The best bread in the world

OK, I know it’s not the best bread in the world, but it does qualify as the best bread in my world at the moment.

I discovered this recipe in a bread book I got out of the library about 3 years ago, when I was in one of my “I’m going to be a baker” phases. Unfortunately, while I wrote down the recipe, I didn’t reference what the book was called or who it was by, so if anybody knows, please tell me!

The best thing about this recipe is that it is a no-knead bread that requires two or three periods of two or three minutes to make. And it tastes superb. So without further ado, here it is.

NO KNEAD BREAD

3 cups flour

1 1/4 tsp salt

1/4tsp yeast

1 1/3cups water

Mix all these up in a large bowl. I usually put all the dry ingredients in and then add the water, and use my hand to mix it. Then you get a really good idea of the feel of the dough, and can add a touch more water if all the flour won’t combine. The dough should look something like this….

Oh, hmm, that doesn’t really help, does it…anyway, it should be a fairly tight lump of flour and water. Now put a hat on it and tuck it away somewhere in your kitchen, not necessarily anywhere particularly warm, for 18 hours. Don’t be too particular about the timing, but the dough should have doubled or tripled in size, look slightly bubbly on top, but not have collapsed on itself.

After this time you will have…..

Rather than a lump of stuff, it is now definitely a living breathing thing. Now, flour your surface HEAVILY. I can’t stress this too much. You’re going to leave the dough on the surface to rise again, and if you don’t put enough flour on it, you will never get your soon to be loaf off the surface without completely destroying it….which really isn’t the point, now, is it?!

Once you’ve turned it out of the bowl, just gather together the dough and tuck it up into a ball. I couldn’t really take photos of this because I was on my own, but fold it gently up on itself into the middle to form a ball, turn it over and then firm it into a ball shape so it looks kind of like this….

It’s a reasonably tight dough, and shouldn’t be sticky on the outside. Sprinkle more flour all over the place if you’re worried it’s sticky. Unlike a lot of other recipes, adding flour to surfaces you’re working on, or to the surface of the bread is not a problem.

Now cover with your bowl and leave for about an hour.

At this point, you want to get your oven ready. I know you’re going to leave the dough for an hour, but you want your oven red-hot. Turn it up to your maximum temperature.

The best way to cook this bread is in a Dutch Oven

It’s cast iron so gets super hot and it has a lid, which means that no steam escapes as the bread cooks. Instead, it recirculates, much as the steam does in a commercial bakers oven, which helps with the brilliant crust development. Put the dutch oven in the oven now so that it heats up.

After an hour, you will have….

Slightly wetter looking and probably a bit slumped. Take the dutch oven out of the oven, and this is where you want to work quite quickly. Whip the top off the pot, pick up the dough and dump it into the pot so that the bottom as it is in this photo becomes the top. I guess this doesn’t really matter, but it’s awful easy. Now, quick as you can, put the lid back on (don’t want steam escaping) and bung it back in the oven. Keep the heat super high.

At this point, you can make another dough in the unwashed bowl you’ve just finished using. I know not washing might sound a bit distasteful to some, but it does mean that you end up with a kind of mild sourdough taste to your bread after a few days. The bits of old dough that are in the bowl soak up a few environmental, wild yeasts and then impart that to the new dough you put in there. I guess it depends on whether you can cope with using a “dirty bowl”!

The bread takes about half an hour to cook, but you just have to observe what it looks like. You want a really deep brown colour to the crust. Anything less and it’ll be stodgy and with a really uninteresting crust. My kids call this “chewy bread” and there’s a good reason for it!

This is your masterpiece….

When you (carefully) get it out of the Dutch Oven, put it up to your ear and you will hear it “singing”. I can’t really describe it, but it definitely happens. There will be beautiful cracks in the top and the flour that was on the bench that you put the dough on to rise will now form a great snowy mountain look on the top of your bread.

Allow it to cool. While hot bread is a wonderful thing, it’s apparently terrible to digest, and I think this bread is better just warm. Then grab a good bread knife and start making those wonderful cuts…

The crumb is quite dense, but with these fabulous holes throughout. A bit of butter on that….ah, I’m in heaven!

But for Adrian today, as it was a running lunch, how’s this?

Fresh bread, eggs from our chickens, cheese from our cow. Yum! We could also do the lettuce and the butter, but they’re not available at the moment. Now that’s a pretty good lunch to go.

 

Experimenting

I’m not usually one for experimenting, I’m much too controlled for that. Instead, I like recipes, instructions and the like. So I really like that there are lots of written resources as to how to make cheese. I have a few lovely books which in total have probably nearly 100 different cheeses in them. With so much milk around at the moment, I have started to try to make every different cheese in the book. We don’t eat an awful lot of soft cheese, so that section of the book will take a while, but with hard cheeses you make them then store them, so that section has been (mostly) ticked off. Then there are the “special” cheeses, the white rinded like camembert, the blue cheeses, swiss cheese and red rind cheese. As you know, I’ve tried camembert with varying results, though I hope to start again tomorrow to perfect my technique. Blue cheese I’m waiting on, swiss cheese I’ve made but I’m not sure it worked very well. I really want to make a Port Salut, which is a red rind cheese. In fact, I have made Port Salut twice, but….. I’ve never managed to get my timing right to get it finished so it ends up with the chickens! The idea is that after 6 days, you make up a “red wash”, leave it for a day and then rub the cheese with the wash the next day and for several days after that. Again, maybe Port Salut will be on the menu of cheese for this week. Third time lucky?!

Today, however,  I have broken the mold, and I have embraced experimentation! I know, exciting!? Frankly, the process of cheese making is essentially the same for all cheeses (I’m talking about hard cheeses here), with just a few differences here and there. I’ve been doing a very basic recipe 2-3 times recently and it’s been working really well. Tonight though, I didn’t quite have the time to do the recipe to the letter. So I experimented! Yikes! Careful, anarchy may reign at Ra Puke. I’ve used the same basic process…heat milk, add bacteria and leave to ripen, add rennet and leave to solidify, cut curds, stir and cook curds, drain, salt and press. I’ve just tweaked things here and there so that it actually fit with what needed to happen around here tonight. And I won’t be able to share the results for another 3 months! Got to be patient around here.

And on another note, I would like to admit a defeat. Loom bands have taken over in New Zealand over the last month or so. Everyone has them and they were a great thing for the kids to be doing at school, until the school banned them…thanks for that. But I’m also quite taken with the different designs so I set myself the task of completing a “fancy” bracelet this evening….but it didn’t work. Oh dear, please don’t say I’m going to have to take my own advice to Emily to start with the easy ones…..

Dinner

We had a truly yummy dinner tonight, and have been talking about future dinners.

The first was lamb tagine…I adore Middle Eastern flavours, but don’t actually make much of it. Maybe I should make it a culinary goal. I do like the basic kebab you get in street stalls which is a pitta bread wrapped around felafel (or meat, but we don’t do that), salad and sauces. But I also like tagines, flat breads, sauces and dips, eggplant, garlic, yum, yum yum.

So lamb tagine has been a recipe that I really like, served with rice or couscous. Unfortunately, the girls don’t much like couscous (and to tell the truth neither does Adrian). I’m not sure that this tagine is all that traditional, but the flavours are lovely, so if you like this kind of food give it a go. There are a lot of ingredients, but most of them are spices which are used to marinate the lamb.

First, cut up 1kg (2lbs) lamb or any red meat would work beautifully.

In a plastic bag (big enough to fit all the meat), mix together your spices: 2tsp paprika (I like to use smoked paprika), 1/4tsp turmeric, 1/4tsp cayenne, 1/4tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp salt, 1/2tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp ground ginger. If you don’t have one or two of these, it’s probably ok…I didn’t have cardamom and it was still great.

Mix 2 tbsp oil with the lamb, then add to the bag of spices, mix around and put in the fridge overnight.

The next day, heat up a pan and brown the lamb in batches. Remove it from the pan. Add 2 cubed onions and 4-5 chopped carrots. Cook for 5 minutes, then add 2 cloves of chopped garlic and 1tbsp grated fresh/frozen ginger. Cook for another 5 minutes. Return the lamb back to the pan with the zest of a lemon, 1 tbsp tomato paste, 1tbsp honey and 500ml stock. Being very virtuous tonight, I used the stock I’d made from the lamb bones I had left when I cut up the lamb for marinading yesterday.

Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours till the lamb is super tender. If the gravy is a bit on the runny side for your liking, add 1tbsp cornflour mixed with 1tbsp water.

This does have a little spice from the cayenne, so leave it out if spicy is not you. Please try it, it is absolutely lovely!

Secondly, we’ve been talking about future dinners, and particularly chickens. We have, as I’ve mentioned previously, killed our own chickens, and they are a reasonably sized bird. They do take several months to a year to get to a good size and they are really tasty. So we’ve been talking about getting Cobb chickens. These guys get big quickly. How big? About 2 1/2 kgs (carcass weight)! How quickly? About 8 weeks! That’s almost fast food in this neck of the woods! The downside is that they grow so quickly that their bone structure can’t support their weight and they generally end up immobile by the time they’re slaughtered. Not our idea of animal welfare really, but no wonder they have such pale, insipid, huge breasts! There is an alternative, however, and that is to grow them free range, feed them “normal” food rather than food designed specifically for meat birds, and therefore to grow them slower to the same size and get a carcass with more flavour. That seems like a plan to us, so now all we have to do is source these special birds, which are available at a couple of large hatcheries with a minimum purchase of 300 1-day old chicks! That might be a few too many for us,well, for a start anyway. So if you know a friendly Cobb breeder, let us know won’t you.

Golden Orbs

We at Ra Puke are quite fond of our eggs. Adrian would quite happily eat one every morning fried for breakfast with toast, often with camembert underneath (if only I could make a decent one!), sometimes with baked beans, and on special occasions, with some bacon (and fried bread for a complete artery closure meal). Scrambled eggs are another favourite, me preferring somewhat plain, and Adrian liking his with lots of garlic, a sprinkling of fresh coriander and some hot sauce.

For dinners, souffle is great…I always thought it was a difficult dish to make, but actually all it is is a cheese sauce enriched with egg yolks, with some beaten egg whites folded into it. Pop it in the oven and when it looks like it’s going to go through the roof of the oven, it’s ready. Take it out and serve straight away. Who cares that it will sink, it still tastes super good. Silverbeet pie and egg curry are on the “often” menu list.

Due to this need for eggs, the first animals we ever got (well, apart from cats, but I can’t be without them) were chickens. Four ancona hens that we had in an appallingly small enclosure in Lyttelton, but who were treated to a whole garden planted just for their benefit. They had greens aplenty and their eggs were a gorgeous golden yellow. When we left Lyttelton, they were rehomed with some friendly people up the road. Out next place just never managed to get chickens, and then we moved to Southbridge. There was a hen house already there so we popped round to somebody’s house and bought half a dozen mixed breed/age chooks to get us started. At some point, we started getting a bit more serious about the chookies and started breeding them. We realised that the dodgy roosters we were getting were no good for anything, and we researched breeds that would work for eggs and for meat. That’s when we came up with the Light Sussex, which is a most attractive beasty…

Isn’t he beautiful? And he makes a very large roast…not this one of course as he is our prime breeding rooster. But several of his sons have made it to the freezer this year. Since being at Ra Puke, we have expanded our Sussex population with the Coronation Sussex….

Still large, just very pretty too, and a little less available so you can sell them at a premium.

We also ended up with a posse of other breeds like red shavers (first things we bought to try to get eggs in a hurry, but you have to feed them like crazy to keep them laying), gold laced wyandotte (I want to breed these guys but just haven’t got round to it yet), anconas (harking back to our original “flock” but they aren’t nearly as good as we remember), australorp (a great dual purpose breed), bantams (accidentally ended up with them because I got them from a friend to try to sell on and I never managed to catch these ones), orpington…..that could be it, actually. Oh no, Minorcas as well, a hen from last year’s hatching. So there are a bunch of different girls, who lay beautifully in spring and summer and then have a six month holiday. Not really the point, is it, having chickens, feeding them, and then having to buy eggs from the supermarket?!

But now we have our secret weapon, and our secret weapon is Milkshake….her milk, rather than herself. We started feeding the whey from cheese making, any dud cheese, and any old milk to the chickens by mixing it with their pellets morning and night. The only reason we did this was because the pigs had gone, otherwise we may never have made our most eggcellent (sorry, had to get it in their somewhere) discovery. Our chookies started laying eggs. First just a couple of eggs, but now, two months later, we got 15 eggs today! What do you do with 15 eggs a day?

And this evening we had a peruse of our eggs and this is what we found…

What an interesting array, we did think…you may have guessed that the one on the left might not be from Ra Puke, or at least not from one of our chickens. There have been no major genetic mutations here to date! It is a blown ostrich egg that someone gave me once. When they gave it to me, it wasn’t blown and let me tell you there are a lot of servings of scrambled eggs in one ostrich egg! All the others are from Ra Puke, from the monster (presumably) double yolker next to Mrs Ostrich, to the bullet pristine white, to the standard supermarket type/size shaver egg, the lovely pale brown Sussex egg, the smaller creamy egg, and finally the miniature chicken. I don’t know how eggs this little happen, but it’s very cute, and no, it doesn’t come out of a miniature chicken….at least I haven’t seen one about recently…..

And she’s 5!

Yep, today’s the day. At 3.15pm on July 3 2009, Tara was born. She had a great birth, coming quickly but not too quickly, and while Adrian’s jeans will never be the same after me almost yanking the belt loops off, it was not too bad as labours go. Tara was a whopper, too ,weighing in at a portly 9lbs13oz. I remember vividly a midwife on the labour ward seeing me going up to the postnatal ward and viewing my gorgeous new bundle. Her only comment was “Wow, you’re gonna need huge bazoomers to feed that one!” Seriously, she said that!

Tara has developed into a cheerful, considerate, charming little girl. Everyone comments on her ability to empathise with people and creatures. She is very kind, thanking people profusely for her presents today. When her granny rang, the first thing she said (and there was NO prompting going on!) was “thankyou so much for my presents granny”. Tara is loved wherever she goes, and for that we are tremendously proud…and thankful!

Tara also has a steely resolve, and a strong personality which will probably lead her to significant teenage rebellion, fast cars, boys, and all the other things that go with that. Why do you think we moved to the country?! She runs the risk of being a bit of a bad girl and is already causing concern for some of the older group of girls at school as she is hanging out with the “bad” crowd! Hah! Is there such a thing at age 5? Two of her wee friends do get on the “hot seat” reasonably regularly, so we’ll see whether they lead her astray. Maybe at first, but I think Tara will sort out what’s good for her reasonably quickly.

But Tara still isn’t sure she’s 5. Yes, we sang her happy birthday today (but we did that yesterday too…twice….so I can see that that could be a bit confusing), and she got to open her bundles of presents and she went to school (but she did that on Monday and she definitely wasn’t 5 then, so that’s a bit confusing too), but the main thing that means that she’s not yet 5 is that she hasn’t had her party! Apparently, a party is the true, genuine, honest to goodness proof of a birthday. So for that we have to wait until Saturday. I think at that point, she’ll be convinced!

And now I’m off to make two more cakes for said party. I’ll leave you with the recipe I’m using, which is the Devils Food Cake that I got from my mum. It’s been many a birthday cake in our family, and it’s the girls favourite chocolate cake. Personally, if you’re thinking of making me a birthday cake, you can never go past a truly scrumptious chocolate mud cake, but the children reckon that’s a bit rich for them…..ah well, I’ll train them up on that one at a later birthday!

Devil’s Food Cake

Place 1 3/4cups plain flour, 1 1/2cups white sugar, 1 1/4tsp baking soda and 1/3cup unsweetened cocoa powder in a cake mixer or bowl. Add 2/3 cup of milk and 1/3 cup melted butter and mix together (take it easy or you’ll be covered with brown and white powder….funny for the rest of your family, but a bit inconvenient for you!) for 2 minutes. Add another 1/3cup milk, 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla, mix then pour into a prepared tin and bake at 180degC for about 45 minutes. My recipe says 30mins, but it’s always quite a bit longer than that. It’s a nice moist cake, as long as you don’t overcook it, and it holds up reasonably well for decorating (not as well as the aforementioned mud cake however….). Yummo…have a go and let me know whether it’s better than your chocolate cake. And then give me your recipe and I’m sure I’ll find some tasters!

Pizza night!

Well, here’s day 7 of my week of food. My menu has worked sometimes but then been hijacked at others. But nothing can hijack Sunday pizza night…except going out for lunch which we did a couple of weeks ago.

Pizza is a wonderful Sunday night dinner. I always think of pizza as a quick dinner, but it never is, so at least I’ve got time on a Sunday to put together all the component parts. It also makes great school lunch for Monday (never any arguments). So here goes:

Dough (done in the breadmaker): 350ml water, 500g flour, 1 1/2 tsp salt and 2tsp yeast (4tsp of surebake). When it’s done, I divide it into two, roll them out and put the fillings on.

Tomato base: I use a very simple base these days of a couple of cans of tomatoes blitzed in the blender, then put in a saucepan to boil down to a spreadable paste. Add some salt and pepper near the end, or if you’re being terribly adventurous you can fry up some onions and garlic and put them in the blender too.

Toppings: whatever I’ve got but tonight we had fresh oregano, fresh mozzarella (homemade of course!), red and yellow capsicum, mushrooms, sliced sundried tomatoes, stuffed olives and feta (again, homemade). That was one of the pizzas anyway.

The other one was made along the lines of a recipe I read from an Australian chef whose name escapes me…he used to be on Surfing the Menu and he’s this kind of blonde surfing bloke. It’ll come to me at some point, so if I just randomly insert a name at any point (Ben something?), please put it in this story. Anyway, his recipe was a potato and gorgonzola pizza. Yep, potato. Never have blue cheese (just waiting till my 1kg block of it will be ready), so I just missed that out and it’s still great. Basically, you spread your uncooked pizza base with garlic butter (plenty), then a handful of chopped herbs (I used garlic chives, rosemary, parsley and thyme), then very very thinly sliced potatoes (if you have a mandolin it does a fantastic job), then more butter and herbs and top it off with a good grating of parmesan (homemade!). It’s yum, especially with some rock salt over the top after cooking.

We always have pizza with chips. Yum!

Sunday is usually a reasonably busy cooking day, but not quite so today as Briar seemed to have what Tara had yesterday. And I forgot that I did cook one thing yesterday! Remember that slow cooked chook from earlier in the week? I had chopped it all up and still had some of the carcass in the fridge, so I added it to the slow cooker with some onions, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme and some peppercorns. Covered it with water and left it on low for 24 hours. Came out beautifully! I only thought about it after reading another blog, the zero waste chef (haven’t quite worked out how to link you to that blog, but I’ll work on it! Oh, done it now!). She actually freezes all the bones after a chicken dinner and then makes stock when there’s “enough” bones. Now I’ve got to put it in some zip lock bags in the freezer.

And of course there needs to be something for the lunchboxes, so as we have loads of lemons and excessive eggs at the moment, a lemon slice seemed to be a good option. Haven’t made anything like this for ages, so found a recipe on the internet for Lemon Delicious Slice. It’s pretty good too!

So that’s a week of food from us. Not as much different bread as I would have thought, and a quiet week on the cheese front, so I can see that there might be a week of bread and a week of cheese at some point. As for this week coming, it’ll be the week of Tara. She starts school tomorrow, officially leaves playgroup and day care on Wednesday ( a cake required for each of these I’m told), has her birthday on Thursday and her birthday party (obviously another cake required) on Saturday. Phew! Busy cake week. Can’t wait.

My Knight in Shining Swandri

Here I am again, no Telecom or sleepiness getting in my way….in fact, for those of your interested, I actually managed to get 7 hours sleep last night without my 2, 4 or 9 year old disturbing me! Historic moment!

So what was on the menu today? I think lamb chops actually, but given that Dal Makhani was next on the list, that’s what we had (oh, and I hadn’t got the lamb out of the freezer!). Adrian and I particularly love Indian food, and have it at any opportunity, so it’s always been a goal to produce really good homemade Indian. There is an Indian restaurant (or two) in Dannevirke, but that is 35 minutes away! So, home made it is. Dal Makhani, or Dal Maharani (not sure if they are actually the same thing, but recipes I’ve seen appear to be fairly similar) is a particular favourite at restaurants, but I’ve never been able to make it nearly as good at home until I discovered a packet of masala exactly for this dish. Those who know me well will be shocked and stunned that I bought a mixed up thing, because I am seriously into cooking from scratch. But seriously, this makes a REALLY good curry, and that’s what I’m after!

The recipe I use then is that which is on the back of the masala packet and goes something like this:

Soak 110g whole black lentils (urid dal) and 30g red kidney beans overnight. I forgot this bit, so moved onto the cooking of the pulses. Cook them in 1.5L of water until they’re soft, adding more water as necessary (they obviously take a lot less time to cook if you have remembered to soak them). Meanwhile, cook up 120g tomato puree with 1 tbsp of the masala, and cook for about 10 minutes. When the pulses are cooked, add the tomato mix and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add cream and butter to taste, and some salt usually, and voila (don’t know the Indian for voila), you have a fab vegetarian dinner. I think you’re supposed to use 30ml of cream and 30g of butter, but that’s just not enough for us, and while it decreases the healthiness of the dish, we only have it once in a while so I figure a bit of indulgence is OK now and then. I served the dal with rice (love my rice cooker) and some flat breads:

2 1/2c flour mixed with about a cup of water to make a dough, leave for an hour or so, roll out pieces into circles (you might have to experiment with the thickness) and then cook in an unoiled frying pan at reasonably high temperature. I cook them for a minute or so on one side, then the other then flip them back onto the first side again. You’ll see air bubbles coming up from inside after the first turn but when you turn them again, they (usually) balloon up. The kids love these flat breads.

Fruit salad and home made (from scratch, not from a Yogit sachet or anything!) yoghurt for dessert. I did add a touch of yumminess (extra yumminess that is) to the yoghurt as the kids are a wee bit sick of the plain stuff…a bit of vanilla paste and some runny hunny did the trick!

More bread rolls today as gave the others away to the neighbours. Replaced half a cup of the white flour with wholemeal today for a touch of healthiness…Miss 9 quite likes it but you can’t push the boat too far!

And cheese…another colby today as I figured I was playing around a bit much rather than settling with perfecting one thing. Currently in the press for it’s second to last time. In an hour it will come out and go back under 25kgs for 12 hours.

But all this really doesn’t explain the rather strange title for today’s post, does it? Well, my menu posting seems very organised and under control but unfortunately my morning was anything but…it started by being surprised that the neighbour had a cattle beast in the paddock next to us. That shouldn’t be too surprising, but they did move them OUT of there only yesterday. On further thoughtfulness, it seemed a bit small for one of his….oh, that’s because it’s mine!!!! NO!!!!!!!!!!! Take Emily to the bus and return to find two of my heifers in there, then 5 (that’s all of them!). Drop children at the lovely Wendy, and go home to discover that the sneaky little beasties had opened the gate from their paddock into the neighbours. Apparently they like to lick the metal latch and sometimes if it doesn’t have a locking thing-a-me-bobby it just miraculously opens! They’re pretty friendly so they’re not a problem to move…except when the neighbour has inadvertently left a 2 year old bull in the paddock. I’ve had a run in (literally) with these guys before and that has taught me not to put myself too far away from a fence to dive over, and given that one of my girls wouldn’t come the short way (next to the fence!) I was a bit stymied. And then along came my knight in shining armour swandri on his trusty steed quad bike with his faithful companion (well that’s true, the dog was on the back). While I tended my distressed damsels (the four who’d come with me and were happily munching grass on the verge), Simon bravely entered the dragon’s lair (believe me they’re just about as nasty those Friesian bulls), and rescued my last damsel. The ladies were happily reunited and chewed their cud contentedly as they wandered up our driveway. I swooned appropriately (yeah right…anybody imagine ME swooning?!?!?!) as my hero emerged from the lair victorious. He went his way (to the sheep he was on his way to in the first place) and I wistfully went mine (whilst swearing in a most unladylike manner at my bovines).

All’s well that ends well don’t you think?