The best (yet) naan recipe

200g pizza ‘00’ flour (or plain flour, but something with a bit higher protein is better, this was 11%)

1/2 packet (2.5g) instant yeast (or 5g if you in a hurry or it is cold in the house)

1 tsp salt 

1/2 tsp baking powder 

75g kefir (or plain yoghurt, if it is v solid add a little water)

50ml lukewarm water

1 tblsp milk powder

15g soft butter

Make dough by putting everything together and kneading for 10 mins. It should be not too soft and sticky, fairly easy to handle and stretch well.

Cover and leave to rise until doubled in size (about an hour when in warm room)

Form in to 4 balls by tucking the sides under and gently rolling under your hand, and put in oiled tray covered to rise again (about another hour)

When doubled in size, shape by hand by stretching the dough until most of it is approx 1/2 cm thick. The thinest bits will be almost see through and there may be thicker bits.

Cook the first one you did first so they all get a bit of a chance to rise again a little

Cook (in oven, in frying pan, on bbq)

I cooked it on my cadac bbq on the pizza stone. 

You can do very similar in a dry iron frying pan, but I find this doesn’t work well on our induction hob as it keeps turning itself off when it thinks it is too hot. I guess the pizza stone is about 250°C, I wet the naan on one side before slapping it on, a bit like they do in the tandoor and put a lid over it for a few mins, once cooked it peels off fairly easily and I flip it over to cook the top side. You could try a pizza stone or iron pan in the oven too, maybe with a little splash of water at bottom of oven as steam helps the initial rise…

Next up I’m going to try it in the roccbox. The last time I tried that I had problems with it puffing up like pitta with just one large bubble (great if you want pitta!). But I’m hoping this has been solved with a dryer dough, the knocking back and the hand shaping… we will see!

Update : 

Tried same recipe cooked in the roccbox pizza oven.

I ended up stretching it thinner to stop it blowing up pitta like and it came out super great!

Moulinex pain doré bread recipe

I just bought a breadmaker, because although I enjoy making bread I hardly ever manage to fit it in around the house building schedule, or when I try to I fail to make it back in time for the next step and it goes wrong…

190ml warm water (warm enough to warm the milk to room temp) + 60ml milk

(or 240ml water + 4tsp powdered milk)

1.5tsp salt

1.5tsp sugar

25g butter

400g bread flour

1.25tsp yeast

Program 1 (though I did 3 by mistake!)

Browning 1 if you want to use in sandwich maker

Weight 500g

Unleavened Flatbreads

250g plain flour

50g butter

180g milk

Melt the butter by warming the milk slightly and mixing the two together.

Put the flour in a bowl and add the butter/milk mixture

Mix until it comes together in to a ball and knead gently until evenly combined

Wrap and rest for 30 mins

Divide into 6 pieces and form each one in to a bll.

Roll out the balls on a floured surface until they are 3mm thick

Fry each side in a dry pan for 1 to 2 mins each size until it is cooked with brown spots on it

Stack them on a plate on a warm, but not hot, oven as they are done to keep them warm and moist

No Knead Sourdough Bread

Start in the evening so it rises overnight and is ready for baking during the morning
400g Bread Flour
300ml Water
45g Sourdough (100% fed in the morning)
1tsp salt

You can also make with plain flour, but as this has less gluten you need to prove it a bit less long and use more starter. Generally you need to use less water too as the flour seems less absorbent.

Mix everything together in a bowl. Leave overnight, it should double in size.
Shape and prove a second time.
Bake in casserole dish/dutch oven for about 40 mins (put in to cold oven) at 180°C and then out of the dish for another 15 or 20 mins  until well browned.

This is a plain flour loaf, I find a tin works better as the dough is less strong and needs help holding its shape.

Sourdough bread

With all the excitement of the bread lesson, and having made a lot of bread recently, I have started a new sourdough. I have had them before and they normally go well for a little while but I struggle with getting the bread to rise properly and end up neglecting them and going back to yeast. The bread does taste great, maybe now with so much practice of 'normal' bread the sourdough bread will go better...
This is the first bread (roll) from it which was very tasty and had risen well. Now I just need to keep it alive and well!

 It is a rye starter which is why the bread is a bit brown. The rye flour is extra nutritious for the yeast, and it adds a nice flavour. I am trying a bit of a different technique to previous ones, where you keep and feed a lot less starter and build it up just before baking. Part of the stress I have had with previous ones is that it takes a lot of flour feeding them and the two of us couldn't eat enough to stop there being wasted starter that we didn't use - which seemed to defeat some of the point of making your own bread... so then I didn't feed it enough to avoid waste and it wasn't v healthy...

Bread Baking Lesson

We have a friend who used to be a chef and then teach cooking, he very kindly came round and gave us a bread baking lesson. I learnt lots, it is really good to have someone show you how something should look and feel that isn't possible to get from reading. I learnt to shape rolls and a big loaf much better than before as well as getting a feel for when the dough is risen enough, and getting encouraged to make a leaven before making the dough.

Failed to get photos during the making as was concentrating so hard!

Soft White Bread Recipe

I am on a bread making frenzy at the moment. I want to make bread that can go in the sandwich maker (12cm x 12 cm) and it needs to be nice and fluffy and not holey so the filling stays in...
I have tried a number of recipes

640g plain flour (T45 protein 9%)
2tsp yeast (1 sachet)
70 ml warm water
260 ml warm water
25g sugar
1 tsp salt
27g butter

1lb bread tin

Put the yeast in to the smaller amount of warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and leave for 5 mins
Add the rest of the water and all other ingredients, but only 300g of the flour at this point.
Mix until combined, then add flour slowly until a soft dough is achieved.
Continue to mix for 7 to 10 mins until the dough comes away from the edge of the bowl
Shape in to a ball and place back in the bowl and over it with a tea towel and allow to rise until doubled in size (45 mins to an hour)
Gently shape in to a rectangle about 30 x 25 cm
Roll the rectangle tightly from the short size, tuck the ends under and put in your bread tin
Cover and allow to rise until doubled in size (30 to 45 mins)
Cook in an oven preheated to 200°C

This came out quite well, but felt it could be fluffier. The method was quite a faff so I am unlikely to bother with it, but we shall see, I like to give things a chance. Might try this method with a stronger bread flour to see what happens

Another attempt
400g T65 flour (protein 11%)
240g warm water
15g butter
20g sugar
1 tsp salt
4g yeast

Melt butter in warm water
Mix everything together
Rest for 10 mins
Kneed for 10 mins or until done
Rise for 45 mons or doubled in size
Shape by squishing in to a rectangle and rolling up and folding the ends over
Leave until doubled in size (30mins ish)
Bake at 200 until brown and sounds hollow

This one was a little too sweet and still not quite fluffy enough, but better... I need to try a stronger bread flour I think

Flat bread recipe

200g plain flour
1 tsp yeast
10g sugar
1/2 tblsp oil
50g warm water
60g milk
Salt

Mix everything together in kitchen aid (or similar) for 10 mins.
Rest for 5 mins.
Knead for a further 2mins.
Divide in to 6 or 8 pieces depending how big you want the flatbreads
Form each in to a nice ball of dough like a little roll.
Roll each piece out to 1/2 cm thick. Rest for a few minutes (if you are making pita or pizza rest for less long than if you want a fluffier bread)
Cook in a hot frying pan for about 3 mins each side. You want it browned but not too crispy.
Cook each one, you can stack and keep warm in the oven

Serve topped with minced lamb in a morroccan style (mince fried with onion, garlic and spices and serve with mint and yoghurt or sour cream on top)
Or use to dip in to hummus, taramasalata etc
Or like pita with a filling
Or just as a bread to go with soup or with cheese toasted on top

Reheat wrapped in foil - you can freeze and reheat.

Can also be used as a pizza base.

Lamb flatbread with moroccan mint and spices

Use this flat bread recipe
300g minced kamb
1/2 onion chopped finely
Garlic
Moroccan spices
1 medium tomato chopped
Mint and sour cream for topping

Make the flat bread dough
Fry the mince on a medium until it is dry and sizzling - about 30 mins
Add the spices and garlic and fry for another 5 minutes
Fry the onion in a separate pan on a lower heat until soft.
Mix the meat, onion and tomato together
Once the dough is risen (doubled in size) roll out to about 12 inch circle on a pizza or baking tray
Top with the meat mix
Cook for 15 mins in the oven at 210°C, or until the base is crispy
Top with blobs of sour cream and ripped up mint leaves

Another soda bread recipe

This is pretty much the same as making scones but you shape in to a loaf instead (there is a bit less sugar than in scones)

350g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
80g butter
10g sugar
175g buttermilk or slightly acidic milk (add a squeeze of lemon if required)
1/2 tsp salt

Add the salt and baking powder to the flour
Rub the butter in to the flour mix
Add the liquid to form a stiff dough, don’t overmix, just until it comes together.
Form in to a ball, then cut it almost in to quarters but don’t cut right through
Cook at 200°C for 30 mins or until well browned.

HOMEMADE char siu buns

I would never have attempted making these when we lived in London as there are BILLIONS of places selling them, so it never seemed worth the effort to make such exotic things.

Doug LOVES them and keeps banging on about them, so I decided to give it a go. Plus I did feel that the yumminess of our pork was going to get things off to a good start, even if I didn’t do some other bits quite authentically.

I followed this recipe for the buns
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns/

• 300g all purpose flour + more for dusting
• 40g sugar
• 2 tsp. sugar tolerant instant yeast
• 80g warm water
• 90g milk
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil (corn oil or other oil without strong flavor)
• Salt

Put everything in kitchen aid and knead for 10 mins. Rest for 5 mins, knead for a further 2 mins.

Then leave to rise for an hour (or until doubled in size)
Divide in to 12 pieces, form each in to a ball (like shaping a loaf of bread) and roll out to 10cm diameter.
Put the filling in to the middle and shape the bun.
I watched a video linked from this page to see how to shape the buns
https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/06/carrot-ginger-pork-buns/

Once shaped allow to rise for 15 mins and then steam for 15 mins

The pork char siu I made using this sauce
https://www.souschef.co.uk/char-siu-marinade.html
There were no instructions. I used the whole jar for perhaps 1.5kg of meat. I cut the meat in to slabs about 3cm thick and put it in an oven proof dish, slapped the sauce on top and put it in the oven on 160°C for 3 hours until the sauce had gone gloopy (it started off gloopy then thinned out with the liquid coming out of the pork then dried out again)

It was quite saucy at the end of cooking, so I just cut the meat up and used it as was, rather than adding the things to the char siu pork in the recipe on the first link.

The pork

The pork chopped up

Twelve dough balls

Rolled out flat with the filling on it

The first one - needs some more practice shaping them

The last one - looking better

Raw

Cooked

The final delicious product. SOOOO delicious.

We had only these for dinner, so we were going to be hungry if they didn’t work out!
But they did and we were very full. Amazingly delicious.

I am going to try this soon also, we had it in Paris and I have had it in London too.
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/saliva-chicken/

Naan bread recipe - attempt eleventy billion

We recently had a curry in a restaurant in Tarbes (the Taj Mahal) which was DELICIOUS.

Intermarche has recently started doing curry sauces which are pretty good, so I decided to try yet again making naan bread. They never ever come out as good as in the indian restaurant.

250g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 table spoon oil

1/2 cup yoghurt

1/2 cup milk

Mix everything together and kneed. The mixture should be a soft dough, you may need to add a bit of extra flour.
Leave for approx 3 hours in a warmish place, the mix won’t rise particularly but you are letting the gluten form.
Form in to 6 or 8 balls, use flour if needed to stop them sticking.
Roll each ball flat to about 3mm thick (again use flour to stop sticking) and fry one side then the other until golden brown in patches and cooked through.

These are the best I have made, v tasty and nice texture but just not the same as the indian restaurants. Perhaps I need to try cooking in the pizza oven...

Chicken Tikka Masala made with a kit from Intermarche and one of our chickens. Yum!

We are going to try the butter chicken next

Green bread

Look I made green bread! It has matcha in it. You can taste the matcha slightly. Was pretty nice.

Bread

Looks good huh? I have been making sourdough bread and pizza every weekend.

Sourdough bread recipe

100% hydration starter

67.5% hydration bread

Total 400g strong white flour 270g water

300g flour (plus 50 in the morning if doing overnight)

200g starter (100 for overnight)

170ml water (plus 50 if doing overnight)

Sourdough naan bread

280 flour 170g liquid 60%

100g starter

230 strong flour

40g butter

70g kefir

60 water

Sourdough pizza recipe

Pizza 100% hydration starter

66% hydration bread

180g flour total 120g water

135g flour (35g semolina rest plain flour or all strong white)

90g starter

75g water

Sourdough English muffin recipe

Total flour 400 liquid 270

67.5 % hydration

180 g 100% hydration sourdough starter

310g strong flour

180g milk

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1.5 tsp sugar

For overnight

100g starter

270g flour (plus 80 more in morning)

220g milk

plus salt, baking powder, sugar

roll to 2cm thick

Bread, bread and more bread and sourdough bread

I make bread quite often, but it never comes out quite right. It is fine, but not amazing. I have come to the conclusion that this is because the bread flour they sell in the supermarket here just isn't great. Possibly because it is a small supermarket, but I think more because France has such great bakeries there isn't much interest in homemade bread so they don't have the variety we have in the UK.

I had a sourdough starter a few years ago, but did not keep it up. I have brought some bread flour from the uk and started a new starter. On holiday last week I made quite a few bread products to get in to practice.

Here is the starter. It is going better than the previous one because I have realised I was starving the other one which was indicated by it forming a brown liquid on top. Outside the fridge they need approx a third of their weigh removing every day and replacing with 50% water 50% flour. If you keep it in the fridge you need to do this about one a week instead of every day. I am keeping this one in the fridge.

You can use other proportions of flour and water, but this 50:50 flour and water is called a 100% hydration starter which is what I have gone for as it makes calculations in recipes simple.

 These are sourdough English muffins. I think the dough was a little bit too wet.

But they came out pretty well. There are now plenty in the freezer for Doug to take out and toast for weekday lunches

Sourdough pizza

A really really dud loaf that spread out way too much when rising. Actually it tasted fine, but the shape was no good.

Crumb not too bad

So I got a proofing basket

The first loaf from this came out as the best loaf of bread EVER!
I used the no-knead and baking in a casserole dish method
The dough is 67% hydration

450g flour (strong white)
50g flour (strong white for the morning)
100g 100% hydration starter
320g water
5g salt (1 tsp)

Mix together the flour, liquid and starter (but not the final 50g of flour for the morning or the salt)
Leave to rise overnight
Add the final bit of flour and the salt and mix well
Put in the proofing basket as per any instructions you find on the internet - it goes with the smooth side at the bottom.

Tip out of the basket into the casserole dish, or on to whatever you are going to cook the loaf on and bake as normal.

Beautiful!

Casserole dish, bread recipe

500g strong white flour
370ml cold water
1 tsp bread yeast
2 tsp salt

Casserole dish to bake the bread in. This needs to have a lid and be big enough for the risen loaf. I use a flattish Le Creuset one which is I think 4l (but has a domed lid). The dish can be pottery or glass or metal, whatever you prefer. The purpose of it is to keep the steam generated in a small space with the bread as the bread starts to heat up and cook. A flatter dish is easier to get the bread in to - you are doing this when the dish is hot, so can be tricky.

Mix together the ingredients, no need to knead. The mixture should be quite wet for bread dough.
Leave overnight in a large bowl (it will rise to 3 or 4 times the initial volume) with clingfilm over the top. It should rise right up the bowl and have big bubbles in it, it won't maintain a round shape, but rather just fill the whole bowl as the mixture is quite soft, not exactly runny as it is far more gluteny than that.
In the morning put a few handfuls of flour on to the fixture and squish it down. You need the flour so it doesn't stick all over you hands, but also to thicken the mixture up a bit.
Shape the dough in to a ball and put on a piece of baking paper to rise. I do this in a bowl first then transfer it to a flat plate for a final rise - you are going to need to transfer it in to a super hot casserole dish and that is easier off a plate, but the bowl helps the quite runny bread dough not all flow out in to a too flat shape.
15 mins or so before you think the bread is ready to bake, put the casserole dish  in to the oven at 220C

After rising over night

Shaped and risen again

First part cooked before going back in the oven to brown

Beautiful finished loaf.