By l.martin, on July 20th, 2011   Baking, Bread, Sourdoughs 
These rolls have been on a bit of a journey since Dan Lepards recipe. First scaled up and adjusted to be full sized loaves using levain in place of yeast; and now scaled back to rolls, but keeping the higher amount of wheat flour and the levain base.
This recipe makes nine rolls, but you can adjust it quite easily.
You will need:
100g very active levain 175g organic white flour 150g organic white spelt 50g yellow cornmeal 115g boiling water 230g cold water 4g Maldon salt
Pour the boiling water into a bowl and stream the cornmeal in while whisking furiously. When it’s well mixed, arrange neatly in the centre, cover and leave for 15 minutes. When ready, pour in the cold water and whisk to break up the corn mix. Check the temperature with your finger; it should . . . →Crusty spelt & corn rolls
By l.martin, on July 3rd, 2011 Yeast bread 
Dan Lepard is starting a month of recipes featuring flours from local windmills and watermills; handy since I recently found a local windmill with many different hard to find flours. The original recipe can be found here, this post is just about how I got on.
The cornmeal from my local windmill
The first thing you need to do is make a gelatinised corn mix with boiling water; this helps give structure to a bread where one of the flours doesn’t have gluten.
The gelatinised mix needs to rest for 15 minutes
The processing of the dough requires only light kneading, with two rest periods before you can shape the rolls.
Very large rolls; would make excellent soup rolls as well if smaller.
These took about 30 minutes to prove; it was very hot in . . . →Dan’s spelt and yellow corn rolls
By l.martin, on June 30th, 2011 Tarts 
I’m always wary of posting classic recipes; everyone has strong opinions of what makes “the perfect xxxx”. I have seen a few posts from different people on roast potatoes/mayonnaise/bread and so on that left me infuriated and the last thing I want to do is offend anyone with a classic recipe they don’t agree with.
But still, I do believe I can make a perfect lemon tart so I will throw my lemon and pastry hat in the ring and hope I live up to the challenge.
For the pastry:
250g plain flour 80g icing sugar 125g cold butter in cubes zest of 2 un-waxed lemons 1tsp lemon juice 1 egg yolk half tsp salt some ice water
For the pie filling:
8 eggs 375g sugar not too important, but caster dissolves easier 250ml fresh squeezed lemon juice (from about 5 lemons) 220ml single cream Optional: you can add more zest to the filling but i hate finding . . . →Lemon Tart
By l.martin, on June 26th, 2011 Everyday, Sourdoughs, Supper Club 
A scaled down version of this dish will be the starter at the Roast Chicken & Red Wine supper club in August. This recipe however, is enough to feed four people as a main course. It’s a fiery soup, hot and smokey, offset beautifully by the sweet onions and sharp anchovies in the Pissaladière. If you don’t have a smoke oven, you can use a BBQ, or a grill/salamander.
For the soup
6 red peppers 2 red onions 6 cloves of garlic 4 large tomatoes 1 red chilli A chunk of smoked bacon 1tsp cayenne pepper Glass of white wine Optional: smoked paprika (if you don’t smoke the peppers this is a pretty good substitute)
For the Pissaladière
Around 300g sourdough dough, rested, folded etc. 1 very very large onion, or a number of smaller onions A handful of kalamata olives, stoned 10 – 15 fresh anchovies Olive oil Semolina for the peel/tray
Fire up the smoke oven/BBQ. . . . →Smoked and roasted red pepper soup with Pissaladière
By l.martin, on June 2nd, 2011 Yeast bread 
I recently discovered a local windmill which mills and sells local flour from a shop at the base of the windmill. They sell around 15 different flours, most of which I will be munching my way through in bread form in the coming weeks. My first post in this series uses two flours I have never used before so a bit of an adventure but one ending in delicious, sweet and chewy bread.
I based my recipe loosely on this one, replacing brown flour for buckwheat and taking a wild guess at the types of corn flour required. I also used my KitchenAid mixer rather than getting messy doing it by hand.
300g boiling water 1 tbs honey 145 g yellow corn flour / corn meal 5g dried yeast 120g water 60 g buckwheat 275g strong white flour 15 g Harina P.A.N – White Corn Flour 10 g Maldon . . . →Yellow corn and buckwheat “broa”
By l.martin, on June 2nd, 2011 Yeast bread 
This recipe uses yeast instead of a levain and makes a light brown loaf with a gentle flavour of rye. I’m posting this for a friend who enjoyed the bread and wants to try making it himself.
300g strong white flour 100g rye flour 250g water 5g dried yeast 6g salt
Assuming you have an electric mixer, tip all of the ingredients in and mix on a low speed for around 12 minutes. If you don’t have a mixer, follow whichever hand kneading method you prefer. Leave to rest in the bowl for one hour, then shape how you want; If you want to make a pain de epi as I did, follow the instructions here.
When shaped, prove for around an hour until doubled in size then bake on 225 degrees for 11 minutes, turn the oven down to 160 and bake for 20 minutes more. Cool before cutting.
By l.martin, on April 9th, 2011 Yeast bread 
When I hear “onion bread” I always think it’s going to be shitty; dry, bland, hardly any onions, probably something that’s supposed to be cheese sitting pointlessly on top. With caramelised onion bread you may think the same, until you cut it open to reveal a molten sweet onion centre.
For the dough:
550g strong white flour 350g water 8g dried yeast 10g salt
For the filling:
2 large onions Oil and butter for frying Good balsamic vinegar
Blend all of the dough ingredients together, either by hand or in a mixer. Kneed for around 10 minutes. Let the dough rest for around an hour; meanwhile thinly slice the onions and fry them gently in the oil and butter until golden brown. Add the vinegar and let this reduce until you end up with a rich smelling gloopy mess of onion. Spread thinly on a cold plate to cool.
When the dough has rested . . . →Caramelised onion bread
By l.martin, on April 3rd, 2011 Starters 
I made my San Francisco sourdough starter to the exact recipe from Baking with Passion, and so with Dan Lepards permission I reproduce it here.
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“Our San Francisco sourdough starter, which is a poolish, uses yoghurt, as is typical in American artisanal baking. The polish will raise dough as soon as the fermentation has begun, but we find that it takes a couple of weeks for a real flavour to develop. Bakers will give you pieces of wild yeast starter that have a developed flavour, and these can be beaten into the batter just before you add the fruit.
Vigorous and prolonged beating is important when making the starter, to incorporate the maximum amount of air. This will help to ensure that fermentation occurs quickly and aggressively. Later on, this activity is deliberately slowed as the emphasis shifts away from the generation of carbon dioxide needed to raise the loaf and towards the development of flavour . . . →San Francisco sourdough starter
By l.martin, on March 23rd, 2011 Macarons 
So to follow on from my post from last weekend, I seem to be getting the hang of these macarons. It’s seems to be a very personal thing which depends on your oven, baking trays, how well your blender can grind almonds and so on and so on.
I used the same calculations as the last post to get the ingredients right, and for this batch of 80g of egg whites, I used the following:
Macaron shells
80g egg white 104g almonds 128g icing sugar 64g castor sugar 1.5 tbs cocoa powder
Ganache filling
150g dark chocolate 190ml double cream
The method again is the same as for version 3:
Grind almonds and icing sugar together to a fine powder and sieve . . . →Macarons v.4 – Chocolate!
By l.martin, on March 20th, 2011 Macarons 
I’m a little nervous to jump on the macaron bandwagon; there are so many people making them with such skill that I can’t possibly compete. But it does annoy me when there is something that I know I can’t do, so over time I decided to have a go.
Part 1
My first attempt was based on Dan Lepard’s recipe in the Guardian, a good start as it’s a fairly simple macaron. I couldn’t find the powdered egg white required so at Dan’s suggestion I cracked the whites into a bowl and left uncovered in the fridge overnight to dry out a little. Once I had made and piped the macarons, I left them to form a crust with the help of a fan. This, I had read, should help that shiny crust on the shell develop and let the macaron foot pop out.
The recipe produced a good tasting macaron that looked basically . . . →Macarons attempt 1, 2 and 3
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About Me I love food; cooking it, eating it and having prentious and mildly competative conversations about it. I also play guitar and enjoy the occasional glass of wine or seven.
Based in Tilburg, NL, this blog follows my adventures in food and cooking, trying to eat well in a land where you can buy a horse paste sausage from a vending machine.
For quality suppliers in and around the Tilburg area, see my page on Suppliers.
CHICKEN AND RED WINE?
Click here for my post on roast chicken and red wine
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