The KitchenAid Christening - Basic White Bread

The plans for having a Birthday BBQ have been shot. The weather is terrible and Hubby is stuck in London. He's working on a project at the British Motor Show due to open in the next few days. He went down first thing Friday expecting to be there until about 3pm, well it's now 1pm Saturday and he's still there. The job hasn't gone as smoothly as they had hoped. When he eventually gets home I think it's going to be a very lazy tea of homemade pizza (what we were meant to have yesterday!) and a good bottle of wine.

After getting over the shock of being given a KitchenAid mixer by Hubby I set about trying to decide what to make with it. When they are sold in the UK, they don't come with a recipe book so it was going to be a bit of an experiment, though I did find some good tips on the internet.

Now, I love baking bread, but never seem to make it often. When I do make it I use the Fresh White Bread recipe from River Cottage Family Cookbook. I couldn't believe how fast and easy the KitchenAid made bread making. I left the dough inside the airing cupboard for a few hours while I popped to the shops. When I returned the dough had certainly doubled...all over the side of the bowl. Never before has my dough raised so much. I beat the dough down, shaped and left it to rest for a further 30 min, I could literally see the dough rise in front of my eyes! It produced a beautiful light and fluffy loaf albeit lopsided, but who cares. The hardest part was trying to leave it once it had cooked to allow the crust to harden. There is nothing better in the world than a slice of freshly cooked bread slathered in butter, heaven!

I've enjoyed the bread making experience so much I'm going to try and bake the majority of the bread we have now and can't wait for River Cottage to release their 3rd handbook all about bread.



Basic White Loaf
Makes 1 loaf

500g strong white bread flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp of yeast (or 1 sachet of fast-action yeast)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp sugar
300ml warm water ( 1/3 freshly boiled, 2/3 cold water)

If you are NOT using fast-action yeast prepare yeast with the warm water & sugar and leave for 15 min to froth.

1) Mix together flour, salt and fast-action yeast (if using).

2) Stir olive oil into the warm water/sugar mix. Pour the liquid slowly into the flour, stirring constantly until well combined. It should form together to make a soft, slightly sticky dough.

3) Knead dough on a floured surface for 10 min. If using a mixer, use dough hook and knead for 2 min. Shape dough into a bowl, place in a lightly oiled bowl and leave to prove in a warm, draft-less place for 2 hours (or until dough has doubled in size).

4) Preheat oven to 240oc. Flatten the risen dough with your hand then knead for a further 30 seconds on a floured surface. Roll out into a fat sausage shape and place in a lightly greased 2lb loaf tin or onto a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with flour and leave to prove for a further 30 min.

5) Cook bread for 10 min at 240oc then turn the oven down to 200oc. Cook bread for a further 10 min. Carefully lift the loaf out of the tin, turn over and cook for another 5 min to allow the bottom of the loaf to brown. If you tap the base of the bread and it sounds hollow the bread is cooked. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Basic Hard Cheese & Charity Jailbreak

Hubby's latest edible project, basic hard cheese, has been a month in the making. He found out how to make it on the Creative Living forum. I never realised cheese making involved such a basic process. It was very interesting to see the milk curdle then the emergence of thick curds that could be sliced like jelly and the whey in which the curds floated. I did try to get a picture of this process, but it just didn't work out. I challenge anyone to make curds & whey look photogenic! To help him mould the perfect round of cheese Hubby made a fancy looking cheese press.

Yesterday was tasting day, and I have to say it looks, smells and tastes like basic cheese. It has a slight eau d'sweaty socks...mmmm. He has some Penicillium Roqueforti, so the next challenge is to make blue cheese.

I promise the next post will not be about cheese making!

My brother is currently in France somewhere. He's taking part in a "Jailbreak" for charity where the aim is to get the furthest away and back from the starting point in 60 hours. No money is allowed. It's a case of blagging/begging/hitching as far as possible. So far they have blagged various train journeys within the UK, a night in a 4* hotel, food from KFC & McDonalds and a trip on the Eurostar. As far as I know his team are the only ones who have managed to leave the country. I think he's mad! The map below is tracking their progress.


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Makin' bacon ... plus salami & chorizo - part 1

This post should really be titled "The Hubby who wants to be Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall", oh and I before I go on I suggest veggies, click away now! Hubby's first flit with being Hugh started last summer when he built a clay oven in the back garden. Give him his due it turned out to be a fab oven and that blog post still remains one of my top google hits. With summer just about here Hubby has put his Hugh hat back on.

This time it's the turn of nettle Beer, bacon, salami & chorizo. It has reached the point to where he has built his own smoker and the outhouse has become the place of preserved meat all hanging from the beams. All of this has come about since I purchased Meat. I am thinking of also buying Fish, but am a bit hesitant as to the fact I may come home one day and find Hubby filleting a huge fish ready to smoke in his homemade smoker!



A couple of weeks ago hubby started on the cured belly pork, which in theory will turn into streaky bacon. He dry cured it with salt, peppercorns and bay leaves, wrapped it in muslin then hung it in the outhouse to dry for a week. The first time we tried it, it was unbearably salty because Hubby hadn't washed the salt cure off properly so after a good soaking in water and another week of hanging it's now tasting a great deal more edible. In the next few weeks he is planning to smoke half of it. Some people use saltpetre to maintain the colour of the meat however were unable to get our hands on saltpetre (unbeknown to us at the time apparently used in bomb making) not surprisingly the woman in Holland & Barret gave us a rather scared look when we asked for it!

This weekend Hubby's new sausage making kit arrived so he decided to try and make chorizo and salami. The basic method for the two are very similar apart from chorizo has paprika and the salami he made had different spices and pistachios in it. I have to admit I left him too it. The sight of the ox runners (intestines) were reminding me too much of specimens I studied during the Parasitology module in Uni! Given the fact I was slightly freaked out by the ox runners the meat mixes he made up smelt very authentic. These sausages are also now hanging up in the outhouse. I look forward to trying them in about 4 weeks time. The Cottage Smallholder are also curing pork and salami at the moment and it has been great reading their blog and getting tips.

Vanilla Sugar

Vanilla sugar has been a staple in my kitchen for a long time. I first came across the idea many moons ago on a Jamie O programme and decided rather than paying a hefty amount for shop bought vanilla sugar I would make my own.

Vanilla Sugar

500ml Kilner jar (or similar)
500g caster sugar
2 vanilla pods slit down the length

Pour sugar in jar then add vanilla pods. When ever you use a vanilla pod and have removed the seeds put the in the jar and add to your vanilla pod collection!


I use it in the majority of baking I do and it's a great way to use up expensive vanilla pods that have had the seeds removed. I used it to make Lemon Drizzle Cake a few days ago. I have to admit the second time round for making the cake I got a bit cocky and used 2 small lemons and a lime, well they did need using up. Although the cake was still nice, it wasn't a good as the original cake from a few weeks back. It was almost too tart.

Tonight's dinner was another recipe from my sister. Essentially I dipped a pork steak in egg then coated in dry stuffing mix then baked for 25 min at 180oc. It was lovely but the photo I took looked like it was straight out of a 1960's cookbook so I won't be sharing that with you!

Homemade Butter

This weekend was another weekend-long family gathering in Warwickshire. Like everytime we meet up there is lots of food left over by the Sunday afternoon. I managed to bring home, amongst other things, enough sausages to make a meatloaf tomorrow and nearly a litre of double cream. Not wanting the cream to be wasted I set about making butter.

I first came across homemade butter while flicking through River Cottage Family Cookbook a few years back. Never did I think it could be so easy to make. To make it even better not only do you end up with fresh butter you also produce buttermilk which is fantastic for making pancakes and scones.

Making butter this way takes some serious elbow grease, but it is great and satisfying to see the cream turn into butter. While watching a recording of Cook with Gordon, between the two of us we managed to churn out 5 pats of butter.

Homemade Butter

Double cream (ideally not really fresh cream)
jam jar

1) Allow cream to get to room temperature before using. Half fill the jam jar with cream and tightly screw on the lid.

2) Shake the jar enough so you can feel the cream slop against the lid. Keep shaking. All of a sudden you'll notice the slopping sound stop; at this point you have whipped cream.

3) Keep on shaking! All of a sudden the slopping sound will return and you'll notice a large lump sloshing around in a watery liquid. This can take anywhere between 10-30min. Carefully open the lid. If the butter looks like fine cottage cheese shake for a few more seconds until you end up with a smoothish round ball. The solid is the butter and the liquid is buttermilk.

4) Pour off the buttermilk into a bowl and fill jar with cold water. Swil and keep on changing the water until it is clear. Squeeze the ball of butter in your hands to rid of excess buttermilk. It is important to remove as much buttermilk as you can as this can make the butter go sour.

5) Shape into a pat, wrap in greaseproof paper and store in the fridge.