Buttery Brioche!

Would you believe I starting making this at 4 am? Well I was awake because I had been watching the last of the gymnastics at the Olympics (yup, us New Zealanders have to stay awake to 3 am to be able to watch the gymnastics) though nevertheless I was pretty impressed with how this brioche came together. I didn’t have any brioche tins (a minor setback!) and had thought to use texas muffin tins, but I only had one tray of those so in the end opted for a loaf option. Why was I so determined to make brioche at this hour of the morning, you might wonder? Well it was not only my brother’s birthday, but he was returning from overseas after a long time and my parents were coming down to my city especially to pick him up, plus it had been my mother’s birthday recently as well….and she had requested brioche especially. And unfortunately, their eta at my house was 7 am, so….hence why staying awake for the gymnastics was a blessing.

Anyway, I definitely did look around at various brioche recipes, especially because I was looking for an alternative to brioche tins. In the end, I went with my trusted (and tired now, at least on this blog) bread book by Treuille and Ferrigno which OF COURSE had a brioche recipe. Using a loaf pan was one of their variants:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp dried yeast

2 tbsp water

375 g white four

2 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

5 eggs, beaten

15 g butter, melted

175g butter, softened

egg glaze, made with 1 egg yolk and 1 tbsp water

1. Sprinkle the yeast into the water in a bowl. Leave for 5 minutes; stir to dissolve. Mix the flour, sugar and salt together in a large bowl.

2. Make a well in the centre and add the yeasted water and beaten eggs,. Mix in the flour to form a soft, moist but manageable dough.

3. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until elastic, about 10 minutes. (I had to add a bit more flour here because the dough was quite wet, and it was ok.)

4. Grease the large bowl, with the melted butter. Place the dough in the bowl; turn to coat it evenly. Cover it evenly. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 1 – 1.5 hours. Knock back and leave to rest for 10 minutes.

5. Use your hand to incorporate the softened butter into the dough.

6. Turn dough onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until the butter is distributed throughout, 5 minutes, then 5 minutes more. Grease a 1 kg loaf tin and then shape dough to suit a loaf tin. Put the dough in the prepared tin, cover the tin with a tea towel and leave to prove until the dough rises until 1 cm below the top of the tin – about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.

7. Brush with egg glaze and bake for 35 minutes until golden and hollow sounding when tapped underneath. Turn onto wire rack to cool.

As usual, shitty pictures! What can I say, I am a bit embarassed about photographing my food in front of guests and hungry family members? But I’m pretty sure that anyone that ate this brioche could vouch for its good brioche-like consistency and flavour! I do definitely want to make this again, and I do want to try a more traditional type of brioche with tins, if I ever get my hands on them. I promise I will take better photos, ok?

Saffron Series I: Lucia Muffins

Ever since I started cooking ‘adventurously’ – or rather when I became vegetarian and had to eat different food from my non-veg family – I have been curious about saffron. It’s one of those ingredients that your average person doesn’t have in their pantry (at least, not where I come from) but it IS one of those ingredients that always seems to crop up where you least expect it – in a home and garden magazine, on food network or in one of your favourite recipe books. Then you consider buying some and giving the recipe a go, but never seem to get around to it or simply feel to cheap to justify splurging on buying some. To cut a long story short, I felt like that for years until this year I finally bought some…and found out that my mother already had a packet in her sorely neglected pantry. Unfortunately her packet expired last year, but I may still attempt to use it. But basically, between the two of us, we have lots of saffron! Therefore, expect to see various saffron recipes on this blog in the near future (sneaking in between other posts, of course) hence why this post is titled ‘Saffron Series I.’ I am also going to add ‘Saffron Series II’ when I am done with this post.

Possibly muffins weren’t the best place to start – my last post was about muffins AND included sultanas – both of which have featured heavily of late. But I’m of the opinion  that one can never make too many muffins, and the recipe for these came from 101 cookbooks, so it must be good! I actually made them a while ago and I don’t remember how much I fiddled with things so it’s probably best to refer to the original recipe. My only words of advice would be DON’T OVERMIX. I know baking recipes always say that, but I found my batch of muffins were a bit tougher than my usual, so I may have been a little too aggressive with the batter. Click here for the recipe for Lucia Muffins from 101 Cookbooks. Enjoy!

Molasses Oaty Muffins

As indicated from my last molasses post, I’ve got molasses on the brain. First it was treacle in baking, now it’s molasses…well, at least that’s a healthier progression, right? I made these this morning and was very satisfied with them. I was initially incredulous at their success, given that molasses is the only sweentener (and I suppose the sultanas or raisins) in the recipe. These muffins have this amazing ability to be vaguely sweet but also seem slightly savoury at the same time – quite a hard thing to come by! Their only downside was that I felt a bit unoriginal pairing molasses with sultanas again – but hey, it’s a good combination! Plus I happened to have sultanas around, though the bag is now finished. Anyway, there’s lots of other delicious things in these muffins as well.

Because I didn’t adapt the recipe much (apart from substituting sultanas for raisins, which doesn’t count) and it’s available online, I’m not going to write it out. You can find the recipe here on Yummly, which was awesome enough to feature one of my posts about a salmon quiche a while back.

 

Molasses Sultana Bread

Ok, so this is yet another bread recipe – I know, I know. But this is more like a cake or a tea bread. I found the recipe when I first got into cooking, when I was about 13 or 14. I was particularly fond of it and have always loved molasses, yet I have not made this for a few years. I only unearthed it when looking through one of my scrapbook cookbooks made from magazine clippings from around the same period. So when molasses was on special last week, I knew molasses bread would be on the menu!

(Also apologies for the formal language but my apostrophe and backspace keys on my keyboard are not working)

From memory, the recipe originated from the NZ Home & Garden magazine.

500g sultanas (add more or less to suit taste – I bet dates would be great too)

1/2 cup soft brown sugar or cane sugar

1/4 cup (approx.) blackstrap molasses

1 cup water

fine grated zest of 1/2 an orange

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups sifted flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

 

Preheat oven to 170 degrees celsius (though I have used 180 degrees and that works too). Grease and line either 3 mini loaf tins or one moderate loaf tin, which is what I use. Place the sugar, molasses, sultanas, water and orange zest in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil,  simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool for around 10 minutes. Add the beaten egg and fold in the sifted flour and baking soda. Divide mixture between tins or to the one tin. Bake until cooked through and an inserted skewer comes out clean and loaf sounds hollow when tapped. The original recipe suggests only 20 minutes baking (which may well be appropriate for cooking miniloaves) but I left mine in the oven for a good 50 minutes. It is very easy be deceived into thinking the loaf is cooked when actually it is still quite liquid in the middle! That said, once cooked – serve warm with butter or margarine. Perfect for those wintery evenings!