Quiche au saumon

A very good (french) friend of mine was leaving town on a business trip and presented me with some of the food from her fridge, including some delicious looking smoked salmon. So, I couldn't just eat it, but instead decided to make a quiche out of it.

I have a fool-proof french recipe for flaky shortcrutst pastry, which is definitely as easy as buying it ready made but a thousand times more tasty.

So, I added blanched asparagus, chopped capers and dill to the mix and here is the result! Saturday night quiche!

Chocolate brownies

Chocolate brownies are a signature bake of one of my patisserie heroes, Gerhard Jenne. I met Gerhard at a party, for which he had done the catering,  many years ago. The center piece was a cake that, I had assumed, had been covered with a brown velvet cloth. It was only when it came to be served that one realised that the rippled brown velvet was the cake. I can still remember that it tasted of german spices so reminiscent of Christmas markets, proving that it tasted as good as it looked. You can see an image of a very similar cake here on the Pinterest page of Jenne's patisserie: Konditor and Cook.
Gerhard was extremely down to earth and personable at the party and he invited me to come and see his shop anytime I was in the area. Circumstances prevented me but a few years later was surprised to find it on the corner of the street which houses the London home of the company I work for. After that not a meeting went by without a bag of chocolate brownies.

So, it appears that there are two types of chocolate brownie: cakey or fudgy. The Konditor and Cook ones are definitely fudgy and these are the type I prefer. I love the crumbly flaky crust on top of the soft, creamy interior. There are as many different variations on the recipe as there are cooks some using a melted chocolate base and some cocoa powder. My preferred method is to add cocoa powder and the other ingredients for the brownie to melted butter and then to add chunks of chocolate and pecan nuts to add some structure and crunch. I love using a bitter cocoa and a sweet milk chocolate to create a real contrast in chocolate flavours. Living in Switzerland there is a lot of choice for chocolate but my favourite for brownies is Cailler, Cuisine Chocolate au Lait. You can vary the recipe with chocolate and nuts of your choice, for example white chocolate and pistachio. As long as you use cocoa, they are still brownies.

Here are some pictures of my latest batch which my colleagues enjoyed this week.

One a penny, two a penny ...

As, (officially) a Brit living abroad, Easter gets you thinking about Hot Cross Buns. Although I managed to find a french translation for them (brioche saint), these do remain almost unknown outside the English-speaking (post 1776) world.

The Hot Cross Bun was first mentioned in writing in the UK only a few years before this (1733: 'Good Friday comes this Months, the old woman runs, With one or two a Penny hot cross Bunns', according to the OED.) However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they date at least to Anglo-Saxon times and are possibly connected with the goddess Eostre, from whose name Easter is derived. Some people have linked the design to the moon, as the main festival of Eostre, as well as Easter, was linked to the phases of the moon: the cross would then represent the four phases of the moon. 

So, here are my Hot Cross Buns: my first ones made ever, and a delight since I left England about 7 years ago! I can attest that my non-English colleagues at work devoured them with enthusiasm! 

For those Hot Cross Bun novices, these contain  raisins, currants and sultanas as well as cloves and orange zest. I am not going to post the recipe as there are many available online and actually, the one I used was SO good, I don't feel like sharing it! You can find it yourself!

Happy Easter to all of you, or Schöni Ostara as they say here in Zürich! I also discovered another delicacy for Easter from this neck of the woods which I will post a picture of soon!

Brown Bread in the Ring

Just a couple of pics of my first attempt at a brown loaf! I must say it tastes delicious!!

Success at last (I think!)

So, the next chapter in my search for a recipe for soft baps. After the disappointment of the last ones, I did a google search for 'soft white baps / rolls' and ended up coming across a recipe by Dan Lepard from the UK's Guardian newspaper. I also found the same recipe repeated on a food blog by a British expat, who was missing soft white baps while living abroad. I won't repeat the recipe here as it's available on at least two other websites. but will tell you about my experiences and, of course, post pictures.
It is a very long and convoluted recipe which, like all bread, involves a fair share of waiting around doing nothing, but again, if you are having a quiet day at home, it would be easy to plan them into your day. There were two things which were a bit different from all the other bread recipes I had seen, in that you started off by making a sponge, to which after three hours proving, you add the rest of the ingredients to make the dough, and, apart from 30 seconds of brief action, there is no kneading!
The dough itself was very wet during the proving and kneading stages which was a little off-putting, but the blogger mentioned this and so I didn't lose heart.
The recipe was supposed to make 9 rolls and called for about 700g of flour, which seemed a bit of a waste if it didn't turn out. Also, I couldn't manage to eat 9 rolls on my own in a week without putting on serious amounts of weight, so I halved the recipe and made 6 small rolls. At least, I thought they would be small: at the final proving stage they grew into monsters and ended up joining together as batch rolls.
Once in the oven, they went a beautiful golden brown colour and I realised that I had forgotten to compensate for my rather hot fan oven. So, I watched them like a hawk and after 20 minutes they looked OK so I took them out.
My initial reaction was one of disappointment. The top of the rolls was very hard and crusty. However, the recipe said I should let them cool completely on the baking sheet. I also covered them with a cloth since, I had heard that that helped to make rolls soften as they were cooling. Halfway through the cooling process, I couldn't resist, so I peeked under the cloth and poked one again and ... deep breath ... they were soft! I picked one up and even though it was still warm, it felt soft and light, just like a proper soft bap. Success at last!

Sponge ingredients: flour, water, cornflour and fresh yeast

Spong before rising. It grew to twice the size

Ingredients for the dough: water, milk, flour, butter, sugar, cornflour, salt

Finished buns before final prove

Batch rolls after final prove

Et voilà!

Baps (Part three)

So the baps turned out to be really nice  bread rolls, but not the light and fluffy things I had anticipated. They would make great burger buns or sandwhich buns but they were not what I wanted. However, I immediately googled 'light and fluffy baps' and found something very promising. Watch this space for Baps (Part four). 

Baps (part two)

Before and after cooking pictures of the baps. I will post tasting notes later!

Some of my best friends use cups

Let me start out by saying that I have nothing against Americans, but the thing I hate more than anything else in baking are recipes that use cups, teaspoons and tablespoons, instead of units of weight. I have no problem with pounds and ounces even if I prefer the metric system, but recipes written in cups drive me nuts. The main reason for this, is that they are so unpredictable. Even with a set of standard measures, it's quite difficult to make sure that you are using exactly the amount called for in the recipe and also to replicate the volume every time, so that recipes that work once can turn out a mess next time. And scraping the flour off the top of the cup to make sure it's level makes such a mess!

The internet, whilst being an amazing source of recipes, is full of cups! Cups, cups, cups everywhere I look which frankly drives me nuts!!!

I am sure there are many people out there who cope quite happily with cups and maybe I should practise using them a little more, but I'm sorry, I find recipes with weights far more easy to work with and much more predictable.

Rant over, 'nuff said!

I'll leave you with a picture of a bread roll I made last night, using a recipe written in grams.

Panis quotidianus

Bread is seen as one of the ultimate challenges for the amateur cook. It's something that we take for granted, but forms so central a part of our daily diet that even the slightest change can cause consternation. It is no accident that Jesus used it as a metaphor for food and that, in English at least, the word is a synonym for money, that other essential for sustenance. When I was living in Tuscany, I discovered that the local bread was made without salt and, to my palate brought up on salted English loaves, was simply unpalatable. Thankfully, someone had given me a Panasonic breadmaker a few years before, with which we were able to make delicious English bloomers!

Recently, I have started baking bread without the benefit of a machine which, unfortunately, takes a lot longer but is delicious. You can make good bread dough in a mixer with a dough hook very quickly, but there is a lot of waiting around for the dough to rise. But if you plan a morning or evening around it, you can have delicious, freshly baked bread on a daily basis.

I started with a recipe for a basic white loaf which is a good one to begin with and to learn the techniques before moving onto experiment with different flours and ingredients.

The recipe I use has five ingredients:

300ml of tepid water
5g of dried yeast
560g of white flour
10g of sea salt
20ml of oil

Bread ingredients

You can use any oil. The original recipe used rapeseed oil, but I prefer to use extra virgin olive oil.

Start with the yeast. Dissolve it in the water. If the water is of the right temperature it should feel neutral when you put your hand in it. Leave it for ten minutes to start working and you should be left with a frothy liquid. If not, then the yeast hasn't worked and you should throw it away and start again.

The bubbles show that the yeast has started working

Then mix the salt in with the flour. You want to try and keep the salt away from direct contact with the yeast as it will retard it. Then add the oil and the yeast mixture and work it with your hands into a dough.

Mix the salt with the flour to keep it away from the yeast

Next comes the kneading. This can be done in a mixer with a dough hook in which case it is ready when it clings to the dough hook and the bowl is clean. However, I think that anyone who is serious about making bread should do it by hand a few times to get a feeling for the process. After a few minutes of kneading the quality of the dough changes and the surface becomes soft and slightly silky. Keep going for about 10 minutes and you will be left with a tight soft ball which bounces back when pressed with a finger.

Dough after kneading

Transfer the dough to a clean bowl which has been rubbed with olive oil and wrap tightly with clingfilm. Then put it in a warm place for about an hour to prove. This is the process by which the yeast will make the dough grow to about twice the size it was before. I warm the oven to the lowest temperature, (50 degrees) and then turn it off and leave the bowl inside.

Before ...

... and after one hour

When it has proved, remove the dough from the bowl and hit it with your hand. All the air will leave and it will return to its original size, but don't worry, this is correct. The dough will feel different again now though: much looser and more pliable.

Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a loaf tin, which has been rubbed with oil. Cover it again, and place in a warm place for another hour. During this time it will double in size again, so make sure that there is room beneath the cover for this to happen. Instead of clingfilm, I use a plastic bag for this to ensure that the dough can rise out of the top of the tin.








































Heat the oven to 220 degrees and place a backing tray at the bottom. When the loaf has risen, cut the top with a sharp knife once or twice, creating slashes. Then sprinkle with flour and place in the oven. Before you shut the oven door, take a glass of cold water and through it into the baking tray at the bottom of the oven. This will create steam which produces a nice crust on the bread.

After 30 minutes, remove the loaf from the oven. Knock the bottom of the tin. If it sounds hollow, then the loaf is cooked.  Leave it in the tin for a few minutes to cool and then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool fully. And voilà, white bread!

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche part deux :)

Some people have been asking me about the title of the brioche post. It is the original version of the phrase often attributed to Marie Antoinette during the french revolution given in English as 'let them eat cake'.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!

I decided I wanted to try to make the french classic brioche. This is a kind of bread enriched with that french staple, butter. It seemed obvious to look for a Julia Child recipe and found the following, although I am not sure if it is authentic Julia since it was quoted on a variety of websites but was also in a YouTube video featuring Julia but where it was demonstrated by Nancy Silverton. Anyway, it worked a treat as you will see!

The recipe was in two halves, first a sponge base and then the dough for the brioche. For the sponge base:

1/3 cup of warm milk (100-110 degrees)
2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 egg
2 cups flour

Now, being European I have always avoided recipes involving cups, but this time I decided to brave it, noticing that my IKEA measuring jug was marked in cups as well as deciliters. So the method was to put the milk, yeast, egg and one cup of the flour into the bowl of your mixer and then mix using a spatula. You were then directed to cover the mixture with the rest of the flour and leave for 30-40 minutes. When you looked at it, the flour covering was supposed to be cracked showing that the yeast had worked. As you can see, this happened right on cue!

Next came the ingredients for the dough.

1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
6 oz butter at room temperature

So back to the method. You put the sugar, salt, eggs and one cup of the flour to the bowl and then mix using the dough hook on low for about 2 minutes until things start to come together. Then you add the rest of the flour and then mix on medium for 15 minutes. This is a bit of hard work for your mixer. You will need to stop occasionally and scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure that it mixes properly. When it is finished, the dough should stick to the hook and slap the sides of the bowl. This is an excellent description as it's exactly what you will see.

Now you need to add the butter to the dough. To do this, you need to make sure that the butter is the same consistency as the dough. Now the dough is sticky and wet and you can get the butter to this consistency by whacking it with a rolling pin or wrapping in cling film and rolling.

Keeping the mixer on low speed, add the butter a tablespoon at a time. It will look like it's not working and the butter will spread on the sides of the bowl, but keep faith as suddenly it will disappear into the dough. When all the butter has gone, return the mixer to medium for 5 minutes. When done you will be left with a dough that is a little wet and feels cool. So put it in a bowl and cover it with cling film.

You can now have a rest as the dough rises. You need to wait a grand total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours until the dough doubles in size, which as long as the milk was the right temperature at the beginning, it will.

When it has risen, put your fingers under dough to lift it out of the bowl and it will deflate. Don't worry, this is all part of the process. Then cover it with cling film again and then place the bowl in the fridge for 4-6 hours. During this time it will double in size again. I didn't say this was quick!

Now, take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into six equal portions. Roll each portion into a ball and arrange in a loaf tin in two rows, as in the picture.

And guess what? You now have to wait for another two hours for it to double in size.

Next, brush the tops of the balls with egg wash being careful that the sides are not touched. This can stop the dough from rising. Then cut a cross in the top of each ball with a pair of scissors! This is truly the classic technique. I was shocked but then saw this video of Michel Roux doing the same so obeyed.

So this now goes in an oven, preheated to 190 degrees C for 30 to 40 minutes and when you have finished, voilà! You will see that the balls blend into each other and form a very attractive shaped loaf.

Perfect with Nutella or jam for breakfast with coffee, or more traditionally, dipped into a bowl of hot chocolate!
As you can see, brioche takes a long time, but if you plan it correctly, the final stages can be done in the morning, facilitating a wonderful fresh cooked loaf for breakfast!