No bread is an island

...entire of itself. (With apologies to John Donne!)
I live and breathe breadmaking. I’m an evangelist who would like everyone to make his or her own bread. I want to demystify breadmaking and show it as the easy everyday craft that it is. To this end I endeavour to make my recipes as simple and as foolproof as I possibly can.

I call my blog 'No bread is an island' because every bread is connected to another bread. So a spicy fruit bun with a cross on top is a hot cross bun. This fruit dough will also make a fruit loaf - or Chelsea buns or a Swedish tea ring...
I'm also a vegan, so I have lots of vegan recipes on here - and I'm adding more all the time.

Thursday 25 June 2015

VEGAN PIE 'N' MASH

Earlier this week, I made a leftover veg curry into a Thai chilli non carne by adding coconut milk, Thai curry paste, lemon juice and soy sauce, red kidney beans and chunks of seitan - it made loads!

I had it one night with brown rice, and the next night with pan-fried curried wedges. Still there was some left!

So I decided to use it as a pie filling,  and have it for dinner tonight along with mashed potatoes.

The pie

Pie 'n' mash!

More pie!
It's easy to make a simple pastry with just self-raising flour, water and oil - but, to the flour I added half a teaspoon each of bouillon powder and curry powder and added tomato puree to the water. The oil I used was poured from a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

The mash was made with broccoli and cheese (Violife), plus 1/2 tsp bouillon powder.

Tuesday 23 June 2015

BREADMAKING WITH 'MY DAY' SERVICES,



Tuesday  23rd June 2015
Fun with chocolate spread today.

First we made a chocolate whirl:


Then we made a tear and share loaf modelled on  a 'Nutella' loaf:









Tuesday 3rd November
Today we made petit pain au chocolat - with three new students, this time. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera, so I have no pics of the lovely bread that they made - but hopefully others who did take pics will send them to me so I can include them here.

The session went well, with a great bunch of people and some very good support. Lots of potential from the new students - I'm expecting great things from them.

Next week we'll make something savoury - possibly sausage parcels.

Tuesday 28th October
1st (taster) session, making fancy dinner rolls with just the one student this afternoon. It was a gentle introduction into breadmaking with the MyDay team.

I've known the director of MyDay for well over 10 years, but we haven't seen each other in a long while, so it was really good to catch up. We have so much in common in our ambitions for the care of people with special needs - this is going to be a very special relationship, I'm sure.

ATM, I'm committed to two more taster sessions - one next Tuesday and one on Thursday. Then we'll see what take-up we get and go from there.

Here's the first batch of bread - fancy dinner rolls - made by the student:



He had some help with the shaping - but he had a lot of input into these rolls!

Monday 15 June 2015

BIALYS

Saturday 13th June 2015




Dough made with bouillon powder and a little curry powder. Filled with a mixture of
mushroom pate, vegan pesto, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, roasted peppers
and mushroom and topped with pieces of the last three.
Thursday 9th August 2012

Bialys - Flat, round baked rolls topped with onion. Well, that's the traditional way of making bialys, but in the spirit of experimentation, I thought I'd try a sweet version as well.