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.

Tuesday, 7 July 2015

5:2 STUFFED MUSHROOMS (vegan).




Two field mushrooms, spread with Pateole mushroom pate and Meridian pesto, pan-fried curried wedges and broccoli - totalling 424 calories.

Wipe the mushrooms and place them in a microwavable dish. Remove the stalks (but leave them in the dish) and spread the mushroom pate over the mushroom, followed by the pesto. Microwave, on full power, for 6-7 minutes.

165g mushrooms 22 calories
54g mushroom pate 124 
15g pesto 75
218g potato 158
One-cal spray 14
100g broccoli 31

I wasn't intending to fast today, until I realised I had to be out of the house before 12, to shop for the first of the three teaching sessions I had this afternoon and evening. I hadn't had breakfast (rarely do, these days), so I simply missed out lunch and only ate when I returned after 7.

I wanted something quick, so I had stuffed mushrooms with pan-fried curried wedges and broccoli. This only amounted to 424 cals, so I had some strawberries dipped in dark chocolate for dessert. All in all, I was pretty stuffed.


Sunday, 5 July 2015

SAVOURY VEGAN TARTS


Just 10 minutes in the oven at 220C

Bread dough:
200g (1 mug) white bread flour
1 crumbled stock cube
1 teaspoon curry powder
125g (1/3rd mug) lukewarm (handhot) water
1 good teaspoon fresh yeast (or level teaspoon dried active yeast)
25g sunflower oil (I used the oil from a jar of sun-dried tomatoes)

Filling/topping:
4 dessertspoon Pateole mushroom pate
1 dessertspoon vegan pesto (Meridian)
4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped small
4 slices mushroom, 4 slices tomato

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.


Wednesday, 20 May 2015

MATT'S MARZIPAN, APRICOT AND SULTANA SNAKE BREAD and other things

It's always an adventure, making bread with Matt at the care home I visit on Wednesdays. His 'go to' bread is always a 'snake bread' - with whatever ingredients we are using with the rest of the students

Today we were making Danish pastries, so we had some tinned apricots - and I always bring in marzipan, since that's such a favourite with Matt. 

Once he had made his sweetened dough, he rolled it flat and lined it with flattened marzipan, on which he placed apricots - then, for good measure, he sprinkled over some sultanas.


Matt's loaf is on the right - along with some Danish

Sunday, 17 May 2015

TWEETING MY LATEST PIZZA (to #veganrecipehour and #realbreadcampaign)

I made a vegan pizza for dinner yesterday, and I wanted to tweet the procedure I used in assembling it. Just one pic of the finished product doesn't convey the whole story.

However,Twitter absolutely refused to let me upload pics from either my iPhone 5 or my MacBook; I kept getting this msg:

Uploading photo failed! Please try again later.

So, I'm going to pretend I'm tweeting from here!


Building a  pizza: H/m T/sauce&hummus w. asparagus and roasted red pepper   

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 

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

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! :)