Tea-cake loaf

This loaf is similar to a ‘tea-cake’ and is best served toasted and smothered in butter. It uses an enriched (with milk and butter) dough and the usual sourdough starter… if you haven’t got a starter take a look at “Get your starter started“.

Ingredients

  • 2-3 tablespoons of starter
  • 150g water
  • 550g plain flour
  • 100g milk
  • 50g butter
  • 80g sugar
  • 100g mixed fruit
  • 2 teaspoon of mixed spice
  • 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon of salt

Start by preparing a leaven – place 2-3 tablespoons of your starter into a bowl and add 50g of water, mixing until smooth. Now add 50g of plain flour and mix again. Set aside.

In a saucepan, heat 100g milk until just before boiling. Take off the heat and add 50g butter and wait for it to melt.

Once melted add 100g of water.

Followed by 80g of sugar and 100g of mixed fruit.

Stir to resolve the sugar and add this to the leaven. Mix well.

Now add 500g flour, 2 teaspoon of mixed spice, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Stir this and, using your hands, form into a dough.

Cover and leave in a warm place for 2 to 3 hours. The dough will grow and become ‘stretchy’.

Prepare a loaf tin. I like to wipe the sides with vegetable oil and then coat with flour. This helps the loaf to release after baking.

Turn the dough out on to a floured surface and gently form into a loaf shape and drop into the prepared loaf tin.

Leave this again in a warm place for between 1.5 and 2.5 hours (check to see when it has become well risen).

Slash to top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 35 minutes.

When baked, remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.

Try to let it cool before slicing.

And serve the slices toasted with butter melting (and a cup of tea)…

Banana Bread

In our family of four, only one likes bananas. We used to buy a couple at a time for him – but, since lockdown and on-line shopping, we can only buy bananas in bunches of seven. We do sometimes buy a bunch for him; but, inevitably he doesn’t eat all seven before they start to go squidgy. So now, we use two or three of them to make some banana bread which, for some reason, we all enjoy. It’s an easy recipe – mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients and combine…

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Roast tomato sauce

We have had fantastic fresh produce from our garden all summer and the tomatoes from the greenhouse are coming to an end. Time to up-root them and replace them with something new. However, this left us with quite a few tomatoes… time to roast them with home-grown garlic and basil for a wonderfully rich tomato sauce – perfect with spaghetti.

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Madras curry

I have discovered that our boys both enjoy eating Indian curry and I have developed a reasonably easy Madras curry recipe. The details below are intentionally slightly vague as I think everyone should put their own spin on this curry and not follow instructions too closely. Hopefully, these ideas will inspire you to ‘give it a go’.

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Sourdough wraps

These are both fun to make and delicious. The first ingredient is some sourdough starter so if you haven’t already prepared a starter, then head over to ‘get your starter started‘.

These started life as my attempt to make injera bread – an Ethiopian flatbread made using a fermented dough from a grain called Teff. While these are somewhat different, they are a good substitute and are very versatile. Large injera bread are eaten with Doro Wat; the spicy stew is poured on top of the bread and then bits ripped off and dipped in the sauce. We like eating them that way but also enjoy using them as wraps for lunch. The measurements here will make about 8 wraps.

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