. No bread is an island

Thursday, 14 May 2015

REAL BREAD WEEK (9-15th May 2015)

The week of 9-15th May 2015 is Real Bread Week, organised by The Real Bread Campaign when everyone is encouraged to make their own Real Bread.

Here's how the week went for me:

Monday 11th May
I was short of bread for myself - so I made this seeded loaf with toasted sesame seeds.

And I was due at a coffee morning on Tuesday, so I made a batch of Chelsea buns (plus a GF, vegan chocolate cake for a coeliac friend who attends) for a coffee morning.

Tuesday 12th May

My usual session at Myday services this week had been moved to Thursday afternoon, so I was able to get to Taunton Association of the Homeless much earlier - 3pm instead of 3.45.

Early as I was, I found one of my students already in the training kitchen, making some frying pan soda bread!

On the menu was a lentil and potato stew or hash, which we then go on to make pasties with, so we quickly got cracking with that!

We were soon joined by 2 more students who set to to make the dough for the pasties. Once these were shaped and proving, the 1st student made another soda bread in the frying pan - at the same time, teaching one of the other students, whose first session this was.

Lentil and potato pasties and frying pan soda bread

INTERMITTENT FASTING - a de-luxe 5:2 fast day with a difference

I only decided during Thursday morning this week, that if I wanted to get a fast in this week, I’d better get on with it. I rarely have breakfast these days, so that was a good start.

My initial thoughts were that I’d have a low calorie dinner – something like a 150 calorie (or less) veg curry - and not eat until lunchtime on the Friday. However, during the morning I made a batch of Chelsea buns (much prefer them to hot cross buns). I wanted to drop some off at the local garage where the guys had done me a huge favour (long story, won’t bore you with it here, but it involved a dead battery for the second time in a month), and wouldn’t accept payment.

In the afternoon on the way back, walking past the pub, a little voice in my head said, “Why not a swift half?”

Me: “But I’m supposed to be fasting!”

Little voice: “You can always build it into a FD – just count the calories.”

So that’s what I did. And a half of Buncombe golden bitter went down a treat. Checking later on I found it was 111 cals.

It was only then that I thought I’d turn my FD into a DL (De Luxe Fast Day), one with all the trimmings, and just see how much bang I could get for my buck.

I made the veg curry – spiced with Frank’s chilli sauce and a teaspoon of my home made curry powder:

134g chopped onion
white cabbage
green cabbage
carrot
cauliflower
1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs
8g Franks Chilli sauce
5g curry powder
400g tinned tomatoes - 76

I still can’t get over just how flavoursome a simple veg stew with a tin of tomatoes can be – however, I added 10g of soya sauce and a tsp of bouillon powder.

A small saucepan full to the brim (before cooking) amounted to 250 calories and made about 7 large serving spoons – 3 and a half of which just filled up a side plate. I needed some carbs, and, rather than using rice, I decided to have some curried potato wedges. 150g of microwaved potato, quartered and fried with a few squirts of One-Cal and a sprinkle of curry powder came in at 115 cals.

So the meal itself came to 240 cals (125+115).

I enjoy a drink before dinner, so I had a small glass (200g) of home made stout (74 cals) and I poured myself 50g of wine (45) to have with it. However, I’ve taught myself to be so abstemious with wine that I only drank just over half of it, pouring the rest back in the bottle and saving myself 20 cals.

This brought my tally for booze – including the Buncombe, earlier - to 210.

So, 240+210=450, leaving me with 150 cals to play with. I still hadn’t tasted my Chelsea buns, yet, and worked out that each one would be 277 cals. Half of one – 139 cals – would leave me 11 calories short of my allowed 600.

So, my FD included an afternoon beer, a pre-dinner glass of stout, a (miniscule) glass of wine, a veg curry with curried wedges, and half a Chelsea bun.

There’s never any need to feel deprived on this WOL!

Sunday, 5 April 2015

5:2 DIET - MY VERY FILLING VEG CURRY, DOWN TO 75 CALORIES

In my quest to find the lowest calorie dinner for a fasting day (FD), I've managed to push the calorie count down to 75! :)

5g each cumin seeds and curry powder, dry fried, 10 cals
65g onion 21
325g celery 26
150g dark green cabbage - cut in strips with the spine still intact 20
125g mushrooms 17
1/2 tin tomatoes 41

Plus: 1 teaspoon each, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce and (vegan) Worcs sauce 15

Total 150

This makes 8 large serving spoons - four of which fill a decent-sized side plate.

So, 75 cals! :)

There are a couple of reasons I like to drive my calories as low as possible on a FD:

The health benefits of intermittent fasting (IF) are backed by hard science.

And by varying the calorie intake on FDs (and feast days*) every now and again keeps the body's cells on their toes - they have to prepare for any eventuality.

*I also think that, just as our ancestors would feast when they made a kill, so should we. So once a week or so I'll have a bit of a blowout! :)

Thursday, 19 March 2015

VEGAN BREADS - Index

[I'm still working on this post, putting in the links to all the breads is time-consuming. If there is no link attached to the bread you're interested in, simply put it in the search box, and you should be directed to the recipe.]

Index of vegan breads:

Apfel kuchen (German apple cake)

Bread bowls (from these to trenchers)

Calzone (soda bread calzone) baked in a chiminea

Canapés

Carta da musica

Chelsea buns (undercover)

Chocolate and banana bread

Chocolate and beetroot bread

Chocolate and cherry bread

Chocolate loaf

Chocolate twist

Christmas loaf

Ciabatta

Cloche method

Cornbread

Crackers – poppy and sesame seeds

Creole soda bread

Croissants

Danish pastries

Devonshire splits

Doughnuts

Dumplings

Farthing buns

Focaccia

Fougasse

Fougassette

Fruit braid

Fruit loaf

Garlic batons

Grissini

Hot cross buns

Hungarian chocolate bread

Iced buns

Jam tart

Lardy cake

Loaves

Marzipan and apple tartlets

Mushroom en croute

Naans

Pane casereccio

Pane cioccolato (Italian chocolate bread)

Pane frattau

Pannetonne

Parathas

Pasties

Peshwari naan

Petit pain au chocolat

Pierogis

Pies (Thai, ratatouille, apple)

Pikelets

Pirozkhis

Pittas

Pizza (2 red pizzas)

Pretzels

Quick breads

Reindeer droppings

Rolls

Schiacciatta con l’uva

Soda bread

Sourdough

Spelt loaf

Spicy fruit buns

Spicy fruit naan

Swedish tea ring

Tempura

Trenchers

Yum yums

ALL bread should be vegan - that is, made with flour, salt (which can be omitted), yeast and water. That's it!

That's Real Bread as defined by the Real Bread Campaign (RBC).

"Real Bread is that made without the use of processing aids or any other artificial additives."

"Additional ingredients are great as long as they are natural...and themselves contain no artificial additives."

I teach breadmaking - in a variety of settings and to all manner of groups - that's my job. Necessarily, this involves me in making bread that is not vegan. It's always vegetarian, however. Of course, all the breads that I make for my own consumption are vegan.

Unfortunately, my wife is a confirmed omnivore - when I announced I was going to be a vegetarian, her response was, "Don't be so bloody silly!" :) "And what about our Sunday roast chicken? And Christmas - what about our turkey?" (This was in November, 2001.)

I'm a man of peace and compromise, so for five weeks I was vegetarian during the week and had roast chicken on the Sunday. I had the turkey at Christmas and I have been a vegetarian ever since - becoming a vegan around 2004.

So, not all of this blog is vegan or vegetarian - but the point of this post is to steer my fellow vegans away from any recipes that aren't vegan.

In this post I want to emphasise and feature - and link to - all the breads I make that are vegan - the great majority.

I want to look at the different 'natural' ingredients that recipes often call for, that aren't vegan, and, either discount them altogether, or suggest alternatives:

Eggs. Eggs are completely unnecessary in bread - and there is no necessity for any egg replacement. None! Ever!

As an aside, eggs (or egg replacements) are also unnecessary in:
Pancakes
Cakes
Pasta
Pastry

Butter. Where ever you see this in a recipe, replace with a similar amount of olive oil. (I use Lidl's - or Aldi's - Extra Virgin Olive Oil which is cheap, and comes high in the Which? Magazine tests.) But as a general rule, you can use as much or as little as you choose. Olive oil adds flavour and helps keep the bread fresh for longer. Other vegetable oils don't seem to add much to bread - with the exception of the sunflower oil in which dried tomatoes have been soaked. When this oil is added to a pizza dough, it makes a wonderful crust - crisp, a little like short-crust pastry!

Cheese. This is used mainly as a pizza topping, in breadmaking - and, as you'll see, there are so many toppings that can be used in its place. Not as a cheese replacement, but as flavoursome toppings in their own right. Otherwise, in cheese rolls for instance, vegan cheese or other tasty alternatives can be used.

Meats of all sorts. Not even in mincemeat! :) (Although in the US some still quaintly believe that this Christmas-associated ingredient should contain meat! Ugh!) Not necessary in any shape or form.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

CROISSANTS AND DANISH PASTRIES (vegan)

Just to show that these are not as difficult as people would have you believe, these were made with one of my special needs groups. Here they are

Baked and brushed with a sugar glaze. As you can see, we also made iced buns

VEGAN PIZZA My best yet!

Choice of two toppings

Saturday is pizza day in our house - and today, I think I excelled myself.

I wanted a variety of toppings, so I covered half of the pizza with a rich tomato sauce and the other half with three layers: First I spread it with Pateole mushroom spread, then Meridian pesto and finally topped it with a layer of hummus.

I then scattered mushrooms, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, sun-dried tomatoes and a few pieces of vegan cheese (Violife). I neglected to add a sprinkle each of nutritional yeast and dried oregano, but, no matter, the pizza was absolutely gorgeous.

I have to say that, of the two toppings, the mushroom pate/pesto and hummus combination just edged it for flavour. I've used these three ingredients in different pairings before, with very good results, but the three together are absolutely amazing!