Pizza snails

s’s birthday wish was to have his class from børnehave over to play. They do this sometimes for birthdays - the whole room of kids goes to the birthday boy/girl’s house for a few hours in the morning during børnehave time, with a pedagog or two. But we haven’t tried it before… 

Apparently pizza snails (pizza snegle) are required for such gatherings. Like overnight bread rolls, these seem to be something every Danish mum can whip up with her eyes closed.

I asked two different Danish mums about how to make pizza snegle, and both directed me to the same recipe, this one. So that seemed like a done deal. 

(makes about 30 medium snails - including some slightly small/awkward end ones - about 20 acceptably similar ones)

For the dough:

50 g fresh yeast

200 ml milk

150 ml plain yoghurt 

2 eggs 

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp honey

100 ml olive oil

250 g / 9 oz wholewheat flour

400 g / 14 1/2 oz plain flour

 

For the tomato sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 400 g tin tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato purée

2 tsp dried oregano

Salt+pepper

 

To finish:

125 g (one pack) fresh mozzarella, finely chopped

1 egg, lightly beaten - for brushing

 

Make the dough:

Mix yeast in a large bowl with the milk. Add oil, yoghurt, honey, egg, salt and wholewheat flour and mix well together.

 

Add plain flour a little at a time until the dough is nice and flexible (it was a bit sticky). Put in a warm place to rise, with a tea towel over it, for about an hour or until doubled in size.

 

Make the tomato sauce:

Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Add tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer c 20 min until thick. Let cool, and keep in fridge until needed, esp if making in advance.

 

Assembly:

Roll out half the dough on a floured surface until c 1/2 cm thick rectangle/square. Spread half the tomato sauce out evenly on top, except c. 4 cm from one end. Sprinkle with half the cheese. Roll into a long roll and cut snails about 2 cm thick with a sharp knife. Put on baking sheets lined with baking paper, with a few cm between them at least, and make round and neat with your hands. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients. Let rise on the sheets for 30 min. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 16-18 min at 180C, until golden brown.

 

They came out well and looked legit. They didn't go down all that well with the kids (they preferred melon, salty popcorn and coconut water), but there were no major complaints so think I got them about right.

Overnight seedy bread rolls

My friend A-L makes delicious no-nonsense overnight bread rolls (morgenboller). I have a theory that every Danish person does this...

One of my lockdown goals, I decided, was to figure out my own overnight bread recipe. I asked A-L for her recipe, and she gave it to me, but it turned out she didn’t really have a recipe, it was more like the bake off technical challenges (‘add flour to make a dough’)...

I didn’t believe in my skills enough to start from her recipe, so I googled a bit and decided to try this one. I’ve made them a few times now and we love them!

(makes 12 medium-small buns)

250 ml water (1 cup)
250 ml milk (1 cup)
15 g fresh yeast (1/2 oz) - approx. 1/3 of a 50 g pack
2 tsp sugar
100 ml wholemeal flour (2/5 cup)
100 ml oats (2/5 cup)
100 ml mixed seeds / grains (e.g. sunflower seeds, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, hulled hemp seeds, poppyseeds, sesame seeds) (2/5 cup)
500 g plain flour (1,1 lb)
1/2 tbsp salt

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast and sugar in the cold water and milk. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a smooth and nice dough. Cover the bowl loosely and place it in the fridge for 8-12 hours (i.e. overnight).

Dip two tablespoons in cold water and use them to set buns on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Try to make them a little pointy - when they raise, they will flatten out a little.

Let the bread raise for an extra hour at room temperature. Heat the oven to 200C.

After the final raising, brush the bread with some beaten egg and decorate them with different seeds or grains.

Bake for 20-25 min, until golden brown. Move to a cooling rack to cool.

Carrot and sunflower seed bread rolls

Little S talks about bøller a lot. Essentially, it is his word for all food - although it really means bread-rolls. My friend A-L makes awesome, no-nonsense overnight bread rolls with carrot in them. I found this recipe after I asked her for hers, and thought I'd give it a go in the meantime.

50 g fresh yeast (2 oz)
550 ml lukewarm water
80 g sunflower seeds
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
250 g carrots, peeled and grated
1000 g plain flour
2 tsp salt
extra sunflower seeds for decoration

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast. If you are using dry yeast then add this in the step together with the flour. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a nice and smooth dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean dish towel and set it aside to rise. Let it rise for one hour.

Divide the dough into 24 pieces and make them into nice buns. Place the buns on a parchment paper covered baking tray. Let the buns rise for another 30 min. Heat the oven to 210C. Gently brush the buns will a beaten egg and sprinkle them with some extra sunflower seeds. Bake for about 20 min.


These were quite nice, but I liked the overnight-risen rolls better - both flavour and method!

Black garlic dill dough balls

We went to the big Yayoi Kusuma show at Louisiana one evening last week. It was amazingly busy for a cold Wednesday night. But it was a super fun show. We'd seen some of her work at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and at Louisiana before, but I was only really familiar with her reflecting rooms and polka dots. Turns out there was a whole lot of other stuff I didn't know about, which was just as great if not better. I really enjoyed her nets, and her pumpkins (especially the large bronze ones). And her earliest work: colourful paintings and beautifully precise botanical sketches. Although it felt very much of its time, her 60s NY stuff - pasta handbags, cut-out dresses and nude happenings - was interesting to see too. I wasn't very familiar with that period of her work, and it was all very smart and humorous. S got inspired by a little footnote listing the performers at one of her happenings - someone called Dill Dough...

So on the train back we decided that we should buy some dill and experiment with Dill Dough recipes. At the weekend we bought dill from a shop in København NV. And last night I was in the kitchen making fritters and decided it was time for dill dough. We still had anytime dough in the fridge from our latest pizza efforts. I also decided to include some black garlic, which we had bought on a whim the other day and is really interesting. It doesn't really taste like garlic at all - sweet and tangy - perhaps more like miso? Somewhere inbetween yeast extract and miso? Anyway, I mixed some of that in too...

1/3 quantity of pre-made dough
2-3 tbsp chopped dill
4-5 cloves black garlic, chopped
1-2 tbsp flour, as needed
butter to finish

Take the dough out of the fridge and add the dill and black garlic. Mix and knead a little to combine. Shape into bread roll shapes (this made 4 but it's flexible depending on dough quantity / ball size preference). Space on a baking sheet covered with baking paper and prove in a warm place for about 30 min. Preheat the oven to 200C and bake the dough balls for 20-30 min, until they sound hollow when tapped on the base. Take out of the oven and smear a little butter on the top of each one to melt. Best eaten still slightly warm.

Oat buns

We have eaten so much good Danish bread. There is endless variety: traditional rye made with sourdough; versions with chia, carrot, potato for moistness. Various focaccia and baguette type things. And everything in between (lots of nuts and seeds!). Last weekend we went to Relæ with Y+M, and fell in love hard with the sourdough bread they serve there - it's from Manfred's, their other place over the road (also had the best beer I have ever had). S especially became a little obsessed. So yesterday we returned to Jægersborggade to try and track down that bread (after a very successful mission to a secret secondhand store). It turned out to be pretty easy: they were selling the bread as wholes and halves for quite a reasonable price, right from the restaurant. So we went home happy, with a bag full of tasty, stretchy, crunchy, wonderful sourdough (not to mention the radio, DVD/CD player, three jackets, one shirt and waterproof trousers we'd picked up earlier...).

So anyway, yesterday for some reason I was looking at the side of a packet of oats and became intrigued by the recipe there. Thought it was about time I tried to follow a recipe written in Danish. With the help of Google translate I figured it out. And realised we had pretty much all the ingredients. Including grahamsmel, which I hadn't been able to identify previously. So I made these oat buns, using up some slightly out of date fresh yeast, testing the grahamsmel, and with freshly made yoghurt. I think I could understand the recipe! One thing I noticed, that I remembered from some Swedish hagebutten soup stuff Anna had given me once upon a time, is that Scandinavians seem to measure volume in decilitres (1 dl = 100 ml) rather than millilitres.

(makes 10 rolls)

25 g yeast (gær)
200 ml (2 dl) lukewarm water (vand)
250 g plain flour (hvedemel) (used white spelt instead)
75 g graham flour (grahamsmel)
250 g oats (havregryn)
100 ml yoghurt
1 tbsp (spsk) sugar (sukker)
2 tbsp oil (olie)
1 tsp (tsk) salt
more yoghurt and some sesame seeds to finish

Dissolve (opløs) the yeast in lukewarm (lunkent) water, and add (tilsæt) the flours, oats, yogurt, sugar, oil and salt.

Knead (ælt) to a smooth (glat) and supple (smidig) dough (dej). The dough should be soft (blød). Form (form) the dough into a ball (kugle).

Let (lad) the dough rise (hæve), covered (tildækket), for about 45 min. Knock (slå) dough down (ned) and shape 10 buns (boller).

Set (sæt) buns (bollerne) on a baking sheet (bageplade) with baking paper (bagepapir) and let them prove (efterhæve) for about 30 min.

Brush with yogurt or water, then sprinkle (drys) with sesame seeds.

Bake at 200C / fan (varmluft) 180C for 12-15 min.


Came out tasty enough but not very well risen - perhaps the yeast was past it? Perhaps spelt flour was a bad substitution?

Real Seelen

I first made something like Seelen for S (from this recipe) a few years ago, and he loved them! He didn't stop talking about them, and I made my approximation a few times since he liked them so much. They are regional bread from where he grew up in Germany, and apparently they are hard to get even elsewhere in Germany.
But I could never track down white spelt flour in the USA, not even in the fanciest grocery shops (or Eastern European ones). Not long after coming here, we went to Lidl (another German thing S loves), and found white spelt flour there! And pretty cheap too. So we decided that real Seelen were in order.

They don't take too many ingredients or special equipment, so it seemed do-able, even without my own kitchen. Finding the other ingredients was actually kind of a challenge. We had salt, that was fine and easy. I thought caraway might be easy too as it seems quite popular - there is a caraway seed cheese I see everywhere and want to try, but it only comes in gigantic blocks so haven't yet. But we didn't find caraway in any of the grocery shops we checked. The Turkish market had a bewildering selection of spices though, leading to a fairly lengthy debate between S+I over whether cumin (spidskommen) and caraway (kommen) seeds were the same or not (they're not! but he wouldn't believe it!). Anyway, we got the caraway there, and the next challenge was yeast, Again, I checked near the flour on the shelves of various grocery shops, until S found some in the fridge in a wholefoods shop - of course! Fresh yeast is the way here, dried yeast seems to be hard to find.

So, real seelen - not only with white spelt flour, but also with fresh yeast!

(makes 12 - I doubled the recipe as I had 1000g flour, 42g yeast, and no scales... and S loves seelen)

1000g white spelt flour
42g fresh yeast
600 ml warm water
4 tsp salt

For sprinkling: caraway seeds and coarse sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and knead all ingredients for about 10 minutes to get soft and fairly sticky dough.  Leave to rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes, kneading briefly after 20 min and after 40 min.

When the dough has risen turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and split in two.  With wet hands shape one piece into a square of about 20 cm.  Use a wet knife to cut the dough into six strips. Transfer the strips onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough (you'll need two baking sheets). Irregular shapes are fine, even good.  Cover with a clean dish towel and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to about 240C / 460F and place a bowl of water on the bottom shelf.

When the Seelen are ready to go into the oven wet them again with your hands and sprinkle with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


They definitely look different -lighter, more golden, with a very slight sheen. Perhaps a little more dense. But the taste is dominated by the caraway and salt so I find it hard to make out a difference in taste from the spelt. No complaints though, and it took us only two days to demolish the whole lot!

Carrot, orange, sumac and olive rolls

I hadn't made any bread in a while, not sure why, it's been Winter and a good time for hanging out in the kitchen and baking. Anyway, I saw this recipe (with additional fancying-up here), and thought it was time to make bread. I decided to go for the rolls with olive and sumac.

175g carrot
150ml warm water
100ml orange juice, at room temperature
7g sachet fast-action yeast (used 2 tsp)
25ml olive oil, plus more for kneading
450g strong white flour
50g wholemeal or spelt flour
2 tsp salt
250g dry pitted black olives, roughly chopped (if making rolls)
2 tsp sumac (if making rolls)
50g black or white sesame seeds, plus extra to finish

Peel and grate your carrots and put them in a mixing bowl. Add the warm water and orange juice.

Stir in the yeast, leave 5 min til dissolved, then add the oil, flours, salt and seeds (also sumac and olives if making rolls) and mix well to a firm-ish dough. You can add slightly more flour or water according to your preference, but use the amounts here as a starting point. Leave the dough covered for 10 minutes.

Gently knead the dough for 10 sec or so, then leave in the bowl, covered, for about an hour / until risen by half.

To make a loaf: Take a large loaf tin and line the base and sides with nonstick baking paper. Dust a surface with flour, then pat the dough into an oblong. Roll the dough tightly like a scroll, squeeze the ends together as you pick it up and lower it, seam-side down, into the tin. Cover and leave for about an hour. Heat oven to 200C//400F. Lightly wet the top of the dough, then sprinkle it thickly with sesame seeds. Cut a deep slash down the middle and bake for about 50 minutes. Remove the loaf from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Or, to make rolls: divide into a dozen 100g pieces for large rolls (or 75g for 16 medium-sized ones), shape into balls with a little flour and leave to rise on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper. Leave to rise for about an hour, or until risen by at least half. Heat oven to 180C/350F. Before baking, brush the top of each roll with water and sprinkle on sesame seeds. Using a pair of scissors, or a small serrated knife, snip or slash the top of each roll. Bake for about 25 minutes for soft rolls, or up to 35 minutes for crustier ones. They freeze well and can be reheated direct from frozen in a hot oven.


I liked these, but they didn't rise very well (time for new yeast?), and I found the olive taste overpowering - perhaps next time stick to the version without olives?

Summer rolls

The weather has eased off a bit these last few days, but it's still been hot.  We've been eating a lot of salads (exciting salads, with lettuce from Mike and fried fresh garlic (from ECO), courgette (from my secret garden) and tempeh, and so forth, but still just salads), there have been a few nights late getting back from work / play and not feeling like cooking, and Monday we went for awesome dumplings and edamame/fresh tofu/mustard greens @ Gourmet Dumpling House in Chinatown after investing in a tent @ Hilton Tent City (both were wonderful places).

So anyway, Tuesday S bought a summer roll for lunch and we were like: these are really good, why haven't we made them for ages?  And last night I got home and he'd started prepping them - yesssss.  They are the soft, rice paper wrapped rolls often seen in Vietnamese food places, filled with fine white noodles, tofu and fresh herbs / veggies.  I've seen them called fresh rolls as well, but 'summer rolls' seems really appropriate for right now.

(made about 8)

For the rolls:
8-10 circular rice noodle sheets
1 portion fine white rice (or bean) noodles, cooked until done (few minutes), drained and run under cold water to cool
1/4 cucumber, chopped into large matchsticks (or raw courgette)
1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped into large matchsticks, steamed until just tender
2 pieces dry or firm tofu, sliced into pieces similar to the veggies
beansprouts
lettuce
fresh coriander
fresh mint

For peanut dipping sauce:
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 in piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 tsp tamarind paste
1-2 tsp soy sauce

To assemble the rolls, fill a large bowl with hot water.  Take a rice noodle sheet and immerse in the water.  Soak for a few seconds, until it is soft. It will become quite fragile, so remove it carefully and spread out on a flat board. Put a ~rectangular pile of noodles in the middle of the circle. Arrange cucumber, tofu, carrot, coriander, mint, lettuce and beansprouts in ~a line along the middle of the noodle pile (any combination will do really, at a minimum you probably want carrot, cucumber, tofu and coriander). Then roll it up: fold up one side, tuck in the ends, then roll and close as tightly as you can. The rice sheets will be a bit sticky and it should hold together reasonably well.

To make the dipping sauce, mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl until well combined, then add water until a good consistency is reached.


These were really good - exactly right for these warm nights, simple, quick, and just as good as any I've eaten anywhere. I packed some up in a box lined with lettuce leaves and that seemed to help stop them from sticking.

Sweet cinnamon and cardamom rolls

I don't know why I suddenly felt like making these... Oh yes I do, I saw this recipe.  I thought I might try veganising it, but then I discovered we are low on fake butter, so decided to try a different recipe instead. I used this one, which uses oil.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I am always dreaming about Fitzbillies' (the bakery in Cambridge, UK) Chelsea buns.  These buns are swirled and gloriously cinnamony like the Chelsea buns, but less sticky, less decadent and more everyday than Fitzbillies' buns.  Which is a good thing if you intend eating more than half of one.

This made nine, and neatly filled my square Pyrex dish.

Dough

1-1/2 tsp dry yeast
1/6 cup sugar + 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
3/8 cup fake milk
1/6 cup veg oil
3/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 cups flour

Filling
1/8 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tbsp flour 
~1/8 cup fake butter

Icing (optional)
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp fake milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix the yeast with the 1/2 tsp sugar and 1/8 cup lukewarm water and let sit for ~10 min until it starts to bubble.

Put the rest of the water in a bowl with the remaining dough ingredients, then add the yeast mixture.  Combine and then knead for ~5 minutes.  Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.  Knock down.  Rest for 10 more minutes.  During the wait period mix together all the filling ingredients except the butter.

Flour a clean surface and then roll the dough out to ~30 cm x 20 cm.  Rub the butter all over the dough with your fingers, making sure to take it right up to the edges.  Sprinkle the sugar mixture evenly on top, again making sure to go right to the edges.  Then roll it up: roll starting from the long side, trying to go as tight as possible.

Oil a ~20 cm square Pyrex oven dish (or similar).  Cut the roll into 9 pieces with a sharp knife - mark and cut into thirds first, then mark and cut each piece into thirds.  Cover with a clean dishcloth and leave in a warm place for 30-45 min.  They will grow to fill the space.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375F.  Bake for ~20 min, until pleasantly golden brown on top and not burnt underneath.

If you are using icing, make it while the buns are baking by mixing the ingredients in a small bowl (add vanilla to sugar first, then add the milk slowly to make sure it doesn't end up too runny).  As soon as you remove the buns from the oven, spread the icing on top.


I experimented a little with how thick to cut the roll, and with whether to ice or not (I iced half of them).  I feel like there is a lot of scope for adding / removing ingredients - raisins or flaked almonds might be good, I could try varying the spice combination (that ground cardamom I have is kinda weak, could try using it with a mixture of roughly-ground seeds), adding more or less butter...

They look wonderful, and are really soft and tasty.  The somewhat crappy cardamom means they mainly taste of cinnamon.  They are mostly bready and not too sweet without the icing, which is good.  The icing does add in some goopiness though, which I feel goes quite well.  Does massively up the sweetness though.  Ooooh perhaps using mincemeat in combination with the cinnamon sugar mix would be good, I have lots of mincemeat laying around...  Still warm from the oven they are lovely - will have to see if they're still good when cooled down.  S voted for the iced ones, although I do think are prettier when you can still see the whorl.

Seelen (Swabian bread rolls with caraway and salt)

Another German baking effort, following a recipe from the same website as the last couple.  I mentioned to S that I was thinking of making Seelen, and he was super enthusiastic.  Apparently they are a forgotten favourite of his, and you only really get them in the Schwäbische Alb region, where he grew up.

500g white spelt flour (didn't have - used ~400g plain flour and ~100g wholemeal flour)
20g fresh yeast (or one sachet dry)
300 ml warm water
2 tsp salt

For sprinkling: caraway seeds and coarse sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and knead all ingredients for about 10 minutes to get soft and fairly sticky dough.  Leave to rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes, kneading briefly after 20 min and after 40 min.

When the dough has risen turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.  With wet hands shape it into a square of about 20 cm.  Use a wet knife to cut the dough into six strips.  Transfer the strips onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  Irregular shapes are fine, even good.  Cover with a clean dish towel and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to about 240C / 460F and place a bowl of water on the bottom shelf.

When the Seelen are ready to go into the oven wet them again with your hands and sprinkle with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


These came out pretty good.  S said they taste almost like the real Seelen - the only obvious difference was the top is usually more golden and shiny.  Probably the lack of spelt flour didn't help (my best guess was the Russian store, they only had wheat and rye flour) - perhaps Amazon.

Buns for Orwell (and Amy)

Amy and I were discussing our mutual love of George Orwell the other day.  We'd independently both just been reading 'The Road To Wigan Pier'.  His writing is so vital, and still so relevant almost a century later.  Those images of coal miners and that discussion of class will stick with me.  I first fell for Orwell through 'Down and Out in Paris and London' - one of my favourites.  The friendly homeless man who used to sit on the footbridge in Norwich was reading it at some point.  That man was nice, I hope he's moved on to better things.  As well as Orwell's political writings, I've long loved his opinions on food, particularly British food.  The tidbit about Wetherspoons being designed to meet his guidelines for a good boozer; his stickling plan for a nice cup of tea (for the most part I accept his opinions, and revel in its glorious microcosm of Britishness, although I can't agree on the milk - good tea needs no milk).  I just recently (through this article) came across his 'defence of English cooking', which may well be a new favourite - it's making me homesick just skimming it.

In honour of all of these coincidences, and because I had some currants in the cupboard I'd bought ages ago thinking I would need them suddenly one day, here are some saffron buns (recipe from the Guardian article).

Saffron buns

Pinch saffron threads
1 tsp yeast
90g sugar
500g strong white bread flour
Pinch salt
½ tsp nutmeg
120g marg
100g currants
100g sultanas / raisins
1 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 3 tbsp hot water
100ml 'milk'

Place the saffron threads in a small bowl with 4 tablespoons of boiling water and leave to infuse for 10 minutes, before adding the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar.  Mix together the flour, salt and nutmeg with a fork in a mixing bowl, then rub in the marg . Add the currants, sultanas / raisins and remaining sugar. Beat the milk and egg together, then add to the flour and fruit, together with the saffron mixture.

Knead the dough until good and springy (on and off for 10-15min), adding a little more flour or milk to get a good consistency.  Divide into 12 and shape into buns.  Place the buns on a baking sheet lined with baking paper, cover with lightly oiled clingfilm and leave to rise until doubled in size (about an hour in a warm place).  Bake at 220C / 425F for 15 minutes, until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.


I'd not made saffron buns before.  They're somewhere in between a scone and a hot cross bun (more like the latter, and much better than my attempts at scones).  The spicing was subtle but they are lovely - slightly sweet, with sticky dried fruit bursting out and a pretty yellowish colour.  S liked them lots.  Good with some carrot jam - another (literary) coincidence.

Flower flour - marigold and sunflower rolls

I was daydreaming about underground restaurants and found myself looking at MsMarmiteLover's blog and coveting her cookbook...  I found this page and loved the idea so much - I even have marigolds growing, nearing the end of their season and begging to be used.  My idea with planting them was that they would be pretty and edible - they grew well and were bright and fun all season, and now I've at last got around to eating some.

For eight:
7g dried yeast
160 ml lukewarm water
1/2 tsp honey
250 g strong white flour
10 g (~2 tbsp) semolina
1 tsp salt
25 ml olive oil
45 g sunflower seeds
1/2 handful marigold petals
1/2 tbsp olive oil for brushing

To make the dough; into your mixer add the flour, semolina, olive oil, sunflower seeds, marigold petals, honey and yeast. Then pour in the lukewarm water.

Let this mix on a low setting for at least 10 minutes, adding the salt at this point. If you don't have a mixer you can knead the dough by hand.  When well kneaded, cover the bowl and leave to rise for an hour or so in a warm place where it should double in size.

Tip the dough carefully onto a floured work surface and gently divide into balls of 40 - 50g in weight, using a digital scale to measure this quite accurately (if possible). Roll each ball in the palm of your hand and pull the sides down tucking the seam underneath.

Use a pair of scissors or a credit card to cut the balls of dough across the top. Make three crosses / six segments.  Pull each segment out from the middle to form a rough petal. Once finished, each ball should look like a little flower. Alternatively, you can leave as round rolls.

Put the dough flowers (or rolls) spaced apart on an oiled baking tray. Cover and leave for 30-40 minutes in a warm place. Preheat the oven to 220C (425F).

Bake the marigold bread rolls in the oven for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden. Finish by brushing with olive oil and sprinkling on more marigold petals. The rolls are nice served warm or, once cooled, can be frozen until needed.


These are so much fun!  I wasn't able to weigh the ingredients very accurately (the original was for double), so wasn't sure if they would work.  But they look good to me!  And S said they were exciting....  Brilliant idea with the freezing, why didn't I think of that before?  The remainder are going in right now.  Also the bread machine seemed to work - I haven't used it like that before, but seemed to be a decent labour saver.

Spaghetti squash / another version of pesto / wholemeal+corn rolls

Got excited about a spaghetti squash at the Haymarket, as I don't think I've ever had one before.  Eventually got around to cooking it.  It is funny stuff indeed.

1 spaghetti squash

20-30 cherry tomatoes
1 medium, sweet onion, finely sliced
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tbsp basil leaves, roughly torn or chopped
olive oil, salt+pepper, balsamic vinegar

for the pesto:
handful basil leaves, washed
handful shelled edamame, defrosted
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 small clove garlic
2 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Heat oven to 400F.  Cut squash in half lengthways (past the stem).  Deseed and set seeds aside.  Place cut side down in a large baking tin.  Add ~1in water to the tin.  Put in the oven for 30-40 min until a knife goes in easily / the flesh is tender.  Meanwhile you can spread the seeds on a large baking tray and toast them for ~5min as a pre-snack.  Around the same time as the squash, bung in another baking tin containing the tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, and olive oil / salt and pepper to taste.  Take the squash and tomato mix out of the oven when ready.  Add a little balsamic vinegar to the tomatoes and mix in.  Allow squash to cool a little, then scrape out the flesh into a large bowl (don't burn your fingers).  Season and add a little olive oil to the squash and mix up / separate the strands with a fork.  Serve with the tomato mix and pesto (to make the pesto, whizz all the ingredients in the blender, adding water and/or olive oil to get a good consistency).

It really looks like spaghetti!  Totally bizarre how it separates out into perfect strands.  Doesn't taste of much, but does have a pleasant, slightly squashy taste that goes well with the pesto and / or tomato mix.  This pesto iteration is getting close to the best yet.


Spelt / wholemeal and corn rolls

We're planning on going to one of the harbor islands tomorrow to check out an art encampment.  Thought it might be nice to take some bread with us for snacks.  This Guardian recipe looked quicker than the other breads I've done, and was on my list of ones I fancied...


75g cornmeal or polenta
200ml boiling water
300ml cold water
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp yeast
300g spelt (or wholemeal) flour / used wholemeal
200g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
Oil and flour, to finish

Put the cornmeal in a bowl, pour in the boiling water and stir. Leave for 15 minutes, then whisk in the cold water, honey and yeast. Add the spelt, white flour and salt, mix to a soft dough and leave for 10 minutes.
Knead for 10 seconds. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for 20 minutes, until it has risen slightly.
Wipe the worktop clean and dry it with a tea towel, then dust with flour. Divide the dough into eight equal pieces and shape into rounds. Place these in two rows of four, and just touching, on a baking tray lined with nonstick paper. Flour the tops, cover with a cloth and leave for about 45 minutes, until risen by half.
Meanwhile, heat the oven to 240C (220C fan-assisted)/465F/gas mark 9. Lightly flour the tops of the dough rounds again and bake for 20-25 minutes, until just coloured on top. Leave to cool, and tear apart to serve.

These look super, but haven't taste-tested them yet...  Now I have.  They're really hearty and wholemeal - excellent with salad.  Quite heavy, but not awfully so.