Chocolate & Orange Loaf

I've become a real breadmaking fan since moving to Brunei.  The climate in our non-airconditioned kitchen, whilst a pain in the arse for cooking most things as you need to go and have a shower after about 5 minutes in there, is perfect for rising yeasted doughs.  I am in the routine of making a couple of malted granary loaves every fortnight which we slice and freeze so I can just pull a slice out of the freezer on a school-day in my 5:45am stupor, and 3 minutes later have toast. 

I've recently begun some tentative experimentation with sweeter breads, most often the recipe that you find on the side of the packet of the Waitrose Organic Malted Grain bread flour that we buy from SupaSave here in Brunei.  It's a nice loaf with only a hint of sweetness from the added honey, and I often adapt it slightly by using whole hazelnuts instead of the specified walnuts, and also throwing in a handful of raisins.  Eaten toasted, slathered with butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar, it even makes getting up at stupid o'clock almost acceptable.

But this morning I decided to push the boat out still further and have a go at some Chocolate bread.  I had found the recipe on the back of a sachet of dried yeast from Sainsbury's, and had hung onto the empty packet intending to make it.  As the expiry date on the packet is July 2011, I think I must have held onto it for well over a year before I actually got round to making it, such is the speed at which my culinary mind works at times...

But as I said, this morning I tackled it.  I was up and about well before Rob (thanks to him 'forgetting' it was a public holiday today so setting his alarm clock last night... thanks love!) - he had managed to go back to sleep but I was suddenly and irritatingly wide awake and ready to bake.

Here's the recipe:

Chocolate & Orange Loaf

500g strong white bread flour
25g cocoa powder
25g butter
1 1/2 tsp fast action dried yeast
1 1/2 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp salt
Grated rind of one orange
100g milk chocolate chunks
2 tbsp milk
315ml cold water

Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl and rub in the butter.
Add the yeast, sugar, salt, chocolate pieces, orange peel and mix well.
Add the milk and water (I also added some orange oil I found lurking in the fridge) and mix to a dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead for 10 minutes (or 5 minutes in a mixer with a dough-hook).
Shape the dough as required (I plonked mine into a greased non-stick loaf tin) and place onto a well-greased baking tray.
Cover loosely with greased clingfilm (or don't bother - I didn't) and allow to double in size.  This may take 30-60 minutes, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
Carefully uncover and bake in a preheated oven - 200C fan, 220C non-fan, gas mark 7 - for 25-30 minutes.
Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

I'm pleased with it.  It tastes lovely, especially with some salted butter (I love the salty/sweet combination).  Mine has quite a loose crumb as I lazily didn't knead it for the allotted 10 minutes.  My board kept sliding around on the work-surface (note to self, put damp teatowel underneath it next time to stop it moving so much) and the chunks of chocolate also made it tricky to knead well.  So I gave up and left it to rise.  It's now sliced and in the freezer... but I'm a little worried it'll be a pain to toast as the chunks of chocolate will melt in the toaster.  Still, it'll taste great I'm sure, even if it is a little messy!

Pushing myself out of my comfort zone

As you may have gathered, I love cooking, particularly baking cakes. Nigella Lawson's 'How to Be a Domestic Goddess' must be my most-used cookbook, by far. However, there has until recently been one distinctly unused, un-spattered, chapter in this book... the section on 'Yeast Cookery'. Something about using yeast has always scared me a bit - all that frothing and injunctions to have things at exactly the right temperature - all my previous attempts to do so had always been pretty disasterous. This had begun to prey on my mind, and hearing tales of my fellow forummers and their wonderful bread-baking only made me more determined to get it cracked.

Never one to start with the easy option, I leapt straight into my personal baking mission with the zeal of a lunatic... 'Danish Pastries!' More specifically, Nigella's Cheese Danish recipe. The Cheese Pastry is a rare and wonderful thing, made with a sweetened ricotta cheese filling, and is always my pastry of choice when I happen upon somewhere that sells them. This took me two attempts to get right, adapting the recipe for the filling somewhat, but the final product was pretty perfect. I was beginning to realise that the art of cooking with yeast lies in the relaxation of the cook - in the past I would watch the clock in a panicky fashion when the dough was meant to be rising, but I have now come to the conclusion that extra rising time is often needed. Perhaps it's the cool temperature in our house, but I am beginning to realise that nothing will come to much harm if left to rise for much longer than the recipe specifies.

Anyway, back to those pastries - they made the perfect weekend breakfast. And doesn't breakfast always taste better when eaten in one's pyjamas?


Buoyed up by the success of the Danish Pastries, I chose something a little easier for my next project - a homemade pizza base. Again this is Nigella's recipe, and it couldn't be simpler.

I've made two of these in recent weeks. The first one was for a friend's birthday, and I got so carried away with my celebratory glass of vodka and tonic that I omitted to take a photo. The picture here is of my second, smaller, pizza in the process of being topped with roasted tomatoes. I later added asparagus, proscuitto and grated cheese (a mixture of mozarella and cheddar) to make a very satisfying supper - streets ahead of the supermarket-bought frozen pizza that we usually eat.

I had a slight ulterior motive for making pizza dough actually... We have always been fans of the beautiful crispy aniseed biscuits that are so readily available in southern Spain - Tortas de Aciete. Delicately flavoured with aniseed and sesame, crunchy yet flaky, and covered with a layer of crisp caramelised sugar, these really are one of my perfect snacks. Here is a 'real' one, purchased at huge expense from a delicatessan in the USA on a recent holiday:

I made enquiries about making these myself and one of my friends, Melanie, kindly typed out a recipe that she had from a Penelope Casas book. I also found a fabulous blog, Wild Yeast, on which the author had written about making Tortas de Aciete, making the method slightly simpler. With the specified 'leftover pizza dough' I set about making them myself.


I'll happily concede that they don't exactly look beautiful... the final grilling to caramelise the sugar also had the unwanted effect of burning the edges, but they did taste very authentic. I'm sure I'll make a slightly better job of them next time!

And finally, my piece de resistance of yeast cookery... a real loaf of bread!! I've always been slightly resistant to making my own bread. After all, you can buy excellent bread in the supermarket, and I've always thought that home-made bread has a tendency to be quite heavy. Great for toast perhaps, but a little leaden for sandwiches. However, after many rave reviews on the cookery forum, I simply had to give this one a try... the No-Knead Loaf. Now I like kneading dough, I find it therapeutic, but I'd happily relinquish this pleasure to produce a loaf this sublime. Check out this link to see a video of the bread being made. It's what really inspired me to have a try. Plus, we have a Le Creuset 'Dutch Oven' (why does that make me snigger?!) identical to the one that she is using! For those of us who are easily confused by ridiculous measurements such as 5/8 of a cup of water, I used instead the measurements given by my friend Mara - 450g bread flour and about 350ml of water (add as necessary).

After a looooong leisurely rising of about 18 hours altogether I plonked the dough unceremoniously into the pre-heated pan and threw it into the oven. After half an hour it looked absolutely incredible - beautifully browned and made that wonderful 'hollow' sound when tapped. Perfectly done.

I'm sure this bread would have been divine as a 'plain' loaf, but I added 2 tbsp of chopped rosemary to the dough as I was making it to eat with a lemony chicken dish and thought that the flavours would compliment eachother. I was right. However, it was the fabulous texture of this bread that really sold it to me - a crackly crust concealing a moist and chewy, yet light and airy bread inside. Hard to describe really, but just make it and see.

This was all that was left last night after 4 of us had eaten supper and Rob had made a sandwich for his lunch the next day. Just enough for a crisp, herbal-scented slice of toast for my breakfast this morning.