Bramley Apple Tart

This recipe shows that Bramley apples don't have to turn to 'mush' when cooked. The apples stay in well defined pieces. It makes a nice change from apple pie and is elegant enough for that 'more refined' occasion! That is, for those of you who have 'more refined' occasions! We had one once; I think it was in 1976!

For the pastry
8 oz plain flour
5 oz butter (or ½ butter, ½ lard)
1 oz - 4 oz sugar (I used 1 oz)
a pinch of salt
1 egg
milk (if needed)

For the Pastry Cream
½ pint milk
½ vanilla pod
2 oz sugar
1 oz plain flour
1 egg
pinch of custard powder (optional)

For the filling
2½ lb Bramley apples
2 oz sugar

To finish
1 Tbsp apricot jam
2 teasp water

Prepare the oven: put the oven on to heat at 190°C and put a heavy baking sheet in it to warm.

Make the pastry: rub the fat into the flour, add the sugar and salt, and then mix in the egg and a little milk (if required) to make a smooth pastry. You can do this easily in a food processor.

Make the Pastry cream: Heat the milk and vanilla pod to just below boiling point. In a bowl, mix the egg, flour, custard powder and sugar together. Pour half the hot liquid into the egg mixture whisking it as you do so. Return this to the pan and gently heat it back up stirring/whisking as you do so to avoid it sticking to the pan as it thickens. When it boils remove it from the heat and pour it into a clean bowl. Whisk to remove any lumps (sieve if necessary) and cover the surface of the cream with a butter paper or cling-film. Place on a rack to cool. It needs air circulation around and under it otherwise it will sour.

Line a pastry case: grease an 8 inch loose bottomed flan tin and line it with pastry. (There will be quite a bit left over for making tarts etc). Prick the bottom all over with a fork.

Prepare the apples: peel and core the apples, halve or quarter and cut into thin slices - if you can't do this quickly, put the sliced pieces into water to which you've added a squeeze of lemon juice.

Assemble the flan: spread about ¾ of the pastry cream into the flan case, mounding it in the middle. Drain and dry the apples and arrange them in overlapping circles on the pastry cream working from the outside, sprinkling the sugar between the layers. Reduce the size of each layer to make a 'pyramid' working towards the middle.

Cook: Put on to the baking sheet in the pre-heated oven and cook for 30 - 40 minutes or until the pastry is cooked and a skewer will go through the apple easily. Remove and place on a baking rack to cool.

Glaze: heat the jam and water and mix together. Brush over the partially cooled tart to glaze and allow to cool fully.

Bread - A Five-Strand Plaited Loaf

There are times when you get a bit fed up making the same things day-in, day-out; so you end up having a bit of a play. Here's the results of Tuesday's play session - a five plait loaf:

Firstly roll your dough into five long pieces and join them at the top. Spread them out with three on one side and two on the other.

Take the outermost of the three strands and place in in the middle next to the innermost of the two strands.

You will now have three stands on the other side. Take the outermost of the these and place in in the middle next to the innermost of the two strands.

Repeat the process, always taking the outermost of the three strands and placing it in the middle next to the innermost of the two strands.

...and again.

Continue until it is all plaited.

The finished loaf.

Playing with Sourdough

I've written about sourdough bread before and came to the conclusion that it just didn't fit in with my lifestyle, in that by the time I had made a loaf it was bed-time! I want the bread for sandwiches etc at lunch!

However, the fascination of making bread with just flour, water and salt, no yeast, is so intriguing I just couldn't resist revisiting it. My idea being to be able to make a loaf that could be refrigerated overnight in it's uncooked state and baked fresh from the fridge the next morning. I want a process that's easy and that won't become a chore.

I'm halfway there in that I've got a good starter going. I did this by mixing 50 gm of bread flour and 50gm of water in a preserving jar (holding the lid down loosely with an elastic band rather than the catch). After a day I added a further 50 gm flour and 50 gm water and on subsequent days threw half of it away and topped it up with the same amounts of flour and water. This is a 100% hydration starter: that is the water weighs 100% of the weight of the flour. This method of calculating recipes is known as baker's percentages. They differ from normal percentages in that all other ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the flour rather than the total amount of dough.

I won't post my recipe and method yet as I'm still working on it. I'm not at a stage yet where I'm confident that the dough won't collapse in the fridge overnight and also need to adjust the method to improve the crust - it's too crusty at present. However, in the absence of anything else here's a picture of one of the test loaves; this long fermentation system produces a bread that is infinitely more tasty than breads made by normal methods so I'm happy to persevere in my endeavours.

Further Adventures with Ciabatta

Last year I started playing with higher hydration doughs and made a not particularly good Ciabatta. At the time I didn't experiment further, so I thought I'd better give it another go. Some online research turned up some super looking recipes on Dan Lepard's Forum. Anyone planning to venture into ciabatta territory is well advised to read this thread.

I decided on my recipe, a combination of two on the first page of the thread, and made my biga (starter) on Thursday. 24 hours later I should have made the final dough but had to go to Coventry, so it was late in the day when I started. This meant that the fermentation time was shortened to about 3½ hours as against the 6 - 7 hours I had planned. Even so, I am quite pleased with the result:

Recipe

Biga (starter)
75% hydration
300gm Flour
225gm Water
½ tsp Yeast (or 1 tbsp starter)

Dough

200gm Flour
150gm Water
9gm Salt (1.8%)

1. Mix Biga to develop gluten.
2. Leave at room temperature, in an oiled bowl, for 12-24 hours.
3. Break it up and add flour and 100gm of the water and mix until it starts to come together. Leave it for 20 minutes.
4. Add the other 50gm water and the salt. Mix for 10 – 15 minutes then put it into an oiled rectangular container.
5. Cover it and leave for 1 hour.
6. Tip it out and gently fold the two outside thirds over the middle third - like folding paper to put into an envelope, I use a dough scraper for this, oil your container again and return the dough to it.
7. Do this twice more with an hourÂ’s gap in between each fold.
8. 3 – 4 hours after the last fold, tip it out onto a well-floured surface.
9. Cut and shape gently so as to retain the air.
10. Roll lightly in flour and prove for 30 minutes.
11. Slash and bake at 220°C until brown. Turn oven down to 190°C after 7 - 8 minutes. They take about 15 - 18 minutes to cook.

Next time I will use a larger container, which should give a flatter loaf.

Hot Cross Buns

I was going to post this recipe yesterday, but the test batch I made weren't very good. Then I realised I'd picked up plain flour instead of bread flour! Also, they weren't spicy or moist enough. This is the adjusted recipe; it takes time to rise properly, being a rich dough. If you want them quicker, increase the yeast to 3 sachets. I used just currants and sultanas; the choice of fruit, or addition of mixed peel, is entirely at your discretion.

Ingredients for 16 buns:
600g Strong bread flour
85g Caster sugar
300ml Semi-skimmed milk
1 tsp Salt
120g Butter melted
3 tsp Cinnamon
4 tsp Mixed spice
2 Eggs
2 Sachets Fast Action Dried Yeast (14g)
100g Currants
100g Sultanas
1 Grated lemon rind

For the crosses
50 Flour
55ml Water

To glaze
30g Sugar
30ml Boiling water

Soak the fruit in strong black tea or alcohol of choice for at least an hour. Melt the butter and beat the eggs.

Mix the dry ingredients together then add the drained fruit, butter, eggs and milk.

Kneed for 10 minutes in a mixer with dough hook, turn the very sticky dough out onto a well floured surface, shape it into a ball:

...and put it into a bowl. Cover and leave it until doubled in size.

Knock all the air out of the dough and cut into 16 pieces - I do this by weight - make each piece into a smooth ball dusting with flour to stop the dough sticking, and then flatten each piece slightly. Put onto a baking tray, I use a non-stick mat; parchment would be fine, or just dust the tray lightly with flour.

Cover - I use a clean tea-towel - and leave to rise again until doubled in size. Mix the flour and water for the crosses and pipe them on using a ribbon nozzle, or a plastic bag with a cut off corner.

Bake at 180°C (170°°C Fan Oven) for about 20 minutes until light brown.

Mix the sugar and boiling water for the glaze and brush it over the buns. Then leave to cool on a rack.

Falafel and Pita Bread

I make no claims as to the authenticity of this recipe - 'cos I made it up! It's an amalgamation of a few I've seen online over the last year, or so.

Falafel
300gm Dried chick peas
½ Large onion chopped
3 Cloves garlic chopped
Bunch of parsley, roughly chopped
½ tsp Chilli powder
2 Tbsp Plain Flour
½-1 teasp Bicarbonate of soda
2 teasp Ground cumin
2 teasp Ground coriander
1½ teasp Salt
Black pepper

Oil for frying

Cover the chickpeas with water - it wants to be at least a couple of inches above the level of the peas. Soak them for at least 12 hours, then drain.

Put them into a food processor and process until fine. Add the onion and garlic and process further. Add the remaining ingredients and process to mix.

Form into round ball shapes about the size of a golf-ball and put into the fridge to rest for about an hour.

Cook in deep fat at 180°C for 2 minutes until brown.

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Pretzels

Initially, I wasn't that pleased with these pretzels, thinking that the outside should be more crispy and the centre less dense, but then Hannah, my daughter who went to Berlin twice last year, told me that they are just like the ones she bought there. My judgement had been based on ignorance of what they should be like.

Next time though, I think I'll leave them to rise for a short time after shaping, before boiling them. I'll also omit the egg yolk glaze and try out different toppings: poppy seed, sesame, celery seeds etc.

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Cornish Pasties

A recent BBC news item about a group of pasty enthusiasts travelling 220 miles just to eat pasties reminded me that I photographed a pasty making session a few months ago, but didn't post the pictures, as I thought I could do better. The remarkable thing is that the pasties in the photo on the BBC look remarkably like mine! So here goes...

Dice potatoes, swede and onion and season well with salt and white pepper. Cut some beef into small pieces - use something like skirt, collar, blade or chuck. Make shortcrust pastry using half lard to plain flour, don't try to make a good pastry with as little water as possible, make it badly and even add a bit of lemon juice - if you make a delicate pastry it just crumbles apart when you cook it.

Roll out and cut out circles of pastry - rest these against your rolling pin while you put the filling in...

Seal the edges together using a bit of water and 'crimp' by pinching the dough and folding it over - easier to do than explain...

Egg wash it then cook at 190°C for ten minutes, then cook for about 30 minutes more at 170°C-180°C.

They're great for the 'post pub' munchies!