Home Baking

Lately I've been very conscious about unnecessary additives you find in commercially sold bread. The obvious answer to this problem is of course to bake your own bread. The only problem I had with this is the fact that all my loaves turn out to be quite dense and even when they tasted good spread with butter or as a side to soup they just wouldn't make proper sandwiches. So I started browsing the internet to find a recipe that would make a fluffier bread. I found this site and thought I might give the recipe a try. And I'm glad I did: Usually recipes I make don't turn out like the should even when tasting fine but this bread actually looked like in the picture shown on the site. Even though I substituted kefir for the milk (I do this whenever I can to use up the huge amounts of kefir that my grains yield) and used a cup of wholemeal wheat flour.

As for the taste, I will have to play around with seasonings a bit the next time, but I was very happy with the texture. Adrian and Aidan were too, so there wasn't much left by the time I remembered to take the picture. It did make lovely toast like it said on the website but it also worked as sandwich. So I expect we'll have more of this bread in the future. 

The other recipe I tried out is this one . Not only did it look beautiful but the quick-no-knead-heading appealed to me as well. I had never heard of a Dutch oven but I figured it must be close to a cast-iron casserole dish which it said you can use instead. I was a bit nervous because of the high temperatures and handling the hot casserole but everything turned out fine. The bread rose beautifully even without kneading and it tasted very good. It's not a sandwich-style bread but I did't expect it to be. I will certainly do it again. It does say to let it rise for 12 to 18 hours or 6 hours in an oven with only the light turned on but mine had risen well after two hours in an oven with set to about 30 degrees celsius.

There's another recipe I'd like to try but I have to be a bit patient for that as I need to make the sourdough starter first which will take a few days. I've made sourdough bread before but wasn't very happy with it. It came out very dense and quite hard. After reading up on this useful website  I figured that I probably didn't knead it enough and didn't let it rise enough. I am ready to give it another try now. I've started making the starter dough two days ago with just flour and water and I'm very curious how it will turn out and if I will be lucky enough to "catch some wild yeasts". It's a bit like trying to trap wild birds I think, you just lay the trap and hope some of them will be lured into it. The first day nothing seemed to have happened but this morning there were a few bubbles in the dough and a vinegary smell so I might be lucky.

My kitchen is getting pretty crowded with all the cultures feeding away: kefir, yeast and sourdough. A few years ago this really would have bothered me, but now I think doesn't look messy, just lived-in and cosy.

Recipe: Kefir Lemon Poppy Scones

A few days ago I had a "day off", meaning Aidan spent the day at his grandparents. When I dropped him there my mother in law was just making scones so I felt a craving for them all the time during my dentist's visit and on the way home. Then my sister Marina texted to ask if she could call in giving me the perfect excuse to start baking. I had a lot of kefir to use up so it had to be kefir scones. But I wanted to add a bit more flavour. After some browsing on the internet I came up with these poppy seed scones that turned out surprisingly well. Luckily I wrote down all the ingredients and quantities.

So here is the recipe:

300g self-raising flour (or plain flour with 3 tsp of baking powder mixed through)
150g wholemeal flour
70g poppy seeds
100g butter cut into cubes
285ml kefir (or buttermilk) plus a little bit more for glazing
1 lemon
85g sugar
1 tsp baking soda


Preheat the oven to 200C fan.
Mix the flour with the baking soda and cut in the butter then use your hands to bring it all together.
Grate the lemon zest and mix with the sugar, then squeeze the juice out of the lemon and mix about half of it with the kefir.
Add kefir, sugar and poppy seeds into the flour and butter mix and stir with a wooden spoon to mix it all together. Then knead with your hands to make a dough.
Turn out onto a floured surface and roll out thickly (no rolling pin required). Cut out circular shapes using a cup or glass and transfer them onto a baking sheet. Use the other half of the lemon juice and mix with a little bit of kefir and glaze the scones using a brush.
Bake in the preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes depending on the size of the scones. They should be ready when they turn golden brown.
Enjoy with butter and orange marmalade!

Food

Food 1: Sugar

A week ago my baby turned two years of age. It's hard to believe that it's two years since he was born. It feels like yesterday. On the other hand, life before him seems so far away. Anyway, I made a birthday cake, or rather my mum and me made several cakes, as quite a number of people were expected to call.

I couldn't shake this guilty feeling though: last year I had made a sugar free cake for Aidan's first birthday, it was sweetened with bananas and blueberries, but this year white sugar played  a big role. (I made this chocolate cake, which is fairly healthy, though the buttercream I used for the frosting is full of sugar, and mum made her famous version of a Milka Torte) Of course it's not the first time that Aidan had sugar. I don't want to be too strict and I don't want to deny him the pleasure of eating sweet things. And it undeniably is a pleasure! But I also want him to be healthy and I certainly don't want him to become a sugar addict. Awareness of how bad sugar is for your health is constantly rising and I've been trying for a while now to reduce the amount of sugar that my family and me are eating. When you have a baby all the nurses and all the books and leaflets tell you not to give your child sugar in the first two years. I do love cake and biscuits myself and so does my husband and of course Aidan got to nibble some biscuits even before he turned one. I don't think this is so bad when it doesn't happen every day. Still I will try to keep sugar at a low level though we could never succeed to eliminate it completely in this house. But since I started to reduce sugar in my home baking I have found a lot of sweets that I used to love nearly unbearably sweet. I think I can regard this as a success!

Food 2: Kefir

A few months ago my husband's colleague gave me some kefir grains so I could start making my own kefir. My mum used to make yoghurt at home but I had never heard of home made kefir. I'm not even sure if I ever had kefir before. I did get hooked very soon! Even when I had to drink all the kefir myself as Adrian absolutely refused it after taking his first sip. And you do get a lot of kefir as it takes only a day for a glass of milk to turn into kefir.

And recently I don't have to drink it all myself: Aidan discovered that he loves it, especially with a bit of orange juice through it. Maybe he likes it because I let him help me to sieve the kefir and then lick the bowl? Whenever he sees the sieve or the bowl or the glass with the kefir grains he demands to sieve the kefir and drink a good bit of it. It's supposed to be very good for you so I don't mind to let him have some of it daily. Apart from drinking it you can use it in loads of recipes. I like using it instead of buttermilk in soda bread and scones. Apart from having lots of kefir you also end up having lots of kefir grains as they keep growing as you make the kefir. I hate throwing them out so  I hope I will find someone I can give them to. I think my mum might take some home. My sister Marina already did and has been making her own for a while.

Food 3: Recipe

This is a recipe that I meant to share for a while now: it's a pasta dish I make for Aidan when I need a quick dinner. I've been making it since he was about a year old.

Tbsp butter
1 green onion, chopped
1 carrot, grated
Tbsp flour
about 200 ml milk
handfull frozen peas
20g baby pasta
grated cheese

Cook the baby pasta according to the instructions on the package. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a pan and add onion and carrot. Fry a little over medium heat then dust with flour and add milk, stirring constantly. You might want to add more milk for a runnier sauce. Cook for a few minutes then add the the peas and cook for another few minutes until peas are soft. Pour sauce over pasta and serve with a bit of grated cheese.