The Polish Bakery - I may be a tiny bit in love ...

We've just got back from our usual Tuesday shopping trip to Asda.  Now, for - quite literally - years, I've been eyeing up the bread made by The Polish Bakery and thinking "I must give some of that a go".

In the meantime, I've used various Polish foodstuffs and have been impressed by them all.  I've come to realise that - currently, at any rate - if it's Polish, then you can pretty much guarantee that it won't have any additives, sweeteners or any of the myriad of things that we try to avoid in most processed foods in it.  The same is true of The Polish Bakery's bread.

The loaf I brought home with me is a small round "Grandmother's Bread" or Chleb Babuni.

The ingredients list reads like a shopping basket of all the good things you are advised to get into your diet, where seeds and grains are concerned.  With sesame seeds decorating the top, it not only looks good and has an interesting colour but smells good too. 

However, the real winner is the flavour and texture.  The texture is interestingly stretchy and robust that gives a lovely spring to the slices.  There's none of that collapse which comes when you cut across a slice of commercially produced bread.  This bread holds its own and bounces back.  The flavour is really rich and, well, just bready!  That'll be the sourdough influence, then, I expect.  The additional seeds give such a lovely nuttiness and extra bite to the bread, it really feels as though it's doing you good as you eat it.

I went for a nosey around their website at The Polish Bakery and was hugely interested to see what they say as regards the bread - and I quote "Our products are hand-made freshly every day, and our unique traditional Polish recipes contain nothing but the finest natural ingredients.

Polish bread is a living thing. It is based on Sourdough, which needs to be kept alive to retain the unique flavour of our bread. This is where the love of real baking comes in. Our master baker will not use sourdough kept alive artificially, he tends his sourdough with great care, watching the temperature and balance of all of the key ingredients as only he can. This means his sourdough has years of history which gives the authentic taste and flavour so unique to our bread.

We bake additive free, and that is why all the varieties of the bread we make are healthy options. Many of them are specially made to help our digestive systems, adding to the base of sourdough with a wide range of seeds and grains".

I immediately fell a little bit in love with The Polish Bakery, having read that.  :)  The big tester will come within a few hours when I discover whether the Grandmother's Bread makes my tummy bloat - as so many commercially produced breads do.  I couldn't wait for lunchtime and had a couple of slices of Grandmother's Bread as toast, so I'm crossing my fingers for a good reaction.

If you find more of The Polish Bakery's bread appearing on the blog or my Facebook page - you'll know it passed muster!  If you find some, give it a try.  Don't be put off by the fact that it's Polish, on current reckoning, it's an awful lot better than many of our bread offerings!
   

The ever-adaptable Bloomer!

When you’re poorly, food becomes something of an issue – depending on what you’ve got wrong with you, needless to say.  In my case, along with the Shingles, I had the oddest sore throat in the Universe.  I could eat without bothering it – and in fact, eating improved the sore throat situation.  It didn’t matter what I ate, it could have been a packet of crisps or a slice of fresh lemon, nothing aggravated it except coughing (and, perhaps, snoring – but we’ll skip lightly over that).

Of course, what you might want to eat is another matter.  In this instance, I was happy enough to eat whatever was put in front of me (so we knew I wasn’t dying, put it that way) but my very definite preference was for high carbohydrate “comfort food”.

Enter the Bloomer.

A bloomer loaf (of bread, for those from abroad) is one of the most adaptable things.

Over the last few weeks, we have eaten slices of bloomer in many and varied ways and, to be quite honest, I’ve wondered what I would have eaten in certain situations, had we not have been all bloomered-up in the bread bin department.

I’ve had toasted bloomer (toasted under the grill, instead of in the toaster.  Makes a far superior piece of toast) as a late-night “keep the wolf from the door” snack with just plain old butter on, or rather more exotically, with marmalade.  Breakfast at 10pm.  Naughty, but nice!

Speaking of breakfast, toasted bloomer has accompanied many denominations of same.  With butter and accompanying a boiled egg, it forms perfect “feel better” food.  Again, buttered but with scrambled or a fried egg (in olive oil, of course!) it always hits the spot.

A couple of tinned tomatoes with lots of freshly ground black pepper are a superb breakfast when twinned with toasted bloomer.  Crunchy, tart, savoury – it wakes your taste buds up from their virus-induced slumber.

Good old baked beans will make an admirable plate-fellow for two slices of bloomer, for breakfast or with some grilled cheese hiding under the beans, for lunch.

When you’re deep in the worst of your malaise, good old warming, comforting soup always comes to the fore.  Team it with some lovely soft bloomer with its chewy crusts and you’ve the best of all worlds.  Eaten in bed is by far the best way, but beware the fallen crumbs!

Needless to say, the meal planning went a tad A.W.O.L. during this time.  Hubby manfully took over the stove duties and as such, looked at several of my planned meals and artfully down-sized them to meals with just as much taste appeal, but with far less work involved.  I don’t blame him, either.  Poor soul had enough to do, without working out how small he should be chopping his parsley.

Inevitably, this meant that we had several ingredients sitting aimlessly in the fridge, all lost and without a recipe to go to.

Like the large vine-ripened tomatoes, the olives and the mozzarella.

Cue, for lunch one day, grilled mozzarella on vine-ripened tomatoes and sliced olives, with Worcestershire sauce sprinkled over.  All on slices of toasted bloomer, of course!

In fact, I’ve just waded my way through two slices of toasted bloomer, covered in chicken in white sauce, which has brought about the following (which should be read with a discontented pout hovering around one’s mouth) :

Whatever happened to the tins of “Chunky Chicken”, made by Shippams, that you used to be able to get?  The Princes’ variety just didn’t shape up well against the memory of the pieces of actual chicken, taken from the bone, that Shippams used to cover in their gorgeously savoury sauce.  Yes, Princes’ version had used breast of chicken, but it was in boringly square pieces.  No leg meat in evidence at all.

I can remember my Grandad taking the whole family on a tour of a Shippams factory, once, many, many moons ago.  We saw the chicken paste being made as well as the cans of Chunky Chicken being sealed.  I remember there was a vast pile of chicken wishbones in one corner of the factory, just waiting to be used in some (hopefully lucky!) way.  I can only have been around 8 years old (or maybe less!).  We had the whole canning process for the Chunky Chicken explained to us and I’ve been a fan of the product ever since.

But I digress.  The next time you’re poorly, get someone to bring you a bloomer loaf and a bread knife.  Apart from the pleasure gained from eating it, just think of the fun you’ll have working out how you can use it!

The Perfect Loaf

Hubby has been on the trail of The Perfect Loaf, ever since we got our new Kenwood Chef.

So, I would like to unveil .....

ta-daaaaaa!!  The (currently) "Perfect Loaf".   Isn't it a beauty?

For us, the perfect loaf needs to be light crusted, as heavy crusts can often result in rock-hard toast.  Isn't this one just the most perfect golden colour?

The "crumb" (or for us newbies to bread - the white, inside bit) should be springy - but without being chewy, soft-textured - but without being too doughy, moist but not too moist - as we want it to double up as brilliant toast.

This loaf (of which he is keeping the recipe quite firmly under his hat) fits all those criteria and is, quite simply, the Perfect Loaf.

For now.  LOL

Look what we've got!

Such treasure!  A Kenwood Chef - at last!

I don't know how long we have lusted after a Kenwood Chef.  Well, we've been together for nearly 13 years, so it's probably about that long.  Now, thanks to our friends Laura and David deciding to have a turnout of their kitchen, we are the proud owners of a beautiful shiny as-new Kenwood Chef.

Hubby is terribly excited, as the Kenwood came with a dough hook.  Well you know what an artisan baker he is - although I'm not sure artisan bakers are supposed to use things like Kenwood Chefs, aren't they supposed to sweat as they mix things by hand?  LOL  Anyway, we'll forgive him that, as anything that makes life a teensy bit easier has got to be a good thing.

You'll see above his first loaf of bread, made using the Kenwood.  He was so proud.  Now, I think we're on to loaf three or four of various incarnations of bread, in the search for the perfect "everyday" loaf.

I have to admit, that all I've done with it (so far) is make a smoothie - but what a smoothie!  I've always wanted to be able to add ice cubes to a smoothie - and ice cubes are definitely more than my little stick blender could cope with.  The Kenwood, however, just munched it's powerful way through them.

My smoothie was made with an enormous Cox's apple, three red plums, a banana, three dessertspoonfuls of plain live yoghurt, around 200ml of apple juice and three ice cubes.  Whizz it all up and it makes enough for two smoothies that will wake up the most jaded of taste buds!

Bagels!

I had an interesting little discussion with my friend Jane this morning, who said she knew of a baker who reckoned you couldn't cook bagels at home, because you need a steam oven.  ~scratches head~  Well, we seem to be managing it!

Mind you, I say "we", but it is in fact Hubby who has become the Chief Bagel Baker.  The original recipe came from my friend Melanie Boxall - Quiddity - thanks, Mel!  He's tweaked the recipe and changed from dry yeast to fresh yeast and now thinks he's got the perfect recipe.  So - as he appears to have perfected it - here it is (by popular demand!).  This is the recipe for the basic plain bagel.  We have tried cinnamon & raisin (which I recommend) and have got it in mind to try cheese & onion bagels, using the fried onion pieces you get for sprinkling on salads.

BAGELS

Makes 8-10 (depending on how big you make each individual bagel)

Ingredients :

13.5 fl oz of warm water (112-115 deg F)
3 tablespoons sugar (normal granulated is fine)
15g fresh yeast (available from your local Supermarket's bakery - just ask for some and you should get it for free) if using dried yeast, 2 teaspoons (7 grams).
4.5 cups of strong bread flour
1 tablespoon of salt
1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon of water

Method :

1.  Start the yeast, by mixing the yeast and sugar with the water, then leaving to froth up (around 3 minutes).

2.  Decant into a large bowl and add half the flour and the salt, mix, then add the remainder of the flour.

3.  Knead well until smooth, cover and allow to rise.

4.  Let rise until doubled in size - about an hour in a warm kitchen.

5.  Divide into equal sized balls.  Then press down with a finger in the centre of each ball, making the customary hole in the middle of the bagel.

6.  Set aside and allow to rise again for 10-20 mins.

7.  Place a large pan of water on to boil, pre-heat your oven to 200deg C (fan) and prepare the beaten egg.

8.  Boil the bagels, 2-3 at a time, taking care to handle them gently so that they don't deflate, for 45 seconds, flipping over halfway through.  Drain well.

9.  Prepare a baking tray with greaseproof or parchment paper, then lay the bagels on the paper and glaze with the egg mix.

10.  Bake for 20 minutes, turning the tray half way through if your oven bakes hotter at the front than at the back - like ours does!

11.  Allow to cool.

The bagels are gloriously chewy, with the loveliest of fluffy insides.  I've discovered they're perfect with cream cheese and ham, cream cheese and smoked salmon, scrambled egg and smoked salmon, cheese and home made chutney, home made jam, marmite, they're just perfect for dunking in a bowl of soup - the possibilities are endless.  They also make great packed lunch sandwiches for schoolboys.

Ours are supposed to last for some 2-3 days, however as yet they have yet to get beyond 2 days, because we've eaten them all!