Baking recipes
Scroll through our posts below to try all sorts of delicious baking recipes from our instagram baking videos. New baking videos are posted the first week of each month on Instagram and Facebook.
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Ciabatta - it takes a day...but it's worth it! I swear!
Ciabatta is my favourite bread! I have paid a ridiculous amount of money for a single loaf of ciabatta (and I would happily do it again!), but guess what, you can make it at home for pennies! Literally! My food costing comes in around $0.30 whaaaaaatttt! Amazing! It is a labour of love though because it takes about 24 hours to make, but what else are we doing, it’s quarantine! If I am going to have 24 hours to dedicate to a bread it’s now! Yay! This delicious bread starts the day before with a pre-ferment called a biga. A biga is basically a lump of firm dough, I think in theory it was a lump of the dough from your bread baking the day before, but obviously if I made dough it would all be eaten that day. That lump of dough then sits for ideally about 18 hours at room temperature so it can gain lots of flavour and grow some natural yeasts, giving it that sourdough tang without needing to worry about a sourdough starter, because that takes like a week and I can’t be bothered!
Ciabatta Bread before going into my belly!
Ciabatta
Yield: 1 loaf (approximately 10”x4” rectangle)
Biga:
2/3 cup Flour
1/4 cup Warm Water
pinch of Instant Yeast
Final Dough:
1 1/4 cup Flour
1/2 teaspoon Instant Yeast
2/3 cup Warm Water
1 teaspoon Salt
Biga that has sat for 12-18 hours at room temperature
In your mixer with a dough hook combine your Biga ingredients - 2/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup warm water and pinch of yeast. Mix for 3 minutes on a low speed.
You should have a little dough ball, this is your Biga! Place your biga in a greased bowl with a lid/saran wrap and leave at room temperature for 12-18 hours. It should become bubbly and rise.
Once your Biga is ready to go, place it into your mixer along with all of the other ingredients for the final dough. Mix with a dough hook for 4 minutes. This dough is going to look very sticky and goopy, that is perfect!
Place the dough into a greased bowl or pan that has a lid and let sit and proof at room temperature for about 1 hour or until doubled.
Once your dough it ready you will fold your dough ball in half 4 times, I like to use a rectangle pan instead of a bowl when I make ciabatta because it has 4 sides, and i can turn the pan for each fold so I make sure to do this 4 times. Grab the edge of the dough and fold it in half, then turn the pan or bowl 90 degrees and repeat, do this until you get back to where you started and your 4 folds will be complete! Now put the lid on and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
Now that your dough has sat, you will repeat the 4 folds like we did earlier. Then place a lid on and let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Our dough is now ready to shape. Grab a large baking tray and dust it fairly heavily with flour.
Place your dough gently onto the tray and gently stretch the dough into an approximate 10”x4” rectangle shape. Try not to squish the dough, we don’t want to collapse too much of the volume.
Now heavily dust the top of the ciabatta bread with flour, then drape a clean tea towel on top and let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
While the dough is resting, heat your oven up to 450*F and place a clean metal tray on the bottom rack of your oven, this needs to be hot when we bake our bread.
Once your dough is ready to go, place it into the hot oven, on the rack above the one with the hot tray, then grab 1-1 1/2 cups of water and carefully pour it onto the metal pan that is on the bottom rack and its going to SIZZLE and create STEAM! Quickly close the oven to capture all the steam and bake your ciabatta for about 20 minutes. DON’T OPEN THE OVEN! If you take a peak into the oven it’s going to release the steam we just created and we want to keep that steam in there to allow our dough to grow and expand in the oven before it crusts up.
Your ciabatta will be done when it is golden brown and when you tap it with your finger it should sound hollow.
Place your cooked loaf onto a wire rack to cool (this helps steam from forming under your loaf and giving you a soggy bottom!)
Now eat your AMAZING ciabatta bread! I’m eating mine now! mmmm
Lady Fingers...Prelude to a Tiramisu!
What are lady fingers? Obviously they are these wonky digits on the end of my hands….but ALSO a delicious sponge cake-y cookie used in things like TIRAMISU! These cookies can be little tricky, the hardest part is folding everything together gently, so no taking your aggression out on these babies! Make them in a Zen state of mind!
Last fingers…but the cookie kind!
Ladyfinger Cookies
Yield: about 24-30 3” long cookies
Preheat your oven to 400*F
3 Egg Yolks
3 Egg Whites
1/3 cup Sugar
Flour, sifted
pinch of Salt
Icing sugar for sprinkling on top ~3 Tablespoons
In the bowl of your mixer whip your 3 egg yolks with approximately 60% of the 1/3 cup of sugar (save the rest of the sugar to whip up with your egg whites). Whip until super light and fluffy 5-10 minutes. Then place into a large bowl.
In a super clean bowl with a super clean whisk, whip up your egg whites and pinch of salt. When they start to turn white and foamy, sprinkle in the remaining sugar, then whip until medium stiff peaks form.
In 3 parts, fold the egg whites into the egg yolks, start with one third, gently fold that in until it’s almost incorporated, then add the next third and repeat the folding, and then the final third, until all the egg whites have been incorporated.
Now sprinkle all your flour on top of the eggs and continue to gently fold until the flour has been incorporated. Don’t worry if you have any little flour lumps, that is ok! Try not to over mix your batter or else it will get super runny and make piping a bit torturous!
With a piping bag pipe log shaped cookies onto parchment lined baking trays. Each log should be about 3” long and 1” wide.
Sprinkle the cookies heavily with icing sugar, a sifter works great for this.
Pop into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.
These can now be eaten or made into delicious tiramisu! Which is what I shall be making tomorrow!
Puff Pastry with a side of Sausage Rolls!
Puff pastry is a super delicious flaky pastry dough with hundreds of buttery layers! Perfect for making sausage rolls! The puff pastry we are making is the SLIGHTLY faster “quick puff” or “rough puff” which is a little easier! Yay!
Look at those flaky layers of puff pastry in our sausage roll!
Puff Pastry
Yield: about 1 pound of puff pastry dough - good for 12 large sausage rolls, or 2 tart tatins!
Preheat your oven to 425*F once you are ready to bake your puff pastry
1 3/4 cup Flour
1 cup Butter, cold - cut into large cubes
1 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Water, cold
In a bowl mix together the flour, salt and cold butter, rubbing the butter into the flour but leaving large nickel sized chunks - we want to keep lots of big butter chunks so we can roll them into layers on our next steps!
Pour the cold water into the flour mixture and stir it together until it can be pressed into a ball. You might need to add a little more or less water depending on how your dough is working! I like to dump the dough out onto my counter and press it together into a rectangle shape, then saran wrap it and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Once your dough has rested, roll your dough out into a large rectangle, then fold it into 3rds like a brochure, so the bottom one third of the dough folded up, then the top one third folded down on top of it. This is called a “3 fold”
Roll out your folded dough and repeat the 3 fold again, then wrap in saran wrap and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Once chilled, you will repeat the 3 fold 2 more times, then wrap and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Now your puff pastry is ready to go! You can store it in the fridge or in the freezer. I cut my puff pastry in half, used one, and popped the other into the freezer for another time!
Sausage Rolls
Yield: 6 large ~3” long rolls
Preheat oven to 425*F
1/2 batch of Puff Pastry
2 Sausages (I used Spulumbos Chicken Apple Sausages but use your favourite!)
2 teaspoons Dijon Mustard
Egg wash (one egg with a pinch of salt and sugar wicked together)
Roll your puff dough out into a long rectangle about 18” long and 5” wide.
Using a sharp knife cut slits down both sides of your puff dough about 3/8” wide and about 1.5” long on each side leaving a 2” wide UNCUT section in the middle, this is where the sausage is going to go.
Smear a little mustard down the middle of your dough where you didn’t cut and then scoop your sausage down the middle from top to bottom, but not going on top of the cut strips on either side.
Starting at the top you will grab one of the cut strips and pull it across the sausage towards the other side, then grab the top strip from the alternate side and pull it across in the other direction so the strips are criss-crossing. Continue down the entire strip of sausage and pinch them together at the bottom.
Using a sharp knife cut the sausage roll into 3” long pieces, or whoever she you would like!
Place your sausage rolls onto a lined baking tray, then paint the tops with egg wash.
Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown and the sausage is fully cooked through.
Eat!
Spinach Dip STUFFED Pretzels!
It’s a soft pretzel…it’s a dip…it’s a SPINACH DIP STUFFED PRETZEL! I love dip! Like everything is better with dip! I could just live off of dip. Some people seem to think it’s inappropriate to just eat straight dip though, so what can one do but stuff it into a delicious soft pretzel! They’re SO good!!!
Pretzels EXPLODING with flavour!
Spinach Dip Stuffed Pretzels
Yield: 4 giant soft pretzels
Once you start shaping your pretzels, preheat your oven to 425*F
Dough:
3/4 cup Milk (or water), warmed
1 Tablespoon Honey
1 1/4 teaspoon Yeast
2 Tablespoons Butter, melted
1 teaspoon Salt
2 cups Flour
Spinach Dip Filling:
1/4 cup Cream Cheese, softened
1 Tablespoon Sour Cream
2 Tablespoons Cooked and drained Spinach (I use the frozen kind, thaw it, and squeeze out the water)
1-2 Tablespoons grated Parmesean
1/4 teaspoon Onion Powder
1/4 teaspoon Garlic Powder
pinch Salt
pinch Pepper
Water Bath:
2 Litres of Water
1/4 cup Baking Soda
Egg Wash:
1 egg
pinch salt
pinch sugar
Coarse Salt for sprinkling on top
In the bowl of your mixer stir together the warm milk and honey. Then sprinkle the yeast on top, and let it sit for about 10 minutes until nice a foamy looking.
Add the rest of the dough ingredients - flour, melted butter, and salt. Using the dough hook on your mixer, knead the dough for about 5-8 minutes, or until the dough is in a ball, not sticking to the sides of the mixer, and no longer sticky to the touch.
Place dough into a greased bowl, cover, and let sit for 1 hour at room temperature.
While the dough is resting, time to make the spinach dip! In a bowl stir together all the ingredients for the spinach dip, taste it, and adjust the seasoning to your taste!
Place the spinach dip into a piping bag, or if you don’t have one, a plastic ziplock bag will work. Then cut the corner/tip of the bag off so you will be able to squeeze out the spinach dip once your dough is ready. Leave at room temperature.
Once dough is rested get your water bath going, you will need a pot with about 2 Litres of water and 1/4 cup baking soda brought to a boil. You can also preheat your oven to 425*F at this time.
Now to roll the dough! Take your dough out of the bowl and cut into 4 equal pieces.
Roll each quarter into a long wormy on the counter, ideally about 18” long.
Now flatten out each wormy with a rolling pin so its about 1.5” wide.
Pipe a line of spinach dip in the middle of your flattened piece of dough from one end to the other.
Now fold the dough around the spinach dip and pinch the two sides together as tightly as possible. Try to make sure no spinach dip squishes out.
Now you should have a long wormy again, but this time it’s filled with spinach dip! Grab both ends, cross them, then place them onto the middle section of the wormy so it looks like a pretzel shape. That is a terrible description, but just look at the photo and make it that shape…or whatever shape your heart desires! Then press the overlapping dough parts together so they somewhat stick. Place onto a lined baking tray that has been lightly floured.
Next you will very gently simmer each pretzel in the baking soda water for about 20-30 seconds per side, then carefully remove and place back onto your baking tray. If your pretzel falls apart don’t worry, just put it back into shape on your baking tray once you remove it from the water.
Whisk together your egg wash - egg, salt, sugar. Then brush it onto your pretzels and sprinkle them with coarse salt.
Pop them into the oven for about 10-15 minutes until golden brown! Yay! Stuffed pretzels and no mall required!