! more! more! about professional bread baking. 

The B&B so far is fantastic... I'm looking so forward to spending three days away from work, by myself (miss the husband and cat terribly though), with three days of non-stop bread madness, and three nights of quiet, with just me and the laptop.

I'm a bit worried about dinner though.  What's worse - eating by yourself in a pub? (shudder)  Or just grabbing a cold egg and cress sandwich from the fridge in Esso? (cringe)  Can you tell I don't spend a lot of time alone?  

I'm planning to really stretch myself over the next few days though.  I'm going to tackle the two bakery items I fear: brioche and croissants.  I'm also going to try to bake in percentages off the top of my head, like Paul does.  Or divide dough into twenty four identical rolls without weighing.  Or shape 16 loaves into rounds at the same time.  (I don't actually know if he can do that.  I bet he can.)

Off to bed.... more tomorrow night.