more sourdough: the perfect bun

As I mentioned in my previous post, sourdough ‘discard’ makes delicious bakes in its own right. The sour tang of the dough leads to great pizzas, pancakes, crumpets, crackers and of course buns. Hot cross buns are a revelation with an added dollop of sourdough starter and cinnamon buns are just divine.

I can’t claim to have created my own recipe for sourdough hot cross buns as I stumbled across one by Jacqueline Bellefontaine that works just perfectly. You can either just use the discard as the raising agent – in which case you’ll need to allow a much longer rising time and the whole process will take a full 24 hours from start to finish – or you can add yeast (now it’s available again!) for delicious hot cross buns, ready in a couple of hours – or for breakfast if you do as I do and prove the buns overnight, then bake in the morning when you get up. I follow the recipe in the link above pretty much to the letter, either making the dough in my breadmaker, or using the Kitchen Aid to do the kneading – either works well. I then prove in the fridge overnight and add the flour & water crosses in the morning. Equally, if you’re not making these at Easter and don’t want to make the crosses, just leave them off. I added edible borage flowers in the summer for pretty summer spiced buns instead.

A recent discovery has been iced cinnamon buns. I hunted high and low for a recipe using sourdough discard to make these iconic Swedish delicacies, but drew a blank, so decided to cobble together my own – which works a treat. Many of the recipes I found used fed starter, but with an ever-growing mound of sourdough discard in the fridge, I was determined to make inroads into that. My starting point was the Cinnamon Raisin Loaf recipe (also very good) from King Arthur Baking, duly adapted to turn into buns. Do try them and see – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed… Oh, and if you fancy a twist on the original recipe, do check out the Iced Cardamom Bun variation at the very end of the post – very Scandinavian, but equally delicious.

I like to make the basic dough in my breadmaker for ease, especially in the winter months as, to my profound regret, I don’t have an airing cupboard. Using a breadmaker solves the problem of finding somewhere warm enough to prove the dough. The conservatory works perfectly in summer, but if the heating is off during the day in the winter months, it can be tricky to maintain a high enough temperature for proving.

Iced Cinnamon Raisin Buns – makes 9

115g sourdough starter (discard or fed if you prefer)
360g strong bread flour
2 1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 heaped tsp salt
1 large egg
75 g softened butter
150g lukewarm water

For the filling:
60g soft light Muscovado sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp plain flour
75g raisins (or other dried fruit/nuts of your choice)
1 egg, beaten with 1 tbsp water

Icing

100g icing sugar, sifted
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Combine all the dough ingredients in a bowl or stand mixer and knead until your dough is soft and smooth. Alternatively you can use the dough mode on your breadmaker as described above. If not using the breadmaker, you’ll need to leave the dough to prove in a greased bowl in a warm place for about 2 hours.

Make the filling by mixing the sugar, cinnamon, raisins and flour in a small bowl. You could add other mixed fruit such as apricots or dried cranberries and nuts to vary the taste and texture sensation.

When the dough has proved, knock down on a floured surface and gently roll/pat out to a rectangle measuring approx. 45 cm x 20 cm (or 18″ x 8″ for those of you, like me, who are old enough to still prefer to visualise measurements in Imperial units!).

Brush with the egg & water mixture, then sprinkle over the filling, leaving a bare strip along one edge for ease of sealing. Then roll up from one long edge until you have a long, thin roll. Turn to face you and cut into 9 neat sections. I usually do this by eye, but if you’re aiming for Paul Hollywood perfection, you can measure each one. If you’ve managed to roll out a 45cm long roll, each section should measure 5 cm wide, but it really doesn’t matter if they’re not spot on!

Grease a 20cm square deep cake tin (I like to use a loose-bottomed one for ease of removal). Carefully place the buns in the tin in rows of three.  Cover with a cloth (or I use one of those large, re-usable plastic shower caps from Lakeland) and either prove in a warm place or prove in the fridge overnight for a long, slow rise. Perfect if you’re looking to serve them warm for breakfast – and why wouldn’t you?!

The following morning, leave to come to room temperature for 1/2 to 1 hour (counsel of perfection – I’ve cooked them sooner and they’re still delicious!). If you’ve any of the egg mix left over, you can brush all over the rolls to glaze at this stage. Heat the oven to 180°C and cook the buns on the middle shelf for 40-45 mins or until golden brown and shiny.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. Transfer to a wire rack and glaze haphazardly with a runny icing made using 100g sifted icing sugar and the juice of half a lemon. It should be stiff enough to pour thickly so it doesn’t all disappear when it hits the warm buns and still stays in visible stripes on the top. If too thick, add a few more drops of juice or water, and if too thin, add more sifted icing sugar – never an exact science!

Tear apart and serve lavishly buttered with a cup of steaming hot tea and a very satisfied smile.

Iced cardamom buns:

On a roll (sorry) with the success of this recipe, I decided to experiment with a variaton on a theme, adding cardamom to the mix for even more of a Scandinavian twist – with delicious results. This time, I added the crushed seeds from 15 cardamom pods to the dough and the same to the filling with just 1 tsp cinnamon rather than the 1 1/2 tsp in the original recipe. Then, instead of raisins, I topped the filling mix with 25g each of dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots and flaked almonds – not that you can tell from the outside. I also used the juice of half a tangerine in the icing rather than lemon juice. The end result? Divinely spiced and fluffy cardamom buns. Cardamom is an underused spice in sweet recipes here in the UK, but one I adore. They are just heavenly!

Spiced Apple & Marzipan Buns:

Year another variation on the theme that I just had to share. Proceed as above, but add 1 tsp ground cinnamon to the basic dough mix. Then grate 200g marzipan (homemade if possible) over the rolled-out dough (I had some left over from the Christmas Stollen making). Grate 1 large cooking apple or 2 sharp eating apples into a bowl, then mix in the juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 tsp mixed spice, 50g raisins and 25g flaked almonds (or all raisins if you prefer) . Distribute evenly over the marzipan, then roll up from a long edge to a long, narrow roll. Cut into 10 equal-sized pices using a dough scraper, then arange them with their cut side facing upwards in a greased 23cm round cake tin. Cover and prove in the fridge overnight, then cook at 180°C as above for 30-40 minutes or until deep golden. Dust with icing sugar and eat warm with great glee.

 

Pumpkin party

At this time of year, the amount of fresh stuff coming back from the allotment is much more limited: leeks and parsnips certainly, rocket and parsley of course, plus spinach and chard too. I even managed to pick a few side shoots of calabrese, but the main purple-sprouting broccoli won’t be ready until the New Year and the kale is slow this year, not helped by being attacked by caterpillars in the mild September weather. I haven’t checked on my flower sprouts (kalettes), and have only just realised that they grow up the stem like Brussels sprouts, so I really ought to look. However, the Crown Prince squash I harvested in October are still going strong in their basket in the conservatory and make a beautiful addition to autumn recipes, sweet and savoury. That said, I actually used a tin of pumpkin purée in the recipe I’m going to share today, mainly because my son and daughter-in-law brought a couple of tins over from the US when they visited in November, which just happened to coincide with this recipe appearing in the Weekend magazine.

I’ve made carrot, courgette and even beetroot cakes before, but never pumpkin, so I was pleasantly surprised by the texture and taste of this one. I tweaked the recipe slightly, mainly by using a different frosting to the rich double cream version suggested in Martha’s original recipe. Unless you’re catering for a houseful, I’d suggest you want something that keeps a little longer than a cream-based topping. In the end, I adapted an Ottolenghi cream cheese frosting – and froze half the cake (unfrosted), as the end result was quite large! I think it would also be good made as a traybake, adapting the cooking time accordingly. Here’s what I did:

Spiced Pumpkin Latte Cake – serves 10-12

½ x 425g can pumpkin purée (you could use steamed and puréed fresh squash too)
2 large eggs
100ml vegetable oil (I used groundnut, but sunflower would be fine)
100ml strong coffee
125g caster sugar
125g light brown sugar
250g self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger

Coffee syrup:
50ml strong coffee
50g caster sugar

Frosting:
180g cream cheese
70g butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
50g icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp espresso powder (for dusting)

Preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4, and line a 900g loaf tin with baking parchment. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the pumpkin purée, eggs, oil, coffee and both sugars.

In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until a smooth batter forms, with no flour visible. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50 mins to 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin while you make the syrup.

Stir the coffee and sugar together in a small saucepan and warm over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat up and simmer for 2-3 minutes until thick and syrupy. While the cake is cooling, brush the top with the warm syrup.

To make the cream cheese frosting, whisk together the cream cheese, butter and vanilla extract using an electric whisk until smooth. Add the sifted icing sugar gradually until soft and fluffy. Pile on top of the cooled cake and dust with a fine sprinkling of sifted espresso powder (or more cinnamon if you prefer, as used in the original recipe).

Having made the cake, I was left with half a tin of pumpkin purée, but what to do with it? While I was deliberating, Rebekka Gross, a breadmaking colleague on Foodie Translators, suggested pumpkin bread and passed over her tried and tested recipe. It makes a huge loaf, so once again, I froze half – it freezes beautifully and is good fresh or toasted. Quite delicious with today’s carrot and coriander soup. Leave out the spices if you don’t want quite such a savoury taste, although I served it with peach and basil jam for breakfast and it worked really well. I proved it in a basket overnight in the fridge, according to Rebekka’s instructions, but it deflated when I turned it out, so I suspect it had overproved. Fortunately, it still rose again in the oven and tasted great, but I think it needs to be moulded and put in its baking receptacle first if you’re going to go down the overnight proving route! I also chickened out of baking it in a Le Creuset casserole, as suggested, but here’s what I did instead:

Spiced Pumpkin Bread – makes one large loaf

200g wholemeal spelt flour
400g strong bread flour
1.5 tsp dried yeast (I like Dove’s Farm)
280ml lukewarm water
1.5 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
200g puréed butternut squash (or 1/2 x 425g tin)
1/4 tsp ground cumin (optional)
1/4 tsp ground coriander (optional)
Pinch ground cloves (optional)
Grated nutmeg

Mix the dough using the dough setting of a breadmaker – or mix in a KitchenAid or by hand if you prefer. Shape and place on a baking tray or in a large bread tin, then prove overnight in the fridge (or at room temperature for 1-2 hours). The following morning, remove from the fridge, allow to stand at room temperature for 30 mins or so while you heat the oven to 180ºC, Gas 5 (it should have risen quite dramatically!). Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the bread is nicely brown and sounds hollow when you tap underneath. Cool on a rack and enjoy!

(Rebekka suggested the Le Creuset method: heat a large Le Creuset casserole at full whack for 20 minutes – only heat the lid if it has an ovenproof handle. Bake for 50 minutes altogether: 30 minutes at 225ºC with the lid on, 20 minutes at 180-200ºC (depending how brown it is) with the lid off.)

Baking aside, I even managed to snatch an hour up at the allotment on Sunday afternoon: finally planting out the tulip bulbs from last year’s containers in the new cutting garden beds. Of course, I had to clear the beds of the spent sunflower stems and cosmos plants from the summer first – surprisingly tough to get out of the ground! Those sunflowers must have been well over 15 feet tall and had extremely thick stems that required a pruning saw to cut through them, to say nothing of the effort required to extract the roots… All done at long last, with two strenuous treks up to the bonfire site pushing an overladen wheelbarrow over muddy ground – phew! I cut back the blackened stalks of this year’s new dahlias too, and mounded them up with compost from some of the tomato pots from home – waste not, want not. Hopefully, it will help the tubers come through the winter, whatever the weather….

Crochet workshop in Tenterden – a lovely way to spend a December afternoon

 

 

Baking with courgettes…

The recent unexpected late summer heat has meant that the courgettes are still going great guns. Blink, or miss a day or two of harvesting, and you have marrows to contend with! Fortunately, I love courgettes, so courgette pasta, courgette & feta pancakes and grated courgette & beetroot salad have all been on the menu this week – hardly any wonder that I turn virtually vegetarian in the summer months.

Another way of using up courgette gluts is to use them in baking. Bread and cakes with added courgette seem incredibly light and airy – and decidedly virtuous: green AND making inroads into the courgette mountain!

I first made courgette bread  a few years ago when I stumbled across a delicious-sounding recipe on Jack Monroe’s website, then called “A Girl called Jack”. The website has now been rebranded “Cooking on a bootstrap“, but the recipe remains the same – along with the intention of providing tasty food on a shoestring. I’ve adapted it slightly for use in a breadmaker, but it is fundamentally based on Jack’s original idea – and a really nice way of using up some of those courgettes. (See the original website if you want to make it the old-fashioned way.)

Courgette, Lemon & Sultana Bread

1 medium courgette
300g strong bread flour, plus extra to knead the dough
1 tsp dried yeast (I like Dove’s Farm)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
50g sultanas
zest and juice of 1⁄2 a lemon
1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)
Water
Poppy seeds to sprinkle

Grate the courgette finely into a large mixing bowl and set aside with a sprinkling of salt in a colander to allow some of the liquid to drain off – especially important if using juicy homegrown courgettes! Put 1 tsp dried yeast, 300g strong bread flour, salt and sugar into the breadmaker, then add the drained courgette, sultanas, lemon zest and caraway seeds if using. Add the water to the lemon juice and make up to 100-120 ml – I would tend to add the lesser amount if using homegrown veg. as they are very juicy. Set the breadmaker to dough mode – this takes 2 hrs 20 minutes in my Panasonic machine, but every machine will be different.

When the dough is ready, turn out onto a floured surface and knock down. You may need to add quite a lot of extra flour at this stage, depending on the juiciness of the courgettes. When the dough is soft, but able to be moulded without sticky fingers, pat out an oval on a greased baking sheet and leave in a warm place to prove for 30 mins – 1 hour. Sprinkle with poppy seeds if using.

Set oven to 180°C/gas 4 to preheat, then cook the proved loaf for 30 minutes. It should be golden and crisp on top, feel lightweight and sound hollow on the bottom when tapped. Leave to cool on a wire rack, then serve with butter and hunks of cheese – this is also surprisingly good toasted with jam!

My second bread recipe came about when I realised I hadn’t left myself enough time to make a yeasted dough and had people coming for lunch. A quick internet search (I find myself doing this more and more nowadays despite my many recipe books!) brought up this BBC recipe, which is amazingly good considering how quick it is – and yes, it uses up yet more courgettes! I adapted it to what I had in the fridge, as ever, but honey aficionados might like to check out the original recipe.

Courgette & Cheddar Soda Bread

400g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
2 medium courgettes
50g rolled oats
1 tsp salt
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g mature cheddar, grated
few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only
285ml natural yogurt
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 egg, beaten or milk, to glaze

Heat oven to 180°C fan/gas 6 and grease, then dust a baking sheet with a little flour. Coarsely grate the courgettes, then place in a clean tea towel and  squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Put the flour, oats, bicarb and 1 tsp salt in a large bowl. Add most of the cheddar (save a little for the top), thyme leaves and grated courgettes. Mix the yogurt and maple syrup, then pour into the flour mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough starts to clump together, then tip onto a work surface and knead briefly to bring all the loose bits together – try not to overwork the dough or the bread will be heavy.

Shape into a round loaf and place on the baking sheet. Brush with egg or milk and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Use a sharp knife to score a deep cross on top of the loaf, then bake for 30-40 mins until deep golden brown. Best served warm, but leftovers will keep for 1-2 days. Delicious with soup, cheese or hummus – and makes delicious toast!

My final baking suggestion is a courgette cake. Inspired by Bake Off’s drizzle challenge this week, I fancied a courgette drizzle cake – and sure enough, my internet searches brought up a few promising candidates. I plumped for a gluten-free option (always worth experimenting before you’re expecting guests) from the Waitrose recipe site, and was amazed by the results: you would never guess this was a GF cake – sublime!

Courgette Lemon Drizzle Cake

250g courgettes, coarsely grated
175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g ricotta
125g Doves Farm GF self-raising flour (or use normal flour if you prefer)
85g polenta
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Finely grated juice and zest 2 lemons
Handful thyme sprigs
6-8 tbsp icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4. Grease and base-line 2 loaf tins (or one if you prefer a larger cake for a crowd – bear in mind that cakes made with fresh vegetables don’t keep as long, especially in the warm summer months. I made one to eat and one to freeze.). Put the grated courgettes into a clean tea towel and squeeze out excess juice.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until creamy. Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a spoonful of flour if it looks as though it is starting to curdle, followed by the vanilla and ricotta. Fold in the flour, polenta, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Finally fold in the lemon zest, grated courgettes and thyme leaves, reserving some for decoration.

Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin/s and bake for 1 hour (large tin) or 35 mins (two tins) until risen, golden and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Mix the lemon juice with the icing sugar and a sprinkling of thyme leaves. Spoon the drizzle over the cooled cake and leave to set. Slice and serve with a cup of tea for a delectable afternoon treat.