Friday's Vetebrod Easter Loaf

Vetebrod sweet loaf

Another success! Rather than make some hot cross buns I wanted to make a loaf that felt a bit special to have on Good Friday. A book that I've used loads over the years is Bread from ciabatta to rye, by Linda Collister. It is an overview of baking from around the world and contains some delicious, really easy to follow recipes. 

So, for Easter I've made a sweet loaf from Sweden called Vetebrod which is flavoured with cinnamon and cardomom. This is typically served with coffee, but  I think that it will be just as good for breakfast with a selection of cheeses and salami. Although this recipe is a bit fiddly with a filling to make, I must say that it didn't give me the usual angst over proving and rising, even though I did adjust the times to make it with my food mixer.

The initial dough is made by combining 300g strong white flour with 1/2 tsp of salt, 50g light muscova sugar, 10 green deseeded and ground cardomom pods, a 7g sachet of active dried yeast, with 50g of unsalted butter that have been melted in 150ml of hot milk. I mixed a third of the wet/dry ingredients at a time in my Everhot Artisan food mixer on speed 1/2 for 5 mins, to make sure that all were combined. Then it was left to rise for an hour in a warm place to double in size.

The filling was very easy, simply combining 50g unsalted butter with 50g light muscova sugar and 1tsp of cinnamon and mixing in the food mixer on speed 3/4 for around 2 mins until light and creamy.

The risen dough is then rolled to 30cm square and the filling pasted on. This is then rolled length ways and pinched tight at either end. With scissors you cut quite deeply at 1cm spaces, and then alterately pull the dough from left to right. This is then left on a baking sheet under a plastic bag to double in size, taking around an hour. I was so impressed with the size of this when I peeped after an hour. It was then popped in the oven for 200 degrees centigrade for 20 mins.

I do urge anyone interested in giving bread a go, to get this Bread book from Linda Collister, there are some really good bargains on Amazon, and they may save a bit of the heartache that I've gone through with my regular Friday loaf.

Strapping stout loaf

What a strapping loaf this is! For my weekly Friday loaf recipe I have followed the Dan Lepard, Stout Loaf recipe that was in last week's Saturday Weekend Guardian. See the link for the recipe and instructions. I liked the idea of the rye flour, yeast and stout doing the hard work overnight, and found the next day's instructions for mixing, kneading, leaving and resting again quite relaxing. There wasn't the need to knead to exhaustion - the 10 second kneads three times over 90mins was made easy by oiling the work surface and oiling your hands.

And look how the finished kneaded loaf turned out.

This was before having to rise again on non-stick paper for an hour. Unlike my previous loaves, I did make my Everhot work harder, by increasing the temperature to 220 degrees centigrade through the use of the grill (which increases the temperature in minutes) and then lowering the temperature by opening the oven door until it reached 200 degrees. I left the loaf to bake in the oven whilst the door was open and the oven cooling, and it didn't come to any harm.

The result is, if I say so myself, rather splendid, coming in at an impressive 8.5 inches in diameter. It tastes great - very light and malty. It does show that I have a long way to go in adapting the recipes and instructions of Master Bakers (see my earlier bread posts), in order to adapt to my food mixer. I will persevere, but for now I'm happy to have been introduced to such a good traditional recipe. Makes a stout meal with beef stew.

Friday's olive bread loaf

I've used a basic Brewer's yeast bread recipe from a Moro's cookbook for years. It never lets me down, it's really simple to make, only one rise for up to 3 hours and then in the oven for around an hour. Recently I was given a Dan Lepard cookbook Short and Sweet. So, having absorbed his wisdom about the temparature of ingredients, when to knead and when to leave, I've decided to experiment with my basic recipe and add some other ingredients. First up has been a handful of green olives, combining 300g of strong white flour with 200g of strong wholemeal flour (mix with 1 tsp of ground sea salt, 350ml of warm water and one sachet of dried yeast ). Having first worried that the saltiness of the olives had killed the yeast (apprently too much salt does do that), it did rise when left overnight. The resulting loaf was rather good - good crumb like texture and nice firm crust.

My green olive bread

It needed to cook for about 40 mins in a 1lb loaf tin and then for 20 mins out of the tin. We have an Everhot electric range, which is the pride and joy of our kitchen. There are two ovens which can be set to whatever temperature that you want. We have the larger top oven set at 200 degrees and the lower at 100 degrees centigrade, which suits us and suits most recipes, with a little adjustment for the cooking times. It is easy to alter the temperatures in both ovens, and the bottom right hand warming oven helps to keep food from spoiling. Anyway that is a long-winded way of saying that the exact cooking time for loaves, or anything for that matter, is that it's ready when it's ready.

Everhot Electric Range