Brioche & Bacon bread... and bananas along the way!



Well, after all the sweet treats of Easter I thought it was time for a change, and dived into the bread making section of 'Bake'.  Then for some reason, I decided to make Brioche - a sweet, enriched bread,  Oops, my sweet tooth won again!  Still, it was well worth it.  For those who don't know, brioche is a dough with a high butter and egg content - it has a really light texture and golden colour.  

You can buy moulds to shape brioche in the traditional way, like so...

Not my creation, I hasten to add!

As we've been trying to economise a bit, I decided not to buy the moulds, but use the tins I had.  So I used 1 standard loaf  tin, and 4 mini loaf tins.  The latter I bought ages ago, as I thought they were cute (I'm a sucker for cute) and  this was their first outing.  I was pleased with all the results, both in taste and appearance.  The mini loaves sliced perfectly into dinky little slices, which Megan devoured for breaskfast, spread with  butter &  jam.  I think they'd look gorgeous arranged on a cake stand, as part of an afternoon tea. 

Then I did manage a savoury - bacon and cheddar bread.  This is a very easy, hearty loaf, which could be knocked up quickly for those occasions when you've run out of bread and just need something for lunch. 

 I enjoyed it with tomato soup yesterday, and grilled and buttered today. 

Here's the recipe, if you'd like to have a go...

• 320g (11 1/2oz) plain flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 100g ( 3 1/2ox) Cheddar cheese, grated
• 100g (3 1/2oz) bacon lardons, cooked until just crisp then cooled
• 200ml (7fl oz) milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp. wholegrain mustard (I used Dijon as that was all I had)
• 60ml (2 fl oz) olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F/GM4.  Lightly oil and line the loaf tin with parchment paper.
2. Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.  Add the grated cheese and lardons.  Mix well,
3. Pour the milk into a large measuring jug, add the eggs; mustard and olive oil, and whisk to combine.
4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and slowly pour in the liquid, stirring all the time until it is fully incorporated, to form a fairly liquid dough.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, and bake in the oven for 50 minutes.  Remove from the tin, and cook for a further 10 minutes, directly on the oven shelf to crisp the bottom.  When cooked, it will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.  Cook on a wire rack before eating.

Rachel also provides variations of pumpkin seed, Gruyere and thyme leaf bread; and sun-dried tomato, rosemary and olive bread.  Will definitely try these at some point!

Over the last week, I've also made 'baked breakfast omelette' with bacon; cheese; mushrooms and herbs.  Really good!

I've also tried Rachel's baked bananas.  Now, it's not very often that a Rachel recipe lets me down, but I was disappointed with these.  We often have baked bananas after a barbecue, left in their skins, wrapped in foil and cooked on the coals.  Rachel's version are peeled and then baked in the oven.  We found that the texture went a bit strange - almost potato like.  I was looking forward to trying her accompaniment of 'orange, honey and mascarpone cream' but also found this a bit strange - more of a liquid than a cream, and the flavours didn't seem to combine very well.  Oh well. you win some you lose some!  

 

Going to attempt bagels next, back soon with the results!