Showing posts with label #BreadBakers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #BreadBakers. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Easy Apple Banana Bread #BreadBakers

Easy Apple Banana Bread is a wonderful transition from summer to fall, as our temperatures finally get cool enough to bake without cranking the air conditioner thermostat down to compensate.



You know when you are so fast asleep that the phone rings and you somehow incorporate it into your dream? That was me the other night. My sister called about 1 a.m. to ask if I could come over to stay with her girls because their father was being taken to the medical center for testing. The doctors suspected a blockage in one artery. Well, I didn’t wake up in the four rings it took the answering machine to do its thing so she had to call our mom to go. I felt terrible the next morning when I saw the phone blinking and realized that I had missed the call.

The next day, while he was still being tested, I was charged with picking the girls up from school, so I decided to bake an after school snack for them. There was a change of plans and I ended up not doing the school pick up but I can assure you that this easy apple banana bread makes an excellent after school snack! Or breakfast. Or midmorning coffee break.

In other good news, my brother-in-law is fine and he was released that day. I believe a stent may be in the cards but at least it’s not an emergency situation.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 ripe bananas, peeled
1/3 cup or 75g butter, melted and cooled, plus more for buttering the pan
1 egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large or 2 small apples
Option for decorating: a light sprinkling of powdered or confectioner’s sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Butter a loaf pan or line it with baking parchment.

Whisk your flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together in a mixing bowl and set it aside.

In another bowl, use a fork to mash your bananas until they are fairly smooth and pour in the melted butter.



Mix well with the fork until the butter is completely incorporated.

Add in the vanilla and egg and mix well again.



Peel and chop your apple/s finely. Add the apples to the banana bowl and stir well.



Fold the wet and dry ingredients together until just combined.



Pour the batter into your buttered loaf pan. You can sprinkle on a little extra cinnamon and sugar, if you'd like.



Bake in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes or until the loaf is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 10 minutes on a wire rack.



Run a knife around the edges and turn the apple banana loaf out on to the wire rack to cool completely.

Slice with a serrated bread knife to serve.



Enjoy!

This month my Bread Bakers group is celebrating fall fruit and vegetables with a plethora of breads, both quick and yeasted. Many thanks to our host, Pavani of Cook's Hideout, for her behind the scenes work.


BreadBakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.



Pin it!

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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Cinnamon Pumpkin Quick Bread #BreadBakers

Cinnamon Pumpkin Quick Bread is made with the muffin-method. Bowl of wet ingredients mixed quickly with the bowl of dry. The texture is light yet moist with just the right amount of sweetness. 



This month my Bread Baker group is doing one of two things. Jumping the gun, if you aren’t ready for pumpkin recipes yet. Or fulfilling your what-the-heck-took-so-long needs for pumpkin bread, if you’ve been waiting.

If you are in the former group, hey, pin them for later. If you are in the latter, you are most welcome. Either way, you are going to love this creative group of recipes. Many thanks to our host this month, Kylee of Kylee Cooks. Kylee is a fellow expat in reverse. She was born and raised in New Zealand but lives in the US now. I can completely relate to her regrets that her boys don't get to spend as much time with their grandmother as she did with hers. There are pluses and minuses to this expat life and missing family is a big downside.

You know what helps ease the pain though? Sweet pumpkin bread with cinnamon. This recipe has been adapted from one on the King Arthur website. I have no idea why they complicated their lives by using beaters for quick bread but my way is much easier and completely delicious.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
1/2 cup or 100g granulated sugar
1/2 cup, firmly packed, or 100g dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup or 200g canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup or 120ml vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/3 cup or 80ml water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To decorate:
2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon sugar mixed with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your loaf pan by rubbing the inside with a little oil or by lining it with baking parchment.

Use a large bowl to mix together your flour, sugars, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. My brown sugar tends to get lumpy. If you have the same problem, use the tines of a fork or even your hands to get rid of the lumps.

In another smaller mixing bowl, whisk together the canned pumpkin, oil, eggs, water and vanilla extract.


Pour your wet ingredients into your dry.

Fold until they are just mixed. There may still be a little flour showing.



Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle on the pumpkin seeds, then top them with the cinnamon sugar.



Bake in your preheated oven for about 60-70 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. For the last 20 minutes or so, cover the top loosely with foil.



Allow to cool completely in the pan before slicing.



Enjoy!

Check out all the lovely pumpkin or pumpkin spice breads we have for you today.

BreadBakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it!


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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Cheese Stuffed Peppadew Stuffed Buns #BreadBakers

Cheese stuffed Peppadew stuffed buns are fluffy with a savory surprise on the inside. They are super easy to make and would be a fun addition to your holiday meal or summer barbecue.


My neighborhood grocery store has a decent deli counter for such a small place. You can walk all the way around it, cheeses on one side, whole smoked turkey breasts and salami, etc. for slicing on another side, along with hot and cold prepared dishes sold by weight. My favorite side by far offers a colorful assortment of marinated stuff: olives, baby octopus, roasted artichoke hearts, lemons, anchovies and peppers, just to name a few.

Even the tasty Peppadews come in three versions, filled with Parmesan, feta or blue cheese. This month my Bread Bakers are creating delicious breads with peppers and it occurred to me that a festive Peppadew peeking from within a soft bun would be a very good idea. I was not wrong.

This recipe is adapted from one on the King Arthur website, meant to make 24 relatively quick yeasty dinner rolls.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon yeast, instant preferred
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup or 60ml warm water
1 cup or 240ml warm milk
3 to 3 1/2 cups or 375- 440g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil
12 cheese stuffed Peppadews

Method
Measure the yeast, butter and sugar into a large mixing bowl or into the bowl of your stand mixer. Add in the warm water and milk and set aside for 6 to 8 minutes or until you see foam forming in the bowl. If you don’t see the yeast foaming, throw the whole thing out and go and buy some new yeast.

Add the salt and 2 1/2 cups or 312g of the flour to the bowl and mix in well. It’s going to be quite wet still.



If you are using a stand mixer, switch over to the dough hook and add a tablespoon of flour at a time with the mixer running, until you have a soft dough. Otherwise, add it and mix in with a wooden spoon.

Knead with the machine or by hand until the dough is smooth and elastic. Make a ball with the dough and drizzle the olive oil into your bowl.

Put the dough ball back in and turn it around a couple of times to coat with oil. Cover the bowl with some cling film or a damp cloth and set in a warm place for 20 minutes.

Lay a couple of layers of paper towels out on a small plate and line the stuffed Peppadews up to drain, first cheese side down, then cheese side up. You don’t want to lose your cheese filling, just to get rid of most of the marinating oil.



Bonus: Use the marinating oil that’s left behind in your deli container as a salad dressing, mixed with a little lime or lemon juice.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and cut it into 12 equal pieces. You can, of course, eyeball this but I have a digital scale I love so I weigh the whole dough ball, then divide by 12 to figure out how big each piece should be and weigh the bits as I cut them off.

Roll your dough pieces into balls.

Use a rolling pin to roll each ball into a circle and place a stuffed Peppadew cheese side down on the circle.



Gather up the sides of the dough circle and pinch them together to enclose the pepper securely.



Put the bun pinched side down on your baking pan. Which means, that the Peppadew is cheese side up again inside the bun. I lined my baking pan with a silicone mat but you could also use baking parchment.

Continue rolling and filling and pinching until all 12 buns are done.



Cover the baking pan lightly with cling film and allow to rise at room temperature for about 20 minutes. (Assuming your room temperature isn’t too cold – if you are baking in the dead of winter and your house is cold, find a warm spot to leave them.)

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°F.

Bake the buns for about 20-25 minutes or until they are nicely risen and golden brown all over.



Remove from the oven and allow to cool. If you choose to serve these warm, keep in mind that the Peppadew and cheese will be very hot and might burn you as you bite into them.



Enjoy!

Many thanks to our host this month, Sue of Palatable Pastime. I know folks who grow their own peppers are enjoying an abundant crop this time of year so I’m sure they’ll welcome our creative recipes for using those peppers up. Check them out!

BreadBakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.


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Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Cider Honey Quick Loaf #BreadBakers

This rich cider honey quick loaf is naturally sweetened by the cider and the honey. It’s especially delicious toasted.


This month my Bread Bakers are creating sweet breads without refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. Our host Mayuri of Mayuri’s Jikoni limited us to natural sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, blackstrap molasses, dates, banana puree, coconut sugar, balsamic glaze, brown sugar syrup, real fruit jam made without any sugar, stevia or palm jaggery. Further, she said NO SUGAR - white, brown, demerara, turbinado, muscovado, etc- . to be used in the bake.

Trying to use what I have on hand, I decided that honey was the way to go. I’m in the Channel Islands right now so I am also fortunate to have ready access to alcohol, unlike at home in Dubai where one must have a license to purchase (and mine has expired.) The first thing we buy is some traditional English cider, often called hard cider in the United States. It's tart and dry with a little sweetness.

Ingredients
3 cups or 375g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons honey
12 oz or 355ml cider, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In another smaller bowl, add the honey to half of the melted butter.

Pour in the cider and mix well.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just mixed.



Pour half of the remaining melted butter into the loaf pan.



Spoon the batter into the pan, and pour the rest of the butter on top of the batter. Jersey butter comes by its color naturally, from the beta-carotene in the grass the cows eat.



Use a pastry brush to spread it around.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until top is golden brown and a toothpick/knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. If the top is browning too quickly, cover with foil and continue baking until done.



Cool for a few minutes in the pan and then turn the loaf out on to a wire rack to cool.

Slice and enjoy!



Check out all the wonderful naturally sweetened breads we have for you today! Many thanks to Mayuri of Mayuri’s Jikoni for hosting.
BreadBakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.



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Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Apricot Kolaches #BreadBakers

Kolaches are a Texas breakfast treat that can be either savory, think sausage and cheese or sweet, usually with a fruit filling. The filling in these apricot kolaches isn’t traditional but they are delicious. 

Houston has a homegrown doughnut chain called Shipley Do-Nuts, one location mere minutes from our house there. It’s a treat to go early in the morning and get a dozen of their hot glazed doughnuts, fresh out of the fryer. The place smells of sweet sugar and fresh coffee and since there’s no place to sit and eat, folks are lined up to place their orders to go. They even have a drive-through. This is Houston, after all. Everyone drives everywhere. And since it’s also Texas, Shipley's makes kolaches. My personal favorite is jalapeño sausage with cheese. Divine.

So why are kolaches typical in Texas? There are many towns and rural areas where folks from Czechoslovakia came to settle during the mid- to late 19th century. Along with their devotion to the Catholic Church, strong work ethic and love of polka music, they brought their kolache making tradition. If you are ever headed to Texas, make sure to check the events calendar for a Czech Fest. Taking place in several towns, the fun starts on Labor Day weekend with the biggest, Westfest. While many of the Czech fests include a kolache baking contest, they all have polka bands and you will be required drink cold beer and get up and dance. It’s a rule.

This month’s Bread Bakers challenge is to use stone fruit like cherries, peaches, nectarines, mangoes and the like. Problem is, except for mangoes, the stone fruit that is imported to Dubai never really smells or tastes of properly ripened summer fruit. Traditional fruit kolaches have a cooked fruit filling in a sweetened yeast dough so I could have made do. After all, every fruit is sweet if you cook it down with sugar. I decided to use canned apricot halves and leave them whole instead. Just because I think they are pretty that way.

The dough divides nicely into 18 pieces, but my can of apricots was short one half. No problem, I filled that final kolac (<that’s the singular) with some homemade preserves, in this case, fig. You could actually do the same with all of your kolaches if you can't be bothered to make filling.

This recipe calls for chilling the dough in the refrigerator overnight so start one day ahead of when you’d like to serve these kolaches. This is ideal since then they can be fresh baked for breakfast.

Ingredients for 18 kolaches
For the apricot filling:
1 can apricot halves (net wt. 410g, drained wt. 240g) in syrup
1/4 cup or sugar, or more to taste
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the dough:
1 cup or 245g sour cream
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup or 113g butter, melted and cooled, plus more for buttering the dough bowl
2 teaspoons instant yeast OR 1 packet active dry yeast
1/2 cup or 120ml lukewarm water
2 large eggs, at room temperature
4-5 cups or 510g strong white bread flour

For the crumb topping:
1/4 cup or 42g all-purpose flour
1/8 cup, firmly packed, or 25g brown sugar
1/8 cup or 25g granulated sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

To assemble the kolaches:
≈ 2 tablespoons fine semolina

Method
Take your eggs and sour cream out of the refrigerator and leave them to come to close to room temperature.

Drain the apricot halves and put the syrup in a small pot. Lay the apricots out on some paper towels to dry.

Cook the syrup with the sugar over a medium low heat until the liquid has reduced to about 1/3 cup. Add in the butter and salt and stir well. Add in the apricot halves and set aside to cool. Once cool, the syrup turns into a kind of jelly. Refrigerate the apricots and jelly when the dough rests overnight.



Put the yeast in a large mixing bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer. Add 1 tablespoon from the sugar for the dough and the warm water. Leave to proof for a few minutes.

Add the butter, sour cream, egg, sugar and salt into the mixing bowl. Beat until well combined.



Add in four cups or 385g of the bread flour and beat well. The dough will become quite thick but still very soft and sticky.

Use your bread hook to add in the last cup or 125g bread flour and knead for a few minutes. It's still going to be pretty soft and sticky but, fear not, it will be easy to handle once chilled.

Put the dough into a buttered bowl, cover with cling film and pop it in the refrigerator. Let it rest overnight.

When you are ready to bake the next morning, take the apricots and dough out of the refrigerator.

Cut the dough in half. Then cut each of those halves into three equal parts. Then divide the three parts into three more. This should give you 18 reasonably equal pieces of dough.



Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Roll the dough pieces into small balls and place them evenly spaced on the lined baking sheets.



Cover the balls lightly with cling film and set in a warm, draft-free place to rest for 10 minutes.

Use your fingers and thumbs to press out an indentation in the middle of each ball that’s large enough for your apricot halves.



Sprinkle a healthy pinch of fine semolina – perhaps a 1/4 teaspoon – into each indentation.



Add about 1/2-3/4 a teaspoon of the jellied apricot syrup into each as well. Tuck a half apricot in on top of the jelly.



Combine the all-purpose flour, sugars and butter in a food processor and pulse until crumbly to make the crumble topping.



Sprinkle the crumble liberally on top of the apricots. Set the pans in a warm, draft free place for about 30 minutes.



When the resting time is almost up, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Bake the kolaches in your preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until they are golden brown.

There's the fig preserves one, top right. 


Enjoy with a hot cup of coffee or tea. Polka music optional.



Many thanks to Mireille from The Schizo Chef for hosting Bread Bakers this month. Are you ready to get baking with stone fruit? We’ve got plenty of great recipes for you!

BreadBakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send Stacy an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.


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