One of my new favourite toys is the ice cream machine I received for my birthday in July.
Since I received it myself and Rob went on a complete ice cream binge for about two weeks! We had icecream every single day with our dinners and I'm sure if this continued we would end up the size of the building. Thankfully we have slowed out icecream intake down, however I do love creating new flavours,so the Orange Sorbet is born.
Unfortunately if you don't have an ice cream maker you won't be able to try this one out. Therefore I highly recommend buying an ice cream making.
Ingredients:
2 cups of orange juice (it took me 8 medium oranges)
1/2 cup of lemon juice (two large lemons)
5/6 tbsp of sugar
2/3 tbsp water
Preparation
Method:
Squeeze the orange ensuring that no bits or seeds are included in the juice, sieve it if nessasary.
Squeeze the lemons and ensure the same. Combine both juices and cover and refrigerate.
In a small pan combine the sugar and enough water to dissolve it over a low heat. Once the sugar is dissolved add this to the juice mixture and continue to refrigerate for up to an hour or until cold.
Once the mixture has cooled add it to your ice cream machine following the machine guidelines. Mine took over an hour to become frozen but it was extremely warm today.
Serve the mixture straight away or store in a sealed container in the freezer until needed.
About a year ago I was on my first management contract up in Alaska onboard the ms. Zaandam. To say the least that contract brought me all matter of challenges and some fabulous memories too. Plenty of these memories were made in Juneau AK (The viking lounge to be precise the he). After an evening in Juneau the onboard acupuncturist told me she found an amazing bakery (http://wildoven.com) and that they do many different types of bread. On the menu she showed me the one that jumped off the page was the "Italian Chocolate Bread". The next week when we got back to Juneau I went looking for this fabulous bakery and it turned out to be right around the corner from my regular watering hole!
To say the least the chocolate bread just amazing. They cut me a nice big slice and I got it toasted and buttered!
Delicious Chocolate Bread
After all this Alaskan excitement when I got back home aka mammy and daddy's house in Roscommon and I went on Google and found a recipe! The catch was that they wanted me to use something called wild yeast(Sour Dough Starter). I had never heard of it, I hadn't got a clue what I was doing, so I did what we all do when in doubt and I googled. Google told me it was going to take FIVE DAYS!!!
FIVE DAYS
I want my chocolate bread NOW. So, I cheated and used regular old yeast..... The bread wasn't amazing, nice but not like I had hoped. I guess needed to teach myself how to make this crazy wild yeast.
Once I moved over to Seattle I decided to give this whirl. The first recipe I found said it was easy -they lied. I tried my best to follow the instructions, but after 3 days I had a foul smelling liquid which had grown extremely furry. I dumped the top half of it and continued on anyway but them I ended up with this solid ball....... None of which the recipe had mentioned I should have. So in the end I threw it all out and called it a bad job!
Seattle
Today however I am trying again with an extremely simple recipe. Flour and Water!! Wow Wee! Now that's not to difficult. It will take a total of 5 days to see if I am successful but if I am, it opens up a whole world of new recipes to me! Here is me counting for a success cause I am seriously wanting me some Italian Chocolate Bread!
So for those of you interesting I have added the recipe for below.
Day One:
4oz All Purpose Flour
4oz Filters Water
Measure ingredients and put into a plastic or glass bowl and mix vigorously until you have a smooth batter. (It will look similar to pancake batter)
You can now cover this with cling film or loosely with the lid or if you are me you can transfer it into a small glass container.
Now you need to leave your mixture somewhere with a constant temperature of 70˚f-75˚f or 21˚c- 23˚c.
Leave for 24 hours.
Day One Wild Yeast (Sour Dough Starter)
Stay tuned for how the next 4 days go and hopefully next week we will be starting some tasty chocolate bread!
Today I have gone for one of my new favourites to bake.
The Baguette! Or at least the mini baguette.
The baguette for all of us will bring thoughts of France and the french baguette, history dictates that the baguette has been used in France from as long ago as the time of Louis XIV.
A Traditional Bakery
Back in the early 19th century the baguette was baked in a deck/steam oven. This Oven used various steam injections to create the proper baguette that we know today. Using my own conventional oven I generally fill a baking tray with water and leave it in the oven while the oven preheats. This creates enough steam for the inside of the baguette to be light and fluffy while having a nice shiny brown exterior.
The modern day professional Deck/Steam Oven
In the beginning when I decided that I wanted to create my own baguette so they would be super fresh from the oven. I had limited amount of knowledge and due to this obviously there was some hiccups. When we say the word baguette we think of round, long and nicely crisp yes?
Well unfortunately for me the first time I did this it looked more like a Ciabatta...... Long, Flat and Hard. I do not have any pictures of this sorry event! I tried to find a google picture of one but it looks like nobody else felt confident to post pictures of there failed baguettes either and I am sure that I am not the only person in the world to have gotten this wrong!
So you are probably wondering what went wrong with my baguette...... Two things turned out to be the problem, firstly when it says in the recipe to grease a bowl lightly with oil use a bowl the oil actually sticks to and rub it on with tissue. The first bowl I used I rubbed it on with my hands and it all just kept sliding down to the bottom of the bowl in a puddle and sides remained dry......... Well I didn't know what I was doing so I persevered.
Unfortunately this lead to the ball of dough sitting in a puddle of oil and raising only slightly. The second problem was the recipe said to lay the baguette shaped dough in to baguette tins or onto a baking tray. I didn't have baguette tins so i lay them on a regular baking tray, this was a major fail, as my baguette grew and expanded they also flattened out.... In honesty they where flatter than Ciabattas by the time I went to put them in the oven, I did try to do some rescue and roll them back up together but it wasn't working. The end result tasted nice enough even if they where extremely crunchy and rather flat.
I think we where lucky to survive it with all our teeth still in tact!
So now to move onto how to create these successful baguettes.
Let them Eat Bread Video
Ingredients:
250g strong white flour
5g salt
5g fast action dryer yeast
30ml olive oil, plus extra for greasing
180ml water
Tools needed:
Mixer with Dough hooks
Two Large Bowls
Cling film
Baguette Tray
Method:
In a bowl add the flour with a 4 wells, for salt, yeast (Do not let the salt and the yeast touch before mixing), Oil and most of the water.
Using your mixing with the dough hooks start on a slow speed, adding the rest of the water until you have a smooth dough. This will take 3-5 minutes depending on your mixer.
Take a separate bowl and lightly oil the sides. Tip the Dough in here and leave to raise for 2 hours.
The Dough will be roughly double in size. Lightly Oil a clean work surface and tip the dough out onto this. Dust your hands with some flour as necessary.
Divide the Dough in two halves and begin to Knock back the dough, stretch and fold for 1-2 minutes roll out into a baguette shape and repeat with both halves.
Place onto the baguette Tray and cover and leave to double in size.
Now Preheat your oven to 425˚F/218˚C in a non-fan oven place a roasting dish filled with water in the bottom to create steam.
When baguettes are risen slash the top of each 3 times and place in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes until golden brown with a slight shine.
Okay welcome to my second attempt at a blog. Apparently when I make life altering decisions I get this urge to create a new blog! My last attempt was at the beginning of my career at sea, working in the spa department. Little did I know that I would really be working 14 hours a day and spend my evenings partying like a rock star. Being that was how life turned out to be, it did somewhat deter me from my task of blogging and keeping the family and world updated on my new life! Well 4 years on and ship life has eventually been laid to rest and there it shall stay. The thing is now that I no longer work a ridiculous amount or hours a day I find myself at somewhat of a loose end these days with trying to find things to occupy my time.......
One of my favourite hobbies that I have maintained over the years is baking which has progressed to cooking and ice cream making as time has gone by. I love to spend my time scouring over the internet for new recipes and something different to create (not that my waistband thanks me for it). When I see a bookstore I love to go straight in to there cookery section to see if they have anything different. I like to think Baking and Cooking and Ice Cream making is an art form that you can get progressively better at with practice! What I want this blog to be is the "how to" of the different things that I decide to create (like WikiHow only classier). I will add in different time-lapse videos to show techniques and how things should look at the different stages and at the final stage. I am however not perfect and this is a hobby having never gone to any form of professional school to learn any of this. Therefore there will be mistakes and failed attempts and I will post those along with the successes because no body is perfect and sometimes these things will help to bring a laugh to our lives. Looking forward to baking on here in the future Tara
