Basil Oil and Bread

I love having my mighty basil plant in the kitchen. I'm so proud of it growing up all big and strong from seed.

Any good basil gardener will tell you that to make a strong basil plant you must pinch off the tips of the stems before they flower. This results in two branches shooting off from where you pinched out, giving you a sturdy basil bush. It also leaves you with lots of little basil buds and sweet tender baby leaves.

I can't bear to throw away something so perfect so I've stuffed them into a bottle and covered them with a good olive oil to infuse in the sun on the windowsill.

It makes an intense basil flavoured oil and I had the perfect use for it when I came up with this recipe (if you want to try this but don't have any basil oil use the best olive oil you can get your hands on):

Soft brown basil bread

Ingredients
350g strong white flour
100g brown bread flour
200ml water
100ml milk
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp dried yeast
Basil oil
Basil leaves

So, as you might expect, put all the flour in a mixing bowl, put the salt and sugar at separate sides of the bowl and sprinkle the yeast in. Add the milk and water and mix together until you have a good, stodgy, but moist dough mix.

Now, take your basil oil and pour some on your work surface. Kneed and work the dough in the oil. It will become rich and coated in basil infused oil and even squidgier.

To get that silky smooth perfect dough sprinkle a handful of white flour on a clean part of the surface and work the dough a bit more in there.

Use a little more oil to grease a mixing bowl and leave your dough in the bowl to double in bulk. About an hour and a half I would guess.

Knock back the dough, tip it out and work it for a couple of minutes. Now spread it out to a roughly inch thick rectangle and lay on top some tender, fresh basil leaves. Space them evenly but be as generous as you like. I'm a massive basil fan so I go for it.

Roll up your dough and fold round the edges to make a baton. Use more oil to oil a loaf tin and drop the dough in to second prove. In about 45 mins to an hour it's ready for the oven. More oil on the top and some salt sprinkled over, then into an oven at 190degC for about 40 minutes.

The bread is rich and moist and its a favourite in our house.

Delicious on its own with butter, my 18 month old daughter loves it on its own, and if you want a real treat use some of my pizza sauce recipe on it with some mozzarella and pop it under the grill for a bit.

Sourdough Bread

I don't have any sourdough on the go at the moment which is pretty shameful for a homemade bread fanatic and a foodie. So I've decided to start my own wild yeast sourdough. The beauty of sourdough is that it tastes slightly different wherever you make it as it's flavoured by the wild yeasts from that area. That, and it's like doing a science experiment! Probably the most important thing before you begin something like this is to plan your schedule. For example, if you plan to leave something for 12 hours you don’t want to be tending to it at 1:00pm. I worked my timings around my working week.

I've mixed 25g Plain Flour with a little lukewarm boiled water into a wet dough, covered it with a damp tea towel and left it to gather some yeasts. I've actually left it on the windowsill in our bedroom as this doesn't get direct sun so won't dry out the dough and we have the window open most of the day and night. It also overlooks our back garden and fields behind that so it's the best place I can think of for gathering wild yeasts.

After 3 days I check to see how we'd done. The outside of the dough has hardened into a crusty shell, but inside the mixture is gooey and sticky. The best way to describe it is like a ripe, runny cheese texture. Most importantly it smells like sourdough!

It's time to give it its first refresher. I scoop out the "shell" and transfer the starter to a clean bowl. I mix it up in 1 tbsp milk and 2 tbsp warm water before gradually incorporating about 60g plain flour. After giving my container a thorough clean out I place the very wet dough back in.

I leave it back on the windowsill for 1 day this time, again covered with a damp tea towel, after which it hasn't had time to crust over but has developed a skin which I peel off and discard.

Time for the second refresher and to bulk it out a bit. I add 6tbsp warm water mixed with 2 tbsp milk and stir the starter up into a batter, then I add 200g plain flour. I re-cover it with the damp towel and this time leave it high up in the kitchen, where it’s a bit warmer, for 12 hours.

And there we have a sourdough starter. I must admit it’s not looking quite as active as I'd hoped but I've made a schedule and I'll stick to it now. From here on I'm practicing the process for making bread using my starter. This will be important for me to note because I'm only going to achieve regular breads by getting into a routine of doing this once a week or so.

So, I remove 200g of the starter to a separate bowl, add 100ml warm water and weigh out 200g white bread flour.

I stir the starter into the water, make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the starter. I flick some of the surrounding flour over the starter and leave in a warm place to sponge.

While that’s doing it's thing I need to replenish the starter I've just removed, so I add another 6 tbsp warm water and 2 tbsp milk, mix it into the starter and feed it with 175g plain flour again. This time I cover it with cling film and place it back in it's high up spot. I don’t want it to dry out, but I want to give the yeast a chance to multiply in the mixture.

I come back to my sponged mixture and mix it up into a wet dough. This I cover with the tea towel and place high up next to the starter for 8 hours. After that I'll decide whether or not it needs a little longer for the yeasts to really get going.

It doesn't look too bad, I think we can work with this. From here on I'm handling this with kid gloves and I'm gonna make sure I get this right. I'm on my 5th day of making this bread and I'd quite like it to work.

I add 100ml of warm water and mix it up into the dough to make a paste, then add 25g of Rye Flour and 1 tsp of sugar.

Then I sieved in 75g White Bread Flour and mixed that in. Finally I sieved another 50g White Bread Flour and 1 1/2 tsp of salt together and mixed it up into a moist dough. I dumped probably about another 50g of White Bread Flour onto the worktop and worked my dough on this until it was all incorporated and gave me a smooth, elastic and handleable dough.

I washed up my bowl and thoroughly dried it before oiling it and putting the dough back in to prove covered with cling film. I checked on it after an hour. Judging by the way it had re-shaped in the bowl I decided it probably needed firming a little so again I floured the work surface and worked a bit more flour in. This time I plumped the dough up into a cushion and left it on a floured baking tray covered with the oiled bowl to second prove for 1 1/2 hours.

After that it was looking good! I pre-heated my oven to 220 degC, dusted flour over the top of the bread, slashed it and put it in for 20-25 minutes. I splashed water around the inside of the oven 3 times in the first 5 minutes of baking. After just over 20 minutes I turned down to 190 degC and baked for a further 10-12 minutes. When it came out... success!

My very own unique sourdough bread. Big shout out to my back garden for supplying the yeast to make it!

The last thing I did at the end of the day was take my tub of starter, that by now had been feasting on it's refresher for about 14 hours and was looking text book happy, and moved it into the fridge. That'll slow it down and it'll be ready for use in my next bread when I want it.

Even healthier breakfast muffins

Since making my first batch of muffins I have decided to adapt my recipe slightly. Not that there was anything wrong with the first one, I just thought making a totally fat free version might be a laugh. I sit at a desk all day, my body has no use for fat. So I subtituted the whole milk for skimmed, used fat free yoghurt and instead of oil I made some apple sauce and added 2 tablespoons of that. My top tip for making any baking recipe fat free is to directly sub the fat for apple sauce, but dont make the same mistake I did. Adding the apple made the mixture go browner whilst baking and the muffins appeared to be burning, leave them in for the full amount of time or they'll be stodgy.

The new muffins did taste just as good as the last ones, although they were a little more chewey, like brown bread. So I probably prefer the whole milk with oil version (I'm not one of those annoying people that refuses to admit that healthy food is not as tasty as fatty food).

Then I thought it might be interesting to break down what you actually get per muffin. Every morning now my breakfast basically consists of:

Half a slice of toast and 1/6 of a boiled egg

16.5g porridge in 20ml of milk, sprinkled with 6.25g sugar and a pinch of cinnamon

and 22g fresh fruit with a teaspoon of yoghurt

Which is actually a fairly well balanced healthy breakfast! Enjoy your guilt free morning cake.

Breakfast Muffins

I'm not really one for rushing, or doing pretty much anything fast, and the idea of wolfing down breakfast at 6:00am before I leave for work doesn't appeal to me. I prefer to take breakfast at my desk whilst checking my emails just before my working day begins. At the moment this consists of a banana, which is hardly ideal, so I've decided to make up some breakfast muffins to have as my fast food on the go.

Ingredients
200g Plain flour
200g Porridge oats
75g Caster sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon
3 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Salt
2 Eggs
250ml Milk
2 tbsp Natural yoghurt
3 tbsp Vegetable oil
150g Blueberries
100g Blackberries

I switched on the oven and pre-heated to 190degC (200 if you don't have fan assisted). To start with I sieved all the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together into a mixing bowl and made a well in the centre. Then I separated the eggs, reserving the whites, and added the yolks along with the milk and yoghurt. This all mixed up into a batter, it doesn't matter if it's a little lumpy.

Next I poured in the oil and stirred fast until it was fully incorporated into the batter, then added the oats and mixed them in before add in the fruit which a carefully stirred in to avoid damaging the berries.

Finally I whisked the egg whites until they were light and fluffy and formed peaks and folded them in with a metal spoon.

I divided the mixture evenly over 12 muffin cases...

... and baked for about 30 minutes until they were nicely brown on the top and when I poked them with a skewer it came out clean.

I haven't made them terribly sweet because I don't have much of a sweet tooth, especially first think in the morning. If you'd like them sweeter then just up the sugar to suit your taste or sprinkle some over the top of each muffin just before baking.

Please consider your IT departments before eating and try not to get crumbs in your keyboards.

Pain de Campagne

This is a great French country style bread that uses a starter, you need to make that up the day before. It’s relatively little hassle and makes a great loaf, not as chewy as you might expect.

For the starter (a poolish):
200ml Water
175g White Bread Flour
50g Wholemeal flour
¼ teaspoon Dried Yeast

Mix up your starter and leave it to sponge, covered with cling film, at room temperature for about 8-10 hours. You could leave it for a little less time, especially if you’ve got the heating turned up. When it’s ready it’ll go from looking something like this:

To something like this:

Now to combine the rest of the Ingredients to make the dough:
120ml luke warm Water
250g White Bread Flour
50g Wholemeal Flour
25g Rye Flour
1 ½ tsp Salt
½ tsp Sugar
½ tsp Dried Yeast

Start by flouring a bowl with some of the white flour adding the starter and pouring in your water.

Mix this up to loosen the starter mix and make it easier to combine the other ingredients, then sieve all the other ingredients together into the bowl. Mix up to make a firm dough and tip out onto a floured work top. Work it and knead it for a few minutes and plump it up into a neat round cushion.

Then transfer to an oiled sheet on a baking tray and cover with an oiled bowl to prove for about an hour or until doubled in bulk.

Pre heat the oven to 220 deg C. Dust the bread with more flour and with a very sharp knife make 3 cuts across the top of the dough, then turn the loaf 90 degrees and make a further 3 cuts.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until it sounds hollow when you tap the base of the bread.

This accompanied the soft goats cheese I made a rustic country snack. It’s a nice savoury bread that’s well suited to serving with cheese.

Cottage Loaf

It's a very simple recipe really, but the end result is pretty impressive. I love picking at foods over conversation - vinegars, oils and dips with breads and cold meats, chutneys, salad, etc. A good centrepiece bread like this is great for those occasions.

Ingredients

675g White Bread Flour

400ml luke warm Water

2 tsp Salt

10g Yeast




Sieve the flour and salt together into a large bowl. Mix half the water with the yeast until smooth. Make well in the centre of the flour, pour in your yeast, flick some of the surrounding flour onto the yeast and leave for about 15 mins to activate the yeast. A process known as "sponging".




Next pour in the remainder of the water and mix everything up into a smooth firm dough. Turn out onto a floured surface a knead and work for about 10 minutes.




Put this in an oiled bowl covered with cling film and leave it for 1 hour in a warm place to double in bulk.




Turn this out onto a floured work surface, knock back (punch it) and work for another couple of minutes, then separate about 1 third of the dough.




Plump up both pieces into a round cushion shape and leave under an upturned bowl to second prove for about 30 to 45 minutes.




Once that's done it's time for the fun bit! Make a cross in the top of the larger piece with a sharp knife.




Wet the top and place the smaller piece on it. Then put your thumb and first 2 fingers together and push down into the middle of the loaf.




Now with a pair of scissors make cuts around the top and you loaf is ready for the oven.




Bake at 220 degC for about 20 to 25 minutes until the base of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.




Nice and simple and (for bread) really quite quick.


The humble cottage loaf is about as English as they come, though possibly the design was Roman in origin. You don't seem to find them in bakeries too often these days, possibly due to being harder to slice than a traditional loaf. I like to cut them into wedges like a cake, then pull off chunks to dip in soups, oils and vinegars.

Slicing is much easier if you have a traditionally shaped loaf of course, or a bread slicing machine. As with many things there is little more hypnotic than a mass production line as this how it's made video shows.