fruit bread

One morning D came running into the kitchen, declaring a sudden urge to bake fruit bread. This was a first attempt, a modification off one of our usual bread recipes, and it was exciting to bake! I love fruit bread.



fruit bread

ingredients
two cups of plain flour
1 tsp yeast
half a cup of warm (not hot) water
1 tsp sugar
half a cup of sultanas
half a tsp each of ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg

method
Activate the yeast in the water, then add the sugar. Leave to do its work for ten minutes, then combine together with all of the ingredients. Knead well for ten minutes, then coat thinly in vegie oil, and leave to rise for an hour or two, covered, in a warmish spot.

After it has risen, knead another five or ten minutes, then move the dough into your bread-shaped baking tray. Leave the dough to rise again in the bread tin (about forty-five minutes). Bake for 40 minutes at 180C.

lazy day salad-based noms

D works from home, and as the weather (very very slowly) creeps back to warm, likes to indulge in some salad-based lunches. These are pretty easy to prepare, and easy to find the ingredients for, as there's a grocery/bakery on the corner, about fifty metres from the front of our apartment block.



The first of these was a tofu and salad wrap. Fresh lavash bread, with some leftover fried tofu, hummous, a Coles mixed salad bag and some King Soyland mayonaise. I offer no verdict on the deliciousness of this wrap, as I was not home to experience it, but D assures me it was delicious (and it was also repeated for lunch the next day).



Later in the week I was home for lunch, and I can assure you that this salad roll was indeed delicious. I picked up some fresh turkish bread rolls from the corner grocery (Omara, on Sydney Road, for the curious), a roma tomato, an avocado, and some baby spinach, and grated some carrot. Also added some hummous (because we're totally on the hummous train at the moment), and some soy mayonaise.

Sometimes I forget how delicious the really simple, easy, fresh vegan food can be. It can be really delicious!

mini buns by d

D and I went down south for the weekend with some friends, and there will be a post of awesome noms to follow, but I wanted to quickly blog about these great buns D made last weekend. D used our usual pizza base recipe, leaving the bread to its first rise, then kneading, dividing into seven little rounds of bread, and leaving to rise a second time, before transferring to the oven for baking. Yum!

garlic bread

I love a good garlic bread, with a crisp crust and soft, perfectly-cooked insides. The proportions of garlic to margarine to herbs are different for everyone, but it's so important that they're juuuust right.

This is how D and I like to make it.



Garlic Bread

ingredients
2 damper buns
1 and a half tsp minced garlic
3 tablespoons nuttelex
a whole lot of dried parsley

method
Mix together the garlic, nuttelex and parsley, until well combined. Leave to sit for ten to fifteen minutes. Cut the buns in half, and spread thickly on cut side with the garlic butter. Bake at 160C for about 15-20 minutes, or until crispy but sort of soft.

Serve as as side or a snack. This is a great way to use up some of those one or two remaining buns from when you end up buying a six pack.

the world's tiniest loaf of wholemeal bread

This photo does not do justice to the size of my latest loaf of bread. Being on a bit of a bread kick, and loving the wholemeal and seeded breads as we do, we thought we'd give wholemeal bread a go. The first rising seemed to go like normal, but the second rising, whilst normal in duration, did not proceed as high as usual, and after an hour and a half I gave up and threw it in the oven. It was still tasty! Just very, very small. Does anyone have any ideas why this might have occured?

revisionist bread history

Although we had a delicious bread success last month, D and I are revising the bread making, in the hopes of creating the perfect bread.

Our most recent attempt saw us lengthening the second kneading, extending it up to about ten minutes. We then pushed the dough into the greased baking tray, and left it for a second rising, of about forty-five minutes. This allowed the dough to seal in those places where we had mixed in tomatoes and oil. I think next time I'm going to reduce the amount of sugar in the initial dough, in the hopes it strengthens the gluten strands.

hot cross buns

Hot cross buns are delicious religious iconography, a sweet spiced bun with fruit inside and a cross on top of sugar; or scandalously with no fruit or even with chocolate (SCANDAL) (delicious, delicious scandal).

Hot cross buns are an Easter thing, but I don't think they have a specific symbolism. Certainly I can't remember any details from my seven years of Catholic primary school, and wikipedia doesn't have anything constructive to add. Whatever the reason, they are super delicious, and it is a shame they are only available in the lead up to Good Friday. These are storebought, standard from Coles. IGA also does a vegan bun. Please note that many other hot cross buns are not vegan (Woolies and tiptop, for example).

sun-dried tomato bread

It was pleasing, after the bread-failure of late January, to have a bread success. Now that I've seen a successful bread-rising, I'm pretty stoked - it sort of bubbles, and when you punch it down it really does deflate! This is all very exciting.



Lots of people offered advice, which was awesome. This is how I made it this time, but I will probably add some more tomatoes next time.

sun-dried tomato bread

ingredients
2 and a bit cups of plain flour
2 teaspoons of instant yeast
2 teaspoons of caster sugar
1 shake of salt
1 cup warm water
a small handful of sundried tomatoes, cut small
some dried rosemary

method
Sift together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Make a well in the middle, and pour in the warm water.

Because the water shouldn't be too hot, I boiled water and then left it to cool for ages before adding it to the dry ingredients.

Mix together, then on a lightly floured surface, knead for ten to twelve minutes, adding a little more flour if necessary. Leave to rise in an oiled bowl, covered with a tea towel or similar. It will rise and rise! I left it for about two hours.

After two hours, punch the dough down. Ridiculous but true! It just deflates. Flour your surface and knead the dough, adding the sun-dried tomatoes. You may need to add more flour if there is too much oil in the tomatoes. Shake in some dried rosemary.

Brush a pan with oil from the sun-dried tomatoes. Shape the dough into a round, and place on the tray. Glaze with a little more oil or some milk, and bake at 190C for about forty minutes.

bruschetta

A couple of weeks ago we invited S and Dr A around for dinner. S is ethnically Indian, so when I asked "Asian or not-Asian" she leapt for the non-Asian option, at which point I started fretting - I didn't know what to cook! The old faithfuls, that always, always work, are curries and laksa and things with noodles. Venturing out of that territory feels like hit or miss, though I know, logically, that I am getting pretty good with it all.

D suggested we give bruschetta a go, as the pre-entree snack. Which brings me to a slight aside: because I've grown up in Australia, when I say 'entree' what I mean is 'small first course.' I was so confused the first time I read Vegan with a Vengeance, wondering why the entrees were so late in the book, and why they were so substantial...

I've only had bruschetta a few times in my life, so I don't know how close this is to being actual bruschetta, but it was tasty and I believe it meets the general requirements (bread, fresh tomato, basil, not too much else), so I'm going to call it a success.





bruschetta

ingredients:
one long stick of crusty bread
olive oil
tomatoes
basil
parsley
red onion
salt
pepper

method

I don't think measurements are strictly required in this instance, as your bread stick could be ridiculously long, you might like lots of red onion, etc. But in general:

Slice the bread into rounds, brush with olive oil, and bake at 150C for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, as your kitchen is filling with lovely bread-baking smells, dice the tomato and red onion, and combine with shredded basil, shredded parsley, a dash or two of salt and pepper, and a little extra olive oil. Leave to sit, and when the bread is crisp , dollop the tomato mixture on top. Serve as soon as possible.