Celery and walnut bread

Yes, I know, it doesn't sound very nice, but it is! This bread has more of a cake texture, which is expected looking at the ingredients, and it's lovely with butter. The celery doesn't give much flavour (which is a good thing, I guess) but the walnuts and cheese do (which can only be a good thing :-))




Here it goes...

Celery and Walnut bread

225 g self-raising white flour
1 tsp baking powder
55 g butter, diced
2 celery sticks, very finely chopped
55 g walnuts, chopped
85 g grated cheese (I used mature Cheddar)
Salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten
4 tbsp milk

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add the butter and mix, preferably with the fingers, until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Add the celery, walnuts, cheese and salt/pepper and mix. Add the egg and the milk and mix until the dough is soft but not sticky. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth.

Shape the dough (I made a "loafy" shape). The original recipe suggests using a loaf tin, but I didn't have one small enough (the dough is quite small).

Bake at 190C for 45 minutes and then leave to cool on a wire rack.

Pesto rolls without pesto

I didn't cover them in oil, so they stuck to each other! Apart from that, quite nice...

Pesto rolls

Very easy to make, although I managed to stain my new fancy oak dinner table :-(

The consistence of the rolls is really good, and the pesto makes them very tasty.

I'll definitely be trying to make them without the pesto as breakfast rolls.

Pesto Rolls

1 tsp fast action yeast
350 g strong white flour
150 g malted grain flour*
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

For the topping

2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbps pesto

Put all the ingredients in the breadmaker in the right order for your machine, and start the white - dough programme.

Once the programme has finished, knead the dough for a few more minutes, then divide it in 8 pieces, and shape each piece into a roll.

Oil a ring-shaped oven tin. Mix the oil and pesto in a bowl and with two forks coat each roll on all sides with the pesto mix, placing them in the oven tin.

Leave to rest until doubled in size (there is no need to cover them), approximately 40 minutes.

Bake at 200C for 25 minutes. Once they've finished leave them to rest in the tin for 5 minutes and then place them in a wire rack for cooling down.

For the malted grain flour I've used the one in the picture, which has wheat flour, malted wheat flakes and barley malt flour. 

Biscuits!

These biscuits are really good! They crumble in your mouth and they're soooo unhealthy! :-P Love them!

White chocolate and cardamom biscuits

125 g butter (softened)
25 g caster sugar
125 g plain flour
60 g cornflour
3 cardamom pods
25 g white chocolate chips
1 tsp orange flower water
50 g white chocolate

Mix the butter and sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the sifted flours (both plain and cornflour) to the butter and sugar and mix until well combined and smooth.

Get the small seeds from the cardamom pods (discarding the husks) and crush them to a fine powder. Add the cardamom, chocolate chips and orange flower water to the butter/flour mix and combine well.

Place the dough in a piece of cling film and form a sausage (size is up to you!).

Leave the "sausage" in the fridge for at least an hour.

Slice the dough into pieces of around 1 cm thick. Place in a baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes. Move to a wire rack to let them cool down.

Once the biscuits are cold, melt the rest of the white chocolate and decorate the biscuits.

Haddock with a bit of spice!

I bought a jar of "mojo verde picante" for Christmas this year and I didn't really know what to do with it (there's a limit on how many potatoes with mojo you feel like eating!) so I found a recipe online for haddock with mojo verde and sort of adapted it... I'm not going to write a proper recipe for it, but I'm adding it to the blog because it's quite nice and a bit different.

Basically you boil some potatoes. Then you mix them with the mojo (up to you how much, depends on your taste for hot food!), mash it and form pancakes. Then fry the pancakes in a pan until they get a bit golden. Then fry the haddock fillet in a bit of oil. And that's it! Pancake on bottom, haddock on top and a bit of mojo to decorate.

Nutella and hazelnut biscuits

I've taken this recipe from the Ma Petite Boulangerie blog... She has the most amazing recipes!!!

I'm back!

After a bit of a break to have a baby :-), I'm back baking! The truth is that I've baked quite a few things since last post, but time is a bit more precious these days to spending updating the blog... I've now been threatened with losing one of my five(!) followers so here we go...

Sundried tomatoes and rosemary loaf

Very tasty bread, and surprisingly, quite spongy and soft. We had it with fresh mozzarella, rocket salad and sundried tomatoes :-) Yummy!

1 tsp fast action yeast
350 g strong white flour
150 g malted flour
1 tsp salt
55 g chopped sundried tomatoes in oil (drained)
2 tbsp tomato oil (from the sundried tomatoes jar)
1 tbps fresh rosemary (chopped)
320 ml water

As usual, I prepare the dough in the breadmaker (white basic - dough setting). Once is finished, take it out and shape it into a round loaf (or any other shape if you prefer). I leave it to prove for 40 minutes and then bake it at 200C (top and bottom oven) for 40 minutes. Then leave it to cool down on a wire rack.