Student kitchens
Easy, delicious, healthy(ish) recipes that won’t own your budget.Archive for bread
Bread and butter pudding
Just because today was a crappy day, I feel the need to post about some real feel good food, classic, dependable, unfussy and fuzzy wuzzy. Bread and butter pudding is my saviour – since I bake my own bread, there’re always times when the bread is a little too dry but would taste simply lovely in blankets of eggy custard and sprinkled with cinnamon or vanilla sugar.
This time I had a slightly failed batch of buns (let’s not get into this so much as to say that I need to use some more common sense) to work with – they were barely risen, hard lumps, but I knew how to comfort myself. These look prettier than your average perfectly risen buns, because they kept their shape, but really, anything sort of slightly stale bread will do.
For those of you who already have a go-to recipe and what to know whether this one is any different: this is not a watery/liquidy pudding. It goes “glop glop” when serving rather than “squish squish.” It does not have chocolate, and personally I doubt that chocolate would improve things, or too many other over excited additions. Sorry, but this is a classic, okay? If you’re pregnant and have a craving, I would understand, but otherwise, try not to overwhelm the flavours.
Thanks goes to Laura at Hungry & Frozen for the original recipe, and delicious prose.
Bread and butter pudding
serves two
2-4 buns or enough thickly sliced bread to fill a small ovenprood dish about halfway. Don’t use that cottony soft supermarket sliced bread, it’s too thin and too soft – unless you like a soggy pudding.
25g softened butter
30g brown sugar
2 small eggs
1c milk (none of this low fat stuff, y’hear?!)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (best stuff you can find, or home made)
optional: extra sugar and cinnamon for dusting
Heat the milk and vanilla in a small saucepan until hot to the touch but not boiling. Layer buns or thikc slices of bread in a casserole dish or ovenproof fish. Beat butter and sugar together, then beat in eggs one at a time. Slowly whisk in the hot milk, and pour the mixture over the buns. Preheat the oven to 170C (330F) and let the pudding sit until the oven is up to temperature (about 10 minutes). Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes.
Adventures with brioche
For those of you who have ne’er wandered past your supermarket aisles for a loaf of bread (this was pretty much me a year ago…I know, shocking), brioche is a kind of bread – a bit confused perhaps, as it can taste like a muffin. Basically, it’s bread with extra butter, plus eggs and usually honey. Yes, that does make it delicious. Despite how much glee it would bring me to know that students made brioche, I have to warn that it is not the sort of thing you should attempt if you want to do much else the next few hours. However, like much baking, playing around with brioche is incredibly fun (not to mention rewarding on the tastebuds), and you’ll almost certainly be brought back to better times, where all you had to worry about was your play dough set being eaten by your siblings or what your Action Man would be battling next. 
Brioche is the base, and from there…your imagination is the limit. Braid it, turn it into scrolls, a roll filled with surprise fillings, or even just make the traditional Brioche à tête. I made up a batch of chocolate ganache and some cinnamon and sugar to create scroll shapes, surprise rolls, a scroll cluster, and chocolate croissant shapes. The great thing is you can freeze your shaped dough on a tray in the freezer, then transfer to a container once frozen, and you’ll have treats that you can pull out without most of the effort normally involved.
If you get them right, the whole process can give you guaranteed warm fuzzies. This is going to be a process, so roll your sleeves up!
Read the rest of this entry »
Sundried tomato and cheese bread
…It’s like having pesto IN your bread. With bread this flavoursome, you won’t need any dips or sauces, which is a great time and money saver. This bread is slightly adapted from the parmesan and sundried tomato loaf in Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes a Day (sigh…such a great book). If you’re a basil pesto fan, try fresh basil leaves in place of sundried tomatoes, or use basil pesto. Either way, you can imagine how amazing this smells – tangy yet salty, the perfect bread for a picnic if you dont want to take half-opened containers of pesto (ahem…which leak). The recipe below if enough for 3 large-ish loaves, or 4 littler ones, and thanks to the artisan bread technique, it’s easy to have the dough on hand for plenty more, with half the effort.
I have to admit I was tempted to try and make this healthier by adding wholemeal flour, but boy am I glad I didn’t (shhh). This was so heavenly soft, and without melting any butter either.
The crust is nice and crisp, which is so nice for bread that has a cheesy aroma.
Cheese and sundried tomato bread (based on the vermont cheddar bread in Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes a Day)
makes 3 large-ish loaves or 4 smaller ones
2 3/4 c water, at body temp.
1 Tbs salt
1 1/2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 Tbs yeast
6 1/2 c all purpose or high grade (bread) flour, plus lots more
1 c grated cheese (edam or a mild cheddar or similar)
1/4 c grated parmesan
sundried tomatoes, chopped
Mix first four ingredients in a large bowl, then add flour. Mix flour in without kneading, adding up to about a cup of extra flour if it doesn’t come away from the sides of the bowl at all when the dough is pushed up against the sides of the bowl. Add cheeses, then keep mixing until the dough is uniformly moist. Cover (not airtight), and leave somewhere that’s at least 21 degrees C (room temp), for 2-5 hours, until the dough is doubled in size and the surface of the dough is almost flat.
Divide the dough roughly into 3-4 equal size portions, and put each in a box except one and freeze for up to 2 weeks. Or you can refrigerate a portion if you’ll use it within the next 4 days, but I don’t recommend this as the dough sometimes ferments and tastes a bit yeasty if left for more than 2-3 days.
Using one of your portions, dust it with flour, as well as a board. Knead to incorporate it into a ball, stretching the surface of the dough and feeding it back into itself.
To make it in your loaf pan (thanks to Smitten Kitchen for posting the technique!): Stretch or roll out into a rectangle, and scatter with chopped sundried tomatoes. Roll the rectangle up, stretching and pulling the dough as much as you can without breaking it. Seal the edge with your fingers, and fold the top and bottom ends into the centre of the roll, ensuring the length is approximate to your loaf pan. Drop into a lightly greased metal loaf pan, preferably non stick.
To make it into a round loaf: Seal the bottom, and let the dough ball sit seam side down.
Let rest and rise at room temp. for 40 minutes (1 hour if you’re using defrosted dough). After 20 minutes of resting, preheat your oven to 230C or 450F, with a rack arranged in the centre and bottom. Put a small metal pan (roasting or brownie pan) on the bottom shelf, and a baking stone if you have one on the centre rack (if making a round loaf).
After resting, pop round loaf onto your baking stone or your loaf tin onto the centre rack, and quickly at the same time, add about a cup of water into the empty metal pan on the bottom shelf*. Close the oven door quickly, and let bake for approximately 30-35 minutes, rotating halfway for even browning. If the top of the loaf is already brown 15 minutes in, reduce the temperature to 180 or 160C or 350F. Take out when the top is a darkish golden brown, and sit the loaf on a rack to cool (or in the pan for a few minutes, then pop out onto the rack). Serve warm or cooled.
Note: I don’t recommend salty dips or pesto with this bread, as it’s already relatively salty. If you can’t bear to eat it plain, use unsalted basil butter or cream cheese or something similar.
*This method helps to make the crust nice and crisp, as does using a baking stone/pizza stone.
When using frozen dough: let defrost completely, preferably overnight, then knead on a floured board and continue from there.
Panzanella styles – crunchy bread salad
Another very summery day in the middle of spring – and this salad was perfect for it. Crunchy sweet carrot strips, sweet and slightly peppery radish chunks (that colour is so so pretty), and cooling sticks of cucumber – such a simple combination, and so well paired with fresh chunks of bread and a zingy yoghurt basil dressing. It was also properly filling – the bread was made using stoneground flour, so the goodness and fibre of wheatgerm was fully intact, and the fibre from the carrots and other veges kept me full for hours (although that could also have been due to the fact that I didn’t do much all day…anyway).
Did I mention it’s pretty? This was before I added pumpkin seeds (both ways tastes lovely though), which also went quite well with the flavour and texture of the other things. The loveliest thing about this was that it felt so nice to eat – here is an uncomplicated, flavoursome salad that is packed with goodness. It makes a pretty complete lunch with the yoghurt and seeds, and if you wanted to bulk it up even more, you could add any nuts (apart from peanuts…they’re a bit strong) you wanted. Salads are so easy to wash up after too! One bowl, a small cup for the dressing, one knife and a chopping board that just needs a rinse. The radishes were straight from the garden – and I recommend growing them yourself, they mature quickly and are so easy – you can plant them straight into the soil or into pots if you’re moving.
Ah, life’s good.
Refreshing bread salad
serves 1 for lunch/dinner or 2-3 as a side
2 half inch thick slices of very crusty fresh bread (eg. proper ciabatta or Artisan Bread in 5 master loaf)
3 radishes, chopped into little cubes
1/2 carrot, grated or julienned
3 inches off a telegraph cucumber, chopped or cut into strips
salt and pepper
dressing:
3-4Tbs all natural unsweetened yoghurt
1 Tbs best Olive oil or whatever the best oil you’ve got
4-5 basil leaves, torn up into teeny pieces
1 tsp or so white wine vinegar
salt and pepper
Mix the dressing all up roughly, it doesn’t have to be uniform. Toss other ingredients together in a large bowl and drizzle over dressing. Eeeaaasy. If you’re having guests or something, keep bread and veges and dressing separate until you’re ready to serve.
Easy and delicious spring onion focaccia bread
This dough is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (one of my favourite cookbooks), and I love it for how quick it takes to make, especially if you do the dough the night before or have some in your fridge. It’s also highly versatile – sprinkle some dried herbs on baking day, top with chopped garlic, rosemary, or even add some grated cheese. The possibilities are endless, and always delicious.
If you prefer your bread lighter and softer, with a little packet of flavour without fancy sauce or dips, this is perfect. The dough stores in the fridge for over a week – thus it’s absolutely great when you have people coming over the next day, as you’ll already have dough on hand, that will be flavoursome without needing to make other embellishments.
Spring Onion focaccia
makes enough dough for two 8″ breads, or one really large focaccia (but you can halve or double the recipe if you want lots of dough on hand throughout the week)
just under 1 1/2 c water at body temperature
3/4 Tbs granulated yeast (no need for breadmaker’s stuff)
1/2 Tbs sea salt (preferably the rock stuff)
1/2 Tbs raw sugar
1/8 c olive oil (or cooking oil), plus extra for greasing and brushing
3 1/4 c flour (any flour – I used stoneground organic flour)
spring onions, chopped (about 2 Tbs)
Mix first 5 ingredients, then add flour. Mix with a spoon without kneading, until a wet and loose dough forms, and the dough is uniformly moist. Cover (not airtight), and let rest at room temp (approx 21C) for 2 hours until the dough rises, collapses flattens at the top. Use now, or refrigerate and use over the next 12 days.
When it’s baking time, sprinkle some flour over dough and pull out half the dough. Dust a board, and quickly shape into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball slightly as you do so. Flatten to a 1/2″ (2cm) thick round. Grease a tart pan or baking tray, indent the dough several times with your finger, pushing in chopped spring onion. Brush top of dough with oil. Leave for 20 minutes, preheating your oven to 200C or 400F 10 minutes in.
Fill a roasting pan with about 1c water, and place in oven at the same time you put the dough in. Bake for about 20-25 minutes on the middle rack, until lightly golden. Cut and preferably serve warm (great with a soup, on its own, and for gatherings).
