SHORT KNEAD BREAD

For this there is only a 5-7 minute knead. Can be used for a "free-form" crusty loaf or a pan. If making a pan loaf add about 40ml vegetable oil with the water.

4 C strong white or wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon  salt
1 tablespoon instant fast-acting yeast
2 C warm water

Place all ingredients in a large bowl. Keep yeast and salt well-separated from each other til you're ready to work. Mix all of the dry well. Form a well in the middle of the dry. Pour about 1 1/2 C of water into the well. Mix from the middle taking a little more of the dry with each pass. Now mix vigorously until all of the flour is absorbed (add more water as needed).

Note: I make this as dry as possible to make the kneading easier. While fermenting, the mix will soften and become gooey. Drier you start less gooey the final dough. Wholemeal flour might need more water than white flour.

Once flour is absorbed, cover with a damp towel or cling film and place in a draft-free place. Let this ferment for 5 hours. What's going to happen is time substitutes for kneading. Gluten will form and mature over the five hours.

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Scrape dough out of the bowl onto  well-floured surface. At first, knead with a bench scraper or well-floured hands, until the dough is workable. Then knead as usual with your hands 5-7 minutes. Form into a loaf. Place on a silicone paper lined sheet pan. Cover with damp towel or cling film and let rise about an hour. Slash loaf down the middle or diagonally. Bake for 40 minutes. Test for done. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

MUFFINS

If you read recipes for muffins, you will find there are basically two ways of making muffins -- creaming method and muffin method. Creaming method is similar to making cookies or some cakes. Cream butter and sugar; add eggs; liquid and flour. Muffin method is mix all the dry; mix all the wet; mix wet into dry. Although creaming method has more steps, both are fairly simple. If this is true, why are muffins so hard to make correctly.

It is one of the best examples of methodology over recipe. In the textbook I used in my baking courses, making yeast breads was covered before quick breads and muffins, because the author considered quick bread / muffins more difficult to make. I struggled with muffins, especially the look. Mine were coming out flat. I followed the recipes and procedures, but they still came out flat. We seem to have the problem licked; at least for now. This is how we do it.

We use the Muffin Method, but do not add all of the liquid at once. We add most of it, then mix, adding more liquid if needed. Remember, with muffins and quick breads, a little dry left is ok. This is rather stiff batter. Then I add the fruit / filling; usually about 1 cup. Mix til well distributed. So our muffins are made ever-so-slightly dry. Once the fruit "leaks" into the muffin, the final product is not dry.

I'll step aside a moment to explain about overmixing. Most muffin recipes caution against overmixing leading to tough muffins or tunnelling (overly large holes). Although is is possible to overmix by hand, it is not likely to happen. Unless I was making a large quantity of muffins, I would not use a machine.

Back to methodology. I weigh each muffin so as not to over-filling each cup. Final step before baking, I shape each muffin into a peak. Finally, muffins are baked at a higher temperature than recipes recommend. We bake for 24 minutes, the first 6 of which are higher than the following 18.

So methodology over recipe -- slightly dry, weighed product, shaped product, higher temperature. Are these changes to recipes art or science? I think as they are the result of experience, they are art.
What do you think?

Cinnamon Sugar

This is an easy one, but very tasty sprinkled on buttered toast.

Ingredients
Ground Cinnamon        1 Tablespoon
Caster Sugar                  3 Tablespoons

Method

Just mix them together.

PANCAKES

Used this recipe in the cafe for specials a couple of times and at home as well.

Ingredients
Plain Flour                       450 g
Caster Sugar                     60 g
Salt                                    large pinch
Baking Powder                  30 g
-----------------------------------------------
Eggs, beaten                     200 g
Milk                                  900 g
Butter, melted                   110 g

Method

1.  Sift dry ingredients together
2.  Mix wet ingredients together
3.  Add we to dry; mix til combined

Heat a fry pan; add oil. Ladle 60 ml onto hot griddle or fry pan. Fry til top is bubbly and dry-looking, and the bottom is browned. Flip to cook other side. May be held in warm oven while all are cooked.
Once you're used to this recipe, vary the milk for thicker/thinner pancakes. Use veg oil instead of butter if you wish.

g'luck

Wild Onion Pork Sausage

Ingredients
1. Minced Pork at about 75% lean. This is fatter than most minced pork. You may have to ask your butcher to do a special batch for you.
2. Seasonings 3 parts sage, 1 part black pepper, 1 part salt, 1 part garlic powder, cayenne (about a teaspoon for a liter of the other seasonings). A part is as big or small as you like -- teaspoon, tablespoon, cup, etc.
3. Mix the seasonings with the pork thoroughly.

Sausage
1. Weigh out into 1/4 lb balls (about 114g)
2. Flatten the balls
3. Fry in a small amount of veg oil slowly on low heat til cooked through, then brown.

g'luck

Denver Omelet

The way I make omelets is:
1. pre-heat a saute pan with a little butter
2. whip with a fork three eggs (I add nothing else)
3. tip the whipped eggs into the hot pan
4. cook omelet til a light brown underneath, but still a small puddle uncooked on top
5. add on top anything you want cover the pan and turn off the heat (the residual heat in the pan and the eggs will finish the cooking)

Specifically for the Denver, before I start the eggs, I cook the mixed veg and ham. Then start the eggs. when the right point is reached in cooking the eggs add cheddar, hot ham and cooked hot veg. Cover. Turn heat off. Let this sit about 30 seconds to 1 minute and should be cooked.

To plate the omelet:
1. shake the pan a bit to make sure the omelet is loose
2. tip the pan so as to let the omelet slide onto the plate (aim at the far side of the plate)
3. when omelet is half out of pan flip the remaining side on top of the plated side.

The veg we used in the cafe was cut small so as to cook quickly -- broccoli, cauliflower, onion, pepper, carrot.

Good luck

Greek-Style Chicken

This is not really a normal-form recipe...more of a guide. Remember, you are working with chicken. Cross-contamination can be deadly to very young children.

For the marinade. Mix EVOO with lemon juice (fresh works best) and a very small amount of red wine vinegar. EVOO:lemon juice at about 3:1. Amount depends on how much chicken you have; you'll need enough marinade to cover the chicken. To the liquid add oregano, thyme, garlic fresh ground black pepper. Amounts will depend on your taste. Place the chicken in a large non-reactive container and cover with marinade. Wash you hands. Cover with cling film and refrigerate overnight.

For the chicken. I always used goujons. You can use skinned fillets or skinned legs / thighs. If you leave the skin on, the flesh will not take on the flavor of the marinade.

Cooking. You can bake it, grill it, chargrill it. I would avoid frying. You can use the marinade as a basting liquid before and during cooking. Do not use marinade after chicken is cooked. Discard it. The marinade will be contaminated with bacteria from the raw chicken. Cook as you would any chicken until quite done at least 165 degrees F or 75 degrees C.

Enough?

on Experimentation...

It takes a while to bring a product "on line". The reason is that it's got to be right the first time. People have grown to trust our products for a certain level of quality. We have to reach that quality on the initial offering

Many of the recipes that we use in the bakeshop, originated in a published recipe. Most of these do not work well. Some of the reasons are flour differences, humidity in the air, working by hand vs a tabletop machine vs a floor mixer. Sometimes published recipes were badly written or not checked over by someone who knew what they were doing. Result -- bad recipe. Some people who publish recipes purposely leave out ingredients or steps. Sometimes poor results are due to methodology.

When I first try a recipe, I do exactly what it says. If I think that the recipe can be used in the shop, I will edit it: change quantities, procedures, etc. based on my initial results. Then I translate this to a tabletop mixer. If this works well, or shows promise, I make further changes and try it with the large mixer. The final recipe might bear only a passing resemblance of the original one, but now I know it works, at least for me.

We've had more than a few requests for spelt bread. As time allowed, we've been working on it for a few weeks. Probably, next week we'll try it in quantity in our large mixer. I'll let you know the results.

Tapenade

Ingredients
Olives, black or green         1 tin
Capers                                  1 small tin
Anchovies                             1 tin
Extra Virgin Olive Oil          1 Cup
Garlic                                    1 clove
Method
Olives remove stones then rinse with cold water. For the capers, rinse. Crushing these and draining on a paper towel will remove/tone down the brine taste. Basically everything is either chopped vary finely and combined or everything is pureed in a food processor. Add the oil a little at a time to avoid oily taste.
Variation
If you do not like/want anchovies, substitute sun dried tomatoes. Fresh herbs that you think will go well with the tapenade can also be pureed in. Flat leaf parsley or thyme go nicely.

...on French Toast

Several people have asked how to make a great french toast. It is quite simple; only a few things to do.

The batter is eggs, milk and flavoring much like bread pudding. As a matter of fact, french toast is really a bread pudding, one slice at a time. At the cafe, we made our batter with 6 eggs, 1litre of milk, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice. This will yield way more batter than you want. Just cut the recipe, e.g. use 1 egg with 330 millilitres of milk. The flavoring is always to taste. You can adjust even the basic recipe. For example, if you'd like it richer use more egg than I use.

The bread is more important than you'd think. I cannot emphasize this enough. The bread should be a top quality bakery bread -- dense, soft crust works best. A brioche or challah would work quite well, also. The slices should be thick, i.e 2.5cm (1 inch). Contrary to what you might expect,  fresh bread does not work best. It tends to make a soggy product -- 1 - 2 day old bread is best.

There are two ways to cook french toast. On the top of the stove, get the pan hot, add a bit of veg oil or clarified butter. Dip the bread in the batter, leave for a 2-count on each side. Cook on the first side til it is well-caramelized (browned); flip it over and do the same to the other side.

The second method of cooking  takes longer, but gives almost totally different product. Get the pan hot and pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C (165 C for fan oven). Oil the pan. Soak the bread completely. Carefully lift the slice into the pan. Let it caramelize, then flip it over. When caramelized on second side, place in the oven for about 10 minutes. This will turn the mixture inside the bread into a fine custard.

Serve with maple syrup or golden syrup, if you prefer. Some people like to melt butter over. As you like it. Experiment. Let me know your results.
bob