Rainbow Bagels - Great British Bake Off

How bright and cheerful these rainbow bagels are! But what are rainbow bagels and how do you make them?

The Great British Bake Off put rainbow bagels in the spotlight in bread week and there was some controversy after Paul Hollywood suggested they represent the NHS. In fact these brightly coloured bagels - which are just regular bagels with food colouring - originated in New York and there were queues down the street outside creator Scott Rossillo’s Bagel Store when they hit the big time (i.e. Instagram) in 2016. Later they moved to London’s Brick Lane, which if you have been there you will know is bagel-central. But do they have anything to do with the NHS? Well no - they are more commonly seen as a symbol of Gay Pride and the LGBT+ community.

Either way, my two year old daughter loves all things rainbow and thought these were brilliant!

 Since they featured as the technical challenge in GBBO there is a recipe on the website. This is the one I followed and I found them quite easy to make - or so I thought because they didn’t exactly turn out perfectly but they tasted pretty good!

They are more time consuming than difficult as you have to add food colouring to five separate pieces of the dough and knead it in. Layering and twisting each piece was good fun and I thought they looked great even if mine weren’t as neon bright as the ones on the TV.

Did you know that you briefly plunge bagels into a pan of boiling water before baking them in the oven? This is what gives the bread it’s shiny outer crust but makes sure they stay chewy in the middle. I actually made these before watching the relevant GBBO episode and it was onto when I watched it the next day that I heard the judges explain that if the bagels spend too long in the water they get a wrinkled effect instead of a hard shiny crust, which is what mine had - the wrinkles that is!

Apparently the water needs to be simmering not boiling. I also don’t think I kneaded the dough enough (for some reason I decided to do it by hand rather than using my Kitchenaid) and I also left the bagels too long to prove as I was making these in stages around doing other things! So in a way it was actually surprising that they turned out so well! Here is a picture of the inside:

If you are baking along with GBBO and have made these or fancy having a go, let me know!

Lamb and Cypriot New Potato Pittas

Most of the time I don't miss vegetables that aren't in season but one thing I'd love to eat all year round is new potatoes. I'm sorry to say I get quite excited when I see new potatoes in Tesco and can enjoy them with melted butter and mint or as part of a potato salad.

 

Well, now you can get new potatoes in winter, courtesy of the sun-soaked island of Cyprus. Tesco have started stocking the 'spunta' variety which are really versatile - they can be boiled, steamed, roasted or baked and you don't need to peel them so preparation is minimal!

You can even grate them, as I have done in this recipe; even when par-boiled the potatoes are still nice and firm. For this recipe I thought about what I associated with Cyprus, thinking back to a holiday I had there about 12 or 13 years ago. The things that stood out to me were lamb, feta cheese and pitta breads, so I decided to make some lamb and Cypriot new potato patties and serve them with feta cheese inside homemade pitta breads.

You can buy read-made pitta breads for this recipe but don't be afraid to have a go at making your own pitta bread if you haven't before, it's super easy and they taste amazing straight from the oven!

Ingredients (serves 4):

 

250g Cypriot new potatoes
1 egg
1 onion, grated
1 clove garlic, crushed
300g minced lamb
salt, pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
100g breadcrumbs
Oil or low-fat cooking spray
75g feta cheese, crumbled
2 tbsp. plain natural yogurt

for the pitta bread:
560g strong white flour

10g salt

300ml tepid water

20ml oil

5g dried yeast or 10g fresh yeast

Method:

Begin by making the pitta bread. If you have a freestanding food mixer with a dough hook, put all the ingredients for the pitta breads in the bowl of the mixer and run it for ten minutes until you have a pliable ball of dough. Alternatively, mix the ingredients in a bowl and knead on a lightly floured surface for 15 minutes then return to the bowl.

Cover the bowl with clingfilm and put in a warm place for an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

While the dough is proving, make the lamb and potato patties. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and simmer the potatoes for 15 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cover with cold water and leave to cool; change the water a couple of times as you feel it getting hot as this is the quickest way to cool the potatoes.

Grate the parboiled potatoes - you don't need to peel them - into a bowl. Beat the egg and mix in.

Grate the onion and crush the garlic and stir in, then stir in the minced lamb. Season with salt and pepper. Finally mix in the oregano, cumin and coriander until well combined.

Put the breadcrumbs into a shallow bowl. Form the mixture into small balls and roll in the breadcrumbs, then gently flatten the balls until you have patties about three quarters of an inch thick. Press each side in the breadcrumbs again to coat.

Repeat until all the lamb and potato mixture is used up.

When the dough for the pitta bread has had 40-45 minutes to prove, pre-heat your oven to its highest setting and place a pizza stone or flat baking sheet into the bottom of the oven.

When your dough is ready to use, separate into 6-8 pieces of the same size and roll out flat on a lightly floured surface into the shape of pitta breads. Place them (you will need to do this in two or three batches) onto the hot pizza stone or baking sheet and bake for 5-10 minutes until risen. You will literally see them puffing up in the oven and start to brown then they are done. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Heat the oil or low-fat cooking spray in a frying pan and fry the lamb and potato patties on each side until golden brown.

Slice open the pitta breads (careful of the steam that will escape!) and spread 1/2 tbsp. plain yogurt into each one. Fill each pitta with a couple of the lamb and potato patties and crumbled feta cheese. Enjoy hot with a green salad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my entry into the Tesco Cypriot new potatoes recipe challenge. I received a £10 voucher from Tesco to pay towards the ingredients. Cypriot new potatoes are available in Tesco now

 

 

 

 

 

Cheddar and Mustard Loaf

 

I wanted to make some bread to have alongside a barbecue at home so had a look in my Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking. This is the book that came out to accompany the series before last that was won by Nancy.

There's a whole section on bread, and I hadn't made any of the recipes from the book, so decided to have a go at the cheddar and mustard loaf. It turned out really well, even though it was left to prove for a lot longer than intended as we went round to my mother-in-law's part way through and didn't get back until late!

To make one large loaf, you need:
150g mature Cheddar, grated
500g strong white bread flour
5g salt
7g fast-action dried yeast
2.5 tbsp. Dijon mustard
300ml lukewarm milk


Mix the cheese with 1 tbsp. of the flour in a small bowl - this will stop the cheese sticking together in clumps. Put aside until later.

Put the flower, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add the mustard and milk and mix together, either by hand or in the slowest setting in your mixer.

Either turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or if you are using something like a Kitchenaid, continue to mix on the slowest speed setting for 3 minutes. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave to rest for 5 minutes, then add the cheese and knead again for the same length of time.

Return the dough to the bowl if necessary and cover with clingfilm. Leave to rise at normal room temperature for an hour until doubled in size (personally I'd advise a warm room or a warm place as I left mine at room temperature and it didn't increase in size that much).

Then roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle. Roll up from the short end and tuck the seam under. Place in a greased loaf tin- I couldn't find mine and my dough was far too long anyway so I put it on a flat baking tray.

Put a large plastic bag over the tin and secure the ends so the dough has space to rise inside the bag. Leave again at room temperature for an hour until doubled in size.

Towards the end of the rising time preheat the oven to 190C/ Gas 5. Brush milk over the top of the loaf and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes until golden brown.

Cool on a rack before slicing. We had a lot more bread than we needed for our barbecue and it kept for several more days which was good. You can definitely taste the cheese and mustard in it!

Bacon and Cheddar Scrolls

I've started doing my shopping in Sainsbury's a lot more - there's a large store only a few minutes' drive from my house, but as I'm still a relative novice when it comes to driving, I only go first thing or I struggle to get into the spaces in their car park! I recently picked up a copy of Sainsbury's magazine at the till and found lots of recipes inside that I wanted to make. As my fiancé loves bacon and would eat a bacon sandwich for lunch every Saturday and Sunday every week if he could, I get rather bored of it (so he gets a bacon sandwich every few weeks). As soon as I saw this recipe for 'bacon and cheddar scrolls' I knew it would be a winner with both of us as it was something different but still within the bacon category!

This recipe makes quite a few (I can't remember exactly how many) so to serve two people I would halve the quantity.

400g wholemeal bread flour
100g white bread flour
7g yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
50g melted butter
1 tbsp light brown sugar
300 ml lukewarm water

For the filling:
4tbso grainy mustard
8 cooked rashers streaky bacon, crumbled or sliced
100g grated mature Cheddar cheese
3 spring onions, trimmed and sliced

In a large bowl, mix the flour and yeast. In another bowl,  mix the melted butter, water and sugar. Fold in the flour.

Knead for ten minutes if doing by hand; otherwise about five minutes in a stand-mixer (I was very glad of my Kitchenaid at this point!). Grease a large bowl and put the ball of dough inside. Cover with clingfilm and leave in a warm place for about two hours to prove until doubled in size.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle on a lightly-floured surface and spread with the filling.

Roll up from the long edge like a Swiss roll and slice into rounds.

Lay each slice on its side on a greased and lined baking tray, cover with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place to prove until doubled in size. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200 C and bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes. Best served warm as part of a breakfast or brunch, but you could also leave these to go cold and take them on a picnic.

I'm sending this to Bready Steady Go, hosted by Lucy at BakingQueen74.

Super-Fast Chilli and Cheese Beer Bread and Vegetable Soup

Last weekend I decided to make soup and bread for lunch. I had a packet of diced vegetables that were called 'soup mix', the idea being you just bung them all in a pan with some stock. I'd planned to set my breadmaker machine the night before so we could have nice fresh bread in time for lunch - and completely forgot.

Was I going to have to give up on the idea of having fresh bread with soup (or send the reluctant other half out to buy some)? Surely there must be a quick bread recipe out there that I could make in a couple of hours from start to finish (I didn't get up very early on the Sunday morning so lunch was only a couple of hours away!). Luckily, there was: there are bread recipes you don't need to leave to prove, and this is one of them.

It's a recipe from the Telegraph for 'easy beer bread with parmesan and garlic'. I think the beer replaces yeast and all you have to do is mix everything and cook it for just under an hour.

I did change the recipe a fair bit as I didn't have buckwheat flour, polenta, fresh thyme and couldn't be bothered to go into the garden to see if I still had any rosemary (it was raining!), oh and I did't have any parmesan either! Instead I looked in the fridge to see what I did have and decided to create my own flavour of mature cheddar and chilli. I also forgot to add the little bit of butter at the end but it was fine without. So here's what I did:

Super-Fast Chilli and Cheese Beer Bread - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

260g strong white bread flour
100g wholemeal plain flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
60g caster sugar
3 cloves garlic, crushed
50g mature cheddar, diced
2 tsp Very Lazy chopped red chillis
300ml bottle beer

Preheat oven to 190C and grease a loaf tin. Mix all the dry ingredients.

Add the beer and mix in well

Spoon into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the oven for 50 minutes

In the meantime here is my soup mix, which I simply simmered with some vegetable stock until the veg was soft, then put it in a blender.

I added some more water as it was a bit thick

 

 Here's the finished loaf of bread

The garlic, cheese and chilli flavours all came through really strongly, so this is a good bread to serve alongside a simple soup - one that perhaps doesn't have an overpowering flavour of its own.

Lunch! And possibly the fastest loaf of bread I've ever made.

I'm sending this to Bready Steady Go, hosted by Jen's Food and Michelle of Utterly Scrummy.

And also to Extra Veg, hosted this month by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary on behalf of Michelle at Utterly Scrummy again, and Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Tear and Share Cheesy Bread

It's always nice to have some fresh bread at a barbecue and good to take something homemade. When I was invited to a barbecue at a friend's in August I wanted to take something I'd made (as well as something to throw on the BBQ) and thought she would pretty much have dessert covered, so I would make bread.

I found a recipe on a website called Chef Jae, though it was for cheese and onion bread and my boyfriend doesn't like onion so I decided to leave it out. Tasting the bread at the barbecue I realised it wasn't cheesy enough so instead of putting a lump of cheese in each section I might grate cheese and scatter it throughout - and use a more mature cheese.

I forgot to sprinkle the extra cheese over the top as well which was a shame as that would have increased the cheese factor. The bread was good but next time I would probably try adding some sundried tomato or some rosemary.

 

 

Langos - Fried Bread with Cheese

 

When we were in Monument Valley in America we ate something called Navajo Fry Bread that was served either sweet or savoury and was kind of doughy on the inside and crispy on the outside. When we went to Vienna we wanted a snack while we were at the zoo and kept seeing snack stands advertising langos which were very similar but I think served with garlic butter. My boyfriend loved them and I kept intending to make them at home but never got round to it.

When I was looking for something to make for Formula 1 Foods to go with the Hungarian Grand Prix I came across langos - I think they are originally Hungarian even though there are popular in Austria. Result!

They are very easy to make; they take a little bit of time as you need to leave the dough to prove twice but only for half an hour each time, so I started making these at 11am and we had them for lunch. The recipe recommended serving them with sour cream and grated cheese which was delicious.

Mix the flour, yeast and water with salt dissolved in it so you have a dough.

Cover and leave to prove for half an hour and then roll out on a floured surface. I had to add a little more flour to my dough as I found it was too wet. Cut out circles with a large circular cutter - I got eight out of this. I would say this quantity serves 2-3 people as a lunch if you have them on their own but I think they would be great with some crispy bacon or you could have just one as part of a fry up.

After you have cut out the circles leave them to rise for another half an hour. Heat about an inch of oil in a frying pan and fry the dough on both sides for a couple of minutes until golden brown. Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream and some grated cheese.

I'm sending these to Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I created to tie in with each country hosting the Grand Prix. Please join in!