Herbed 'Pot' Bread

It t has been quite a while since I last made bread. I didn't realise how much I missed bread-making until I started work on this beautiful loaf here. As cliche as it sounds, making bread is therapeutic. The measuring,  the kneading, watching a pile of dough rise and rise and rise, shaping dough into form, smelling the bread as it bakes, watching it rise  ...  man, what a trip. 

I think I may be getting a tad emotional here. Give me a minute to compose myself. This is embarrassing.

Ok. I'm ready. So, after a short hiatus, today I decided to be ambitious. Why not bake two loafs simultaneously? I've got a three-day weekend, what better chance to experiment and go on a baking spree. 

So the first loaf. It's a no-knead bread that uses very little yeast and hardly any technique and absolutely no kneading. It does however take a long time to make — try 20 hours, at least! But what you will get is a very light bread, tasty and, most importantly, with a delicious crust. An actual crust that you can crunch. Yowza. This bread belongs to Jim Lahey's (of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City). It was featured by Mark Bittman in his column in the New York Times some time back and my colleague Marty Thyme pointed me to it last week — she;s made it more than once, successfully. 

As I type, my loaf is currently under construction: I've mixed the ingredients to form a sticky dough which is sitting in a big bowl in a big garbage bag in the corner of my kitchen. It will sit there for about 12 −18 hours. (I made it! I made Jim Lahey's loaf. Read about it here!) Until then, let me move onto For now, let's focus on the second loaf — a herb-infused loaf that is baked in pot.

The original recipe which I found on thepioneerwoman.com suggests using a cast-iron pot. I have a cast-iron pot but chose to use my stainless steel saucepan instead because ... well, the cast-iron pot is soooo heavy and I was feeling a tad lazy. Imagine that!

This delicious thyme-infused loaf packs a punch. So flavourful is it that you can literally eat it straight out of the oven without any spreads (not even butter is necessary). You can toast it but really, it's not necessary. In fact, I'd advise you against it... at least the first slice because you really need to enjoy the flavour of the thyme and butter that permeates the soft, moist bread. 

Ok, enough talk. Let's make bread.

Thyme Pot Bread

4 cups bread flour/all purpose flour

1 cup water

113g butter

3 tbsp chopped thyme

2 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

Melt butter and add the thyme and let it stand for about 5 mins. 

Mix the flour, yeast, salt and yeast together in a bowl. Add the water and then the butter (it should still be warm) and mix till a dough forms. 

Knead the dough for about 15 mins by hand or 7 mins using your mixer (use the dough hook). 

Place the kneaded dough in a bowl that's been greased with some olive oil. Cover with cling film and let it rise for about 2-3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 200C about 30 minutes before you are ready to start work on the risen dough. 

Once the dough  has risen to about double its size (mine took about 2.5 hours), knead it a couple more times to redistribute the yeast and then form it into a round mound (kinda like an anthill) and transfer it into your greased pot/saucepan.

Using a sharp paring knife/blade, cut a deep 'X' into the surface. Lightly rub some olive oil on the surface of the dough, sprinkle some salt and cover the pot. 

Bake the bread in the covered pot for about 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid and continue baking for about 20-30 minutes. 

Remove the bread from the oven, drizzle some olive oil on the loaf and cover with a damp cloth. Let the loaf cool a bit before you cut into it to enjoy the deliciously rich slices of warm, herby bread

Guarding my cuppa (corn)

Corn is one of my all-time  favourite comfort food. Simple steamed sweet corn, seasoned with salt, pepper and a sprinkling of herbs and eaten out of a cup in front of the TV.  It has to be that way, only then is it my perfect comfort indulgence.

Strangely, I haven't much eaten steamed corn in a while. It's not that everything's all hunky dory with my life; more like I've been too spoilt for choice these days and consumed by my newfound hobby: baking.

Still, you never can forget true love and it took very little to jog my taste buds into attention. Last Friday, after watching the almost unbearable new Predators flick starrting Adrien Brody (this is totally my opinion, of course), I was feeling completely unfulfilled. Wish Arnie would stop mucking about and get back to Hollywood already. Anyways, as I was walking petulantly down to the carpark, I spotted a food stall selling steamed sweet corn. Now, steamed sweet corn as a "fast food" snack emerged sometime in the late 1980s. Back then, a cup was only RM1. This little stall was selling a really small cup for RM3.5o. Sure, there were many flavours (compared to thos days when the choice of seasoning was only salt and pepper. This exhorbitant corn had several choices of flavours: original (salt), lemon and pepper, cheese and lemon and chilli.

I stuck to the original. Not because I lack a sense of adventure but rather, I've learnt that when it comes to corn, it doesn't pay to be adventurous. A couple of years ago while traveling in India, I tried a local version of steamed corn: masala (mixed spice) corn. It wasn't vile but I vowed never to try exotic flavoured corn. The masala spices overpowered the natural flavour of the sweet corn and I tasted all spice and no corn.

From then, corn went only with salt and pepper ... and melted butter, of course. Last night, I decided to throw caution to the wind (am exagerating, come on!) and added some fresh thyme to the corn once it had steamed. Lovely. So for now, subtle hints of herbs are an accepted extra to my cuppa sweet corn.

A case for mushrooms

I have way too many cookbooks. Some of these cookbooks I inherited but most of them I bought. I have so many that there are some I haven't used -- sure, I've browsed through them but haven't tested the recipes.

Since we started reviewing cookbooks for Don't Call Me Chef column in StarTwo (together with Marty Thyme and The Hungry Caterpillar), I've accumulated even more cookbooks. Yowza!

So, for today's review, I decided to unearth a cookbook I bought about six months ago at a book sale dubbed the Big Bad Wolf sale: the Good Housekeeping Step-By-Step Cookbook. The 460-odd paged book is an essential for beginner cooks as it has step-by-step instructions on basic but fundamental cooking techniques with recipes to accompany.

But it is also a keeper for those of us who know a little about cooking and are  learning: especially Asian cooks who need to know the fundamentals of western cooking styles using Western flavouring.

From jams to pot roasts, chocolate brownies to paella, the cook book is replete with recipes to try out. For the column in the newspaper, I tested two recipes, one for herbed butter and another for a basic lemon cheesecake. Read the full review and get the recipes HERE.

Having tried the two recipes, I wasn't quite done with the book. There were several other recipes I wanted to try: tomato sauce, chilli sauce, the sweet mocha bread (which looked divine), the chocolate chip cookies (if this book could guide me to baking great cookies, it's definitely gold-star worthy as I am hopeless at cookies) and many more.

I started with the recipe for Mushroom Baskets simply because I love mushrooms and had some on hand.  They're really tasty (you can't really go wrong with mushrooms) and though the baskets in the recipe are individual meal-sized portions, they'd make really good canapés if you make downsize them to tartlets.



There are just two steps to these baskets: Step 1 is making and pre- baking the pastry and Step 2 is making the mushroom filling.

Pastry

250 g plain flour

150g chilled butter, cubed

1 large egg

Crumble the butter in the flour till it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and mix (by hand or pulse in a food processor) till the mixture comes together. Knead lightly on a floured surface and shape into six balls. Wrap and chill for 30 mins. Once chilled, roll the pastry out on a floured work surface (big enough to fully line the tart tins) and line the tins (loose based tart tins are recommended) . Prick the base with a fork and chill for 20mins. Heat the oven to 200C. Line the base of the cases with parchment paper and fill with beans. Blind bake for 10 mins. Remove the beans and bake for a further 5 mins or till cooked. reduce oven temp to 180C.

Making the filling

15g dried mushroom

50g butter

2 onions, finely chopped

450g mixed mushrooms, sliced

1 clove garlic, cruched

300 ml med-dry sherry (I used red wine)

250 gm double cream

salt and ground black pepper

fresh thyme to garnish

Soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water for 10 mins. Heat the butter in a pan and add the onions. Cook for 10 mins. Add the fresh mushrooms and garlic and cook for 5 mins. Remove from pan and set aside.

Put the dried mushrooms and the liquid (about a cup) in a pan with the sherry. Bring to a boil, bubble for 10 mins and add the cream. Cook till it becomes syrupy.

To serve

Put the pastry cases in the oven to heat them up, about 5 mins. Add the cooked fresh mushrooms to the sauce  and season on low heat. Pour into cases and garnish with thyme.