Some time ago I was given the opportunity to review a copy of a new-to-me formula recipe book. The book is called "Grow your own cake" by Holly Farrell, and the subtitle says: 'recipes from plot to plate'.

So basically this book promises to take you by the hand and lead you through the whole process of planting and caring for your home-grown fruit and veggies until you are ready to bake with them!
Baking from scratch and crop sounds like it gives an extra dimension to baking. Grow it, bake it, eat it!

There are fifty recipes in the hardcover book, and each is illustrated with beautiful pictures of produce and the baked goods. Recipes range from savory to sweet, using vegetables and fruit and the gardening pages are interlinked with the recipe pages so you can easily switch between the two. Very clear and helpful. The book starts with general tips and basic procedures:

Many people are convinced they do not have 'green fingers' and that any plant they attempt to grow will wilt before their eyes...

I do believe she is talking to me! Although I am a fervent baker, I am surely not much of a gardener, I simply don't know what to do.

Besides the raspberries and the apple and plum tree in our garden there should be so much more that I could grow. Probably... with a lot of help.

(This is the first year my plum tree is bearing fruit!)

Of course the book follows the seasons in the chapters: spring & summer cakes, autumn & winter cakes. Afternoon tea, pudding and savoury bakes are other chapters.

Up until now I baked one sweet and one savory recipe from this book, one a success, the other... not so much. I baked a sweet potato and marshmallow cake (page 91) which is the traditional Thanksgiving dish but is presented here in cake form instead. My family was a bit apprehensive at first but loved the end product. Then I baked pesto-potato scones... not a success, the resulting scones were tough (overbaked?) and the pesto too overpowering. But.. that being said, I think I probably need to tweak the pesto recipe a bit because mine turned out quite wet.

Besides the usual suspects such as carrot cake, courgette cake and beetroot brownies there are quite a few other recipes that use vegetables. I am planning to try of the more unusual recipes in the book such as fennel cake and the savory pea cheesecake.... Or maybe tomato cupcakes?

And that brings me to the only downside of this book, there are plenty of pictures of the gardening in the book but not every recipe has it's own image, which I normally don't mind because I can pretty much picture what is meant but for the unusual recipes I would have liked a pointer of what to expect.

As a whole I think this is an excellent book with a lovely look to it for the novice gardener who likes to try their hand at baking. I think I will longingly look at my fruit trees and raspberries and leave the gardening to someone better at that. I will bring you a cake in exchange for produce though!


 "Grow Your Own Cake"; recipes from Plot to Plate by Holly Farrell, photographs by Jason Ingram, is published by Frances Lincoln.

BBB March 2016: Auberge Walnut bread

Oh girls all around, are you in for a treat this month! Elizabeth as our Kitchen of the Month came across the most wonderful book in her inlaws kitchen, plucked it from the shelf and couldn't stop reading. She is not the first to recognize the enticing stories and recipes in it; David Lebovitz sang the praise here.

The book is called Auberge of the Flowering Hearth..(charming title already) in which the almost blind author spins a tale of an auberge in the French Alps, where the cooking and living follows the seasons, and the hospitality of the two female owners. The recipe Elizabeth chose to make is a walnut bread, checked against Carol Field's Italian Baker.

On to the recipe then. Please make sure this one is on your list, it will be on mine from here on. (In fact the husband asked me to immediately write down what kind of evil I did to the recipe this time because he just loved the bread!)

Oh and per Elizabeth's suggestion... do toast the walnuts! Toast some more because if you are like me you need the extra to snack on.

makes 2 loaves

Dough

• 253g walnut halves, divided
     » 200g (2 c) whole walnut halves (I added just 100g)
     » 53g (0.66 c) walnut halves, finely chopped
• 420g (1.75 c) boiling water
• 34g (0.5c) skim milk powder
• 36g (2.5 Tbsp) unsalted butter
• 12g kosher salt (2 tsp table salt)
• 0.5g (0.25 tsp) powdered ginger
• 84g (4 Tbsp) dark honey (I ran out of honey so used a combination of honey and treacle)
• 634g (~5c) flour
     » 250g unbleached all-purpose flour
     » 9g vital wheat gluten (didn't have any, didn't add)
     » 15g flax seed, finely ground (added two tbs whole flax seed)
     » 360g whole wheat flour
• 29g (0.25 c) wheat germ (didn't have any, didn't add)
• 60g (0.25 c) water at ~98F (didn't add)
• 6g (2 tsp) active dry yeast
• milk or cream for brushing during baking (de Groot’s recipe calls for egg-yolk and milk) (I used milk on one)
• [I added 1 tbs sesame seeds and 2 heaped tbs sunflower seeds]
• Toasted the seeds and walnuts in a dry skillet

1. Walnuts: In the morning of the day you plan to bake the bread, spread the walnut halves in a single layer on a cookie sheet and toast them in a 400F oven for 8-10 minutes. Watch them carefully so they don’t burn! They’re done just at the moment you begin to smell them. Set aside 200g (2 c) onto a plate to cool. Using a very sharp knife, finely chop the other 53g to produce about 2/3 cup.
2. Mixing the dough: Pour just-boiled water into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in milk powder. Immediately add butter, honey, salt and powdered ginger and whisk until the butter has melted and the honey is incorporated.
3. Add flours, wheat germ and finely chopped walnuts (de Groot suggests grating them(!)) on top of one side of the large bowl.
4. Warm the water for rehydrating the yeast to around 98F, a little over body temperature. Or are you allergic to a thermometer? Heat it until it’s the temperature safe to feed to a baby: a few drops on the inside of your wrist feels warm but not hot. If it’s too hot, add cold water. (Tap water is okay, but pleasedo NOT use water from the hot-water tap! You don’t know how long things other than water have been festering in the bottom of that tank.) Pour the warmed water into a small bowl and add the yeast. Whisk until the yeast has dissolved. Check to make sure that the milk mixture is not above body temperature (do the baby-bottle test on the inside of your wrist again) and then add the yeasted water to the milk mixture. Stir everything together with a wooden spoon to created a rough dough.
5. Kneading: Knead in the bowl (or use your electric mixer’s instructions for kneading) until the dough is smooth, “elastic and no longer sticky”.
6. Proofing: Cover the bowl with a plate and allow to proof in a draft-free area (oven with only the light turned on is ideal) until the dough has doubled.
7. Prepare the pans: Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper.
8. Walnuts and Shaping: Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and divide in two. Roll each piece into a ball. Cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rest for 20 minutes. After their rest, flatten each ball into a disc and even divide the rest of the walnut halves on top, “pressing the nuts in slightly”, then roll each piece of dough to form a log. Joining the ends to make a ring, place each log seam side down on the parchment paper. Cover with a tea towel and allow to rise in a draft-free area until the rings have almost doubled.
9. Baking: Preheat oven to 375F. Just before putting the bread in the oven, spray the tops liberally with water. Put the bread into the oven and immediately turn the thermostat down to 350F. After 35 minutes, brush the tops of the loaves with milk or cream (de Groot suggests using an egg-yolk whisked with milk to create this glaze) and continue baking for about 10 more minutes until the loaves are nicely browned and have reached an internal temperature between 200F and 210F (the bread sounds hollow when knuckle-rapped on the bottom). Remove the bread from the oven. Don’t even think about touching that knife!!
10. Cooling and Finishing: Allow the bread to completely cool on a footed rack before cutting into it. It’s still baking inside! Of course you may want to serve warm bread: reheat it after it has cooled completely. To reheat and/or rejuvenate UNsliced bread, turn the oven to 400F for 5 minutes or so. Turn the oven OFF. Put the bread in the hot oven for ten minutes.

My notes:

- I accidentally switched the amounts of ww and white... oops
- I added caramel coloring because it was there for me to add (bought in Vermont's King Arthur Flour's shop!)
- I completely forgot to fold more walnuts in the dough, nor did I put any on top. Next time I will!

This kind of bread reminds me why I bake bread. It smells wonderful, lovely thin crispy crust, very flavorful. You just need butter. Or soup. Or thin slices of dry cured ham.

Or like I did this morning with the heel of the bread a small wedge of left over french cheese.

We had one of the loaves for dinner last night, with mustard mushroom cream soup and a roasted zucchini/egg plant salad. Yum!

Though the Bread Baking Babes (BBB) is a closed group, you can bake with us as a Bread Baking Buddy every month and here’s how it works.

Elizabeth is your host this month. Bake this Auberge Walnut Bread according to the recipe and post it on your blog before the 29th of this month. Please make sure you mention BBB March 2016 in the subject line and link to this BBB post in your own blog post. If you don't have a blog do not hesitate to bake and email Elizabeth with a pic and your experience. 

Details re email over on Elizabeth's blog, scroll down for all the info you need to become a Buddy Baker and receive your Buddy Badge! She will then send you a BBB badge for this bread that you can then add to your post on your blog. 

Bread by Dean Brettschneider

This book was due to arrive in halfway October but I guess the bake happy people at our national Post service had trouble delivering it because they liked it too much? Finally it arrived; a brand new baking book to browse… the cover alone makes you want to skip all sane advice on eating your veggies and varying your diet and keep your meals to bread and bread alone. This is the newly European released book:  Bread by Dean Brettschneider. Remember Pie? The book that made my mouth water? Well this is another book in the series by Dean Brettschneider and again the lay out is equally yummy.
The book starts with a history of bread making and an extensive list of ingredients, equipment and bread know-how shaped as we know from other breadbooks (eg Peter Reinhart) with step by step black and white pictures of shaping and the stages of kneading and proofing. Very helpful. With more than 60 recipes for rustic, healthy, savoury, sweet and festive breads from around the globe Brettschneider guides you through the process of bread-making, with expert tips, varied recipes and rich photography throughout. He explains the 11 basic ‘know-how’ steps in making and baking breads, from mixing or kneading dough by hand to fermenting and shaping dough, and to proofing, decorating, baking and cooling the finished product.
The last chapter is again dedicated to basic recipes (master formulas if you wish) as we know from his other books. I particularly like the schedule for building your own sourdough, it’s simple, clearly explained and answers questions you might have. Love the picture page with neutral, sad and happy sourdough.
The book is divided in chapters as
- Savoury Breads and Sourdoughs
- Grainy and healthy breads
- Quick breads and scones
- Festive breads
- Not quite bread
- Sweet breads

Every recipe (metric and imperial measurements! very important!) has it’s mouthwatering color photos. And again there is the “not quite” chapter which I really like, it somehow makes the book more eh human? It is as if I can see the meeting where it is decided which recipes will make it into the book and which not, deciding this one needs to be in and hmmm I think this one not. And then there’s always the fun ones, not really bread, not really sweet or clearly savoury but fun in their own way… That’s when you get a chapter like this, featuring lavash style crackers, or Danish smorrebrod or a panzanella bread salad or the Nutella spiced French toast which the men in my house beg me to make…
I think it is quite an accomplishment to make a book with bread recipes where you turn page after page and think oh that one! No, that one first. More importantly they all seem do-able! Not intimidating at all. What you might miss in this book is that it dives right in with the recipes, there’s no order in difficulty ranging from easier to more complicated. I don’t mind because he really guides you through each recipe in the text.
So what did I decide to bake?
From the Quick breads and scones chapter I made the Spinach, Pumpkin Cumin and Feta Damper. Mouthwatering picture and it was a perfect idea to use some left over pumpkin. I just served a mustard soup to go with it and had a happy family munching away.
Then I tried the intriguing Brie filled Pain Miche…. Quite simple really and such a festive bread: you bake a boule, let it cool and cut out disc in which you insert a whole brie (in Europe we would use camembert because really… a wheel of brie? those are 50 cm in the round). Anyway you insert your cheese of choice in the cavity top it with a mixture of caramelised onions and garlic and bake again…. Wow!
The resulting loaf gets a crisp exterior and a melty cheese with the topping bubbling away on top! Who needs dinner? Just a bottle of red wine and good company.

Published by Jacqui Small Books www.jacquismallpub.com (@JacquiSmallPub) and available from the usual book sellers elsewhere. Thanks to Jacqui Small for sending me this copy to review – all thoughts and opinions my own.