The Bake Off Bake Along 2015: Week 3 – Bread
Week three of The Great British Bake Off was accused of being quite boring, but I actually really enjoyed the simplicity of baguettes, the flavoursome combinations of quick breads and the absolutely bloody incredible 3D bread structures – that lion….WHAT?!
As I was at a hen party near London all weekend, I knew I didn’t have the time to do something extraordinary, and was actually looking forward to trying a new type of bread and filling it with deliciousness – I also hoped that “quick breads” would live up to their name as I had very little time to whip up a creation.
Soda bread isn’t something I’ve ever jump to munch on and I’ve got vivid memories of nearly breaking my teeth on a family friends homemade soda bread which was like rock! Therefore, my hopes were not high for this bake and I thought I’d play it safe with Paul’s soda bread recipe and some delicious additions of my choosing. As this week was savoury, I was going to go all out with flavours and wanted a combination involving lots of cheese…
Soda Bread with goats cheese, mature cheddar, red onion and rosemary
Ingredients
- 250g/9oz plain wholemeal flour
- 250g/9oz plain white flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 420ml/15fl oz buttermilk
- extra flour for dusting
- 100g chunks of hard goats cheese
- 100g chunks of mature cheddar
- 1 medium red onion, roughly chopped
- 1 large stem of fresh rosemary, chopped finely, or 1 tbsp dried rosemary
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius
- If you don’t have buttermilk to hand, measure out the equivalent amount of full fat milk in a jug, add 1 tbsp lemon juice, stir and leave to stand at room temperature for ten minutes
- Mix together the dry ingredients (both flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt) in a large bowl
- Then add in the other flavours – cheeses, onion and rosemary (or others if you fancy it?)
- Add the buttermilk bit by bit until you have a stocky dough
- Gently roll and fold the dough a couple of times to bring the mixture together, but do not knead – you also need to work quite quickly as soon as the bicarb gets wet it starts to activate.
- Lightly flour a surface, tip the dough onto it and shape it into a ball.
- Score the dough using a large knife, making a big cross almost to the bottom but not quite
- Dust with extra flour and place on a baking tray lined with parchment
- Bake for 30 minutes until it is golden brown (and probably smelling delicious!)
- Leave to cool on a wire rack – or just dive straight in there and eat it hot from the oven, you probably won’t be able to resist!
As I was attempting this in an evening after work, I was also at my parents house for the bake, which meant I could get snap happy whilst waiting for the bread in the oven – hence the various photos of Posy the cat/Lark the deerhound/Daddy Bayfield and Jack (my brother’s best friend who’s just returned back to Devon after living in Barbados for 4 years! I still got my infamous spoon selfie in there too, just with a different spoon and a different oven!
This recipe did live up to its name, it was super quick and relatively easy- plus is tasted incredible! So much better than I was expecting, the crust was crunchy, the inside was soft and light and the added ingredients made it very moreish – I even had a slice or two for breakfast! It may not be the fanciest of breads to make, but I loved that there was no hanging around and you could get the whole thing baked from start to finish easily within the hour. The only slight issue was that the red onions turned a dark green colour making it look a bit strange, but this didn’t put anyone off that tried it and there was a a resoundingly positive opinion about taste and texture. Soda bread has gone up in my estimations and I’ll definitely be making this one again in the future!
Also – I have just read Amanda’s post saying that I won last week’s Bake Off Bake Along! Yay, the effort with the biscuit fridge paid off and I can forever bask in the glory that it was worth the stress!
