Tortano, picnic bread of the year!

Ha! As I told you in my last post; it is a summer filled with picnics in the park for us. And I love to share what is the best picnic bread for us this year: the tortano.

Soft, moist, delicious and filled with what ever suits your taste of the moment. It is a bread made with normal flour and durum flour, which makes it rise perfectly. You can fill it up with what ever you have left over in your pantry or in your fridge, so budget wise it is a real topper. I found the recipe for the tortano in: "One more slice." by Leila Lindholm.

I think this bread will make it through the summer into the next seasons, because it is an easy bread to make with a healthy filling and it is toddler proof. Miss E. eats it to the last crumb, filling and all, because it is bread and she loves bread!

This tortano I filled with mozzarella, roasted courgette, red paprika, basil and sun dried tomatos on oil.

What has been your favorite picnic recipe this year?

To the mill

Last weekend there were the Molendagen (Mill- days) when you can visit some of the most beautiful monumental mills in the Netherlands. We were touring and just stumbled upon this beautiful mill on the outskirts of our town. In which the little city I live in is great: we have at least three working mills in and around this city. 

The one that lies mid-town, grinds biological grown spelt that grows in a city nearby. So this is a very honest local product. And I just love the taste of spelt. 

The view of the surrounding hills was spectacular. We visited this mill and got a beautiful tour.

And then back home there were brown spelt-buns to be made of course!

Ingredients:
250 gr whole grain spelt flour
250 gr all purpose flour
8-10 gr dry yeast
20 gr butter
10 gr salt
275 ml milk

I just love the view of those two different kinds of flour in that bowl!

I let the yeast soak in a bit of the milk for 10 minutes, then I made a starter with the yeast and warm milk by mixing it in with most of the flour, I let it rise for 30 minutes, then mixed the rest of the flour, salt and softened butter and kneaded again. I let it rise till it doubled in proportion. Punched it flat, made buns and let them rise till they got 1 1/2 to 2 times bigger. Then I baked the buns in the oven at 230 C for about 30 minutes.

Bon appetite! Hope you had a lovely weekend as well!

Chocolate Bread

The days are still dark, and with that my mood tends to darken a little as well. Strange enough one of the most potent things to lighten up a lot can be found in something utterly dark and rich and tasty: Chocolate bread!
It is a bread and not a cake, so I can fool myself in good conscious when I feel a frown coming up, thinking about the past holidays and being nice for my figure. This surely is the answer for me.
(Although I must admit I haven't found a nice savory topping, so I tend to dress it with strawberries, jams, lemon curd etc.)

This is what you need:

320 ml lukewarm milk or 320 ml lukewarm water
2 fat tsp of honey
7 gr active dry yeast
500 gr white flour
50 gr cacao powder, pure cacao, (like for example Droste,) non-sweetened!
50 gr sugar
50 gr of butter
a pinch of salt (about 10 gr)

This is how you make it:
Take a big bowl and pour in the milk or water, add the honey and stir a few times to blend it in. Then add your yeast and let it all rest for about 10 minutes or so until your yeast has turned into foam.
Mix all the other ingredients into that same bowl and start kneading. Knead for about 10 minutes; the dough will be smooth and elastic, and sticky and moist.
Turn it into a ball and let it rest in the bowl, covered with a clean kitchen towel or a piece of cling film, in a nice warm place, free from drafts, for 1.5 hour.
Take a baking tin grease it in with a bit of butter and dust it with flour.
Your dough should have about doubled in size. Now punch the dough down. And knead it for 2 more minutes. Shape it in your desired form and put it in the baking tin.
Cover the tin with the towel / cling film and let it rest for another 40 minutes in the same warm spot. When the dough has risen as desired, put the tin into a preheated oven for 30 minutes at 180 C.

Your bread should sound hollow when padded on the bottom, another way to check if it is ready is:

check with a knitting needle or sate pin to see if everything is done, if nothing sticks to the needle when you remove it, your bread will be fine!

If you have an idea what kind of savory topping would be a good idea, please share it with me, I'll sure give it a try!

Last notes:

Now I love to make my breads, (chocolate, white or brown,) with honey to start the yeast because I love the taste the honey gives the bread. You can vary with different kinds of honey, they all will have a direct impact on the flavor and thus the character of the bread. At this moment I have a nice soft linden blossom honey, but this bread also tastes great with the rich end deep taste of buttery sunflower honey, two very different tastes. 

But if you don't like the taste honey so much, use only the 50 gr of sugar in your lukewarm water or milk instead, that will also do the trick.

I also must confess I prefer to make this bread with milk instead of water, it gives a creamy and softer taste.

You can freeze the bread, or half a loaf easily in your freezer, would there be any left.

Gingerbread

I made this amazing gingerbread.
What's so amazing about it, is the taste and the no fuss just do it mentality of the recipe, it was so easy to make!

So this is what you need: 

• 500 grams (deep dark) caster sugar
• 2 cups of water
• 1 tbs mixed spice
• 1 egg
• 2 tbs honey
• 500 grams cake flour (or self rising flour or a combination of both)

And this is what you do: 

You mix all ingredients in a bowl until stirred and blended nicely and then you grease and flour a baking tin. Put your mix in the tin and put it in a preheated oven, 1 hour at 175 C, will do. 

If you decide to make 2 breads, like I did , 50 minutes instead of one hour will be fine. 

(But do check with a knitting needle or sate pin to see if everything is done, if the batter doesn't stick to needle when you remove it, your cake will be fine!)

Last tip: If you like to keep your cake fresh and crispy for a longer period of time, you can freeze it. (But first cut  it into some nice slices.)

Bon appetit and tell me what you think!

Banana Bread

It was time to bake and it was time to bake something nice for lunch, or coffee, or breakfast, or..... well any excuse was just fine with me!

Three ripe bananas were staring at me from the kitchen desk and so it came to be Banana Bread. 

I found this recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks: 

Apples for Jam; recipes for life by Tessa Kiros

I really love this recipe, it's one of my favorites. Banana bread travels with me on picnics and to friends. I love to sprinkle poppy seeds on top; somehow the dough rises and bakes and makes the poppy seeds form a bow tie. 

You can find lots of good banana bread recipes on the net, like this one.

So give it a try (if you haven't all ready) and tell me what you think!