Bath buns

Right - these are top notch.
I followed the Richard Bertinet recipe - and it took me overnight, and 6+ hours in the making. But this one is worth it.
The cakes are very very light, plain - in the best way - because the bread is just gorgeous. Just a sweet bun.

 

First you make a 'ferment' which i had to leave overnight, as i didn't have time to finish the process for the buns yesterday evening. I wasn't sure it would still work, so only made a small batch of buns - but it worked well. I made a judgement on the structure of the ferment which looked very well bubbled - but it wasn't frothy as it was at its height of fermenting. 

So this morning I started making the dough with the ferment, milk, sugar, yeast, flour. Worked the dough from very very sticky to very elastic. This took about 20 minutes as I had quite a lot of ferment (only half of what i'd made as I wasn't sure it was going to work and didn't want to waste even more flour). 

Working the dough was very enjoyable, watching the dough change very gradually and getting into a good rhythm. 

Then it was the proving cycle. One hour, then refold and another hour. Then section and make buns and prove for 2.5 hours. 

Glaze the buns with milk and sugar glaze. 

Then bake for just 20 mins!

Glaze again for a good sticky bun. 

Then eat in 5 minutes because they're so good. 

This is one of the best things i've ever made. Very happy with these - although you do have to mimic being a proper baker for a day - its a full on job.

Pear and Honey tart

This was too fiddly for the taste pay-off.
Make pastry, chill it.
Roll out, lay over tart pan.
Bake for 10 minutes with dried beans to stop it puffing up.
Bake for 5 minutes without beans.
Peel, core and quarter and cook pears, puree them.
Peel, core and slice and cook pear slices to brown them.
Whisk up cream, eggs for the custard.
Layer puree onto baked pastry.
Layer pear slices onto baked pastry.
ERK - except don't because by the time you've got pastry and pear puree in the tart pan, there's not going to be room for the sliced pears and the custard. So I decide to cook them in a separate dish. Then have to turn it all upside down in various stages to get it all together again.
And after all that - the honey isn't strong enough and the pear puree is too wussy for my tastes. And the pears started so beautifully.

Beetroot pasta with Borlotti Beans, Pancetta and Rosemary

Made beetroot pasta just because it looked good in the Jamie Oliver book. He suggested substituting beetroot puree for one egg. Overall I put a little bit too much beetroot in and it was a relatively soft dough, but still workable.

I then used up some good things in the fridge: pancetta, borlotti beans, bacon, paris brown mushrooms - to go with it.

The pictures don't make it look very inviting! But it was very tasty - and very autumnal.

I cooked the beans with a fat clove of garlic first, which gave them good flavour. Extra flavour came from rosemary which I put into the pancetta/bacon/mushroom. And plenty seasoning.
Served with grated Pecorino.

Sourdough starter mkII RIP

I've killed another batch of sourdough starter. I think I now realise where I'm going wrong - lack of oxygen. The yeasts need oxygen, water, food to stay alive. By keeping the starter super-sealed, I've been starving them of oxygen.
The starter is always good for the first 2 days then gets flat and dormant (er, dead). I think it must be the lack of air. There's lots of conflicting advice on how to get starters going - do use other ingredients: potato, cabbage, grape seeds - don't use other ingredients. Keep starter covered. Keep starter open. Remove half starter as you feed it new flour/water. Don't remove any starter.
There's only one constant recommendation "get some starter from someone else".
That's not an option right now, so its time for Starter Marque 3.

Hugh Fearnley's advice on sourdough sounds good - I'm going to run with that and a melange of other things I've read and experienced.

Its worth the effort tho', and I like that some things require time, attention, mistakes, and repetition before it all comes good. It'll come good one day.

Two-cheese burger and chips

Blue cheese mixed into the burger, then Davidstow cheddar on top. Woop! Its very dairy. Its very good.
Burgers cooked on the griddle - nicely striped.
Good greens from those nice 'living salads' boxes. I can't decide if they're unacceptably wasteful (all that compost being chucked out) - but the salad is really lovely - soft and crisply fresh at the same time. Good flavour. Room temperature - none of this cold crunchy tasteless watery nonsense. A proper slicing tomato and good fat chips. Sometimes you just want burger and chips.

Venison pie

This was partly a 'clear up the left-overs' pie - but with some choice venison from the game man at the market.
We used up the gravy from the partridges the other week, some small carrots we put in there whole, some shallots (often spelled shorlots at college) left over from the thai curry paste, paris brown mushrooms that we have a surfeit of as they looked great at the market, and remnant puff pastry from the tarte tatin. We had to crack open some red wine, which went down very well with it. Also used up half a celeriac I had lying about, which I had mashed up. Matt's a bit over celeriac mash and has retreated to plain potato. Unfortunately for him - its still my favourite - lifting the gag-worthy heaviness of just potato and adding that superb sweet and sour aniseed flavour. Absolutely cracking.

Inevitable pumpkin soup

With half a pumpkin to use up, soup was inevitable.
Roasted with pumpkin with chilli and olive oil, then added to a basic soup of onion, garlic and veg stock. Cooked for a while then blitzed.
Added double cream at the end in a suitably halloween spider fashion. Served with sourdough toast. Delicious and very filling. Those puree soups really keep you filled up.