Versatile Blogger Award

I have had the last two evenings off blogging and actually doing anything constructive, I have rather a long list of things-to-do as usual and actually have needed two nights off to stop panicking about it all. Silly I know, sometimes I feel better if I just work through it, sometimes I feel better if I have some time off. I watched two films in my nights off, Con Air and Definitely, Maybe – neither of which can really be called as classics (so not really counted for my 30 by 30) but were enjoyable all the same.

While I was off relaxing I have been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award, I am so thrilled and amazed at this. It is funny, when you are a blogger you have access to site stats and can see how many views you have had on your site but to have an award from another blogger, one whose blog I follow and admire is wonderful, so thank you Peri – Peri blogs at Peri’s Spice Ladle and writes about mouth-watering Indian-inspired food.

The Rules of Acceptance:
 Thank the person who gave you this award.
 Include a link to their blog.
 Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
 Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
 Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
 In the same post, include this set of rules.
 Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.
I’d like to nominate the following blogs for the Versatile Blogger Award:

1.  limmster – I love Belles twitter bio “Outside is my favourite place”, her blog is of her rural life in Cork with her family and animals, her photos make me smile. Belles F*cket List inspired me to write my 30 by 30 list.
2.  52NYR – Alistair Gills 52 New Years Resolutions were another inspiration for my 30 by 30, he has a super swish blog which I can only dream of having something similar.
3. margot-and-barbara – yet another inspiration for my 30 by 30, it was on Liz’s blog that I first read about being a scanner; having so many interests that you don’t know what to choose, Liz writes about all her interests from fashion, beauty and travel to baking and gardening.
4. Gemma Gannon – Gemmas blog is full of fantastic recipes for every sort of occasion, food for breakfast, lunch or dinner, afternoon tea or just a treat but I turn to Gemmas blog especially for recipes for biscuits, bread, cakes and bakes, superb!
5. Jessica Mauskin Illustration – Jessicas blog showcases her gorgeous illustrations, they invite you to look carefully at the pictures to see what else you can spot, I just wish I could drawer like her.
6.  Georgina Giles – Georginas blog is a great place to go for vintage finds, creative inspiration and Georginas Mini Monsters always make me laugh she even has a few tutorials on her blog, go have a look.
7. Carl Legge – Carl blogs about the Seasons, Foraging, Permaculture and Fermentation. He is an expert in sourdough baking and has many wonderful British seasonal recipes on his blog.
8. Creative Jewish Mom – Sara blogs about crafting, cooking and gardening, I especially love that she recycles/upcycles a lot of things and shares how to do them with us. I have so many old t-shirts that I am desperate to crochet with!
9. Meet Me At Mikes – Pip Lincolne who blogs at Meet Me At Mikes lives in Melbourne, Australia. My sister has moved to Australia, near to where Pip used to have her shop. I found her blog when I was trying to find out more about where my little sis lives. I fell in love with Pips blog with her cute style and now want to be the next Pip Lincolne, an English version, publishing my own books and all the rest of it…..we’ll see?
10. Growing Up – this is the blog of Tom ‘an amateur kitchen gardener’ his own words, I love his honesty about his successes and failures in his garden.
11. Lace Hearts – this is a completely new blog to me and it is full of all the things I love especially the crafting, the posts go back to 2008 so I still have a lot to explore.
12. make, do & friend – this is an absolute delight of a blog, I wish me and the kids could be friends with Charlotte and Vin, I wish I had the confidence of doing even half of the creative and fun things that Charlotte organises for her son for my two. An inspiring blog for anyone who needs inspiration for creative play ideas for the kids! Love it!
13. the little loaf – what a wonderful blog this is from Little Loaf, if baking is your thing this is the blog for you such fantastic flavour combinations and fab pics!
14. Very Berry Handmade – this blog is where I come for my fabric fix, fantastic patchwork and stunning photos as well as recipes and some sewing tutorials, what more could you want?
15. Red Ted Art’s Blog – Maggy has much more than a blog here; it is devoted to everything and more for arty things for kids. I have only just discovered this site and I know I will be coming back for more inspiration as my kids grow older.

Wow, what a list, some amazing blogs there and I hope you get a chance to have a quick look at least a few of them.

As per the rules of acceptance of this award here seven things about myself so I can share this with everyone:

1.  I was born in Chester, grew up in Hereford and now live in West London – but I am a country girl at heart and would love to have a small holding one day.
2. When I met my now husband I had short spikey hair and he had long curly hair – we now have a pact that we are never to revert to our previous hair styles!
3. I really need people – I will go out of my way to find people to talk to and most weeks am heard saying “I’ve found a new friend”, even though at one point in time I would barely talk to anyone, and ran away when the phone started to ring!
4. Another thing I have a ‘need’ for is chocolate – not a day goes by where I don’t have to have some, it can be in any form, I only need a little but I get quite grumpy if there is none in the house.
5. I cannot handle alcohol – I have always been a ‘cheap date’ but since having the kids I am terrible, I can get tipsy on a sip and drunk on half a glass, I do however sober up almost instantly!
6. I am named after my Great Great Aunt Catherine – who lived until she was 104, she was my Grannies Aunty and I did meet her when I was very young.
7. Being a mum is the hardest thing I have ever done – I am not that adventurous but I have done a few things in life (got a 1st for my degree + completed an MSc) but I know that being a mum will always be the hardest thing I will ever do and know it is worth it all (even though some days are so hard).

Phew, I think that was the longest (and most complicated) blog I think I have written yet, just hope my links work.

One last thank you for Peri who nominated me for this award and happy blogging and/or reading to you all.

For now,

Catherine

Chocolate Herman Brownies (and a small favour)

We had a fantastic weekend this weekend, we went up to Ruislip Lido both days and we all had a great time in the sun. But, guess what? It’s been raining again today and very cold so a bit of chocolate was in order to cheer us all up!

Here is the recipe I tried today:

Chocolate Herman Brownies

• 185g Butter
• 185g Dark Chocolate
• 20g Flour
• 40g Cocoa Powder
• 100g White Chocolate
• 1 Egg
• 135g Golden Caster Sugar
• 1 Portion of Herman

Grease and line a 20cm square tin. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water, leave to cool. Sieve the flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl. Chop the white chocolate into chunks.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until a glossy pale colour. Pour the cooled chocolate and butter mix into the egg, fold in very gently. Add the portion of Herman and mix again very gently. Re-sift the flour into the mix and fold in as gently as possible. Finally stir in the chocolate chunks until distributed evenly.

Pour the mixture into the tin, gently smoothing it into the corners and leveling the top. Bake for 25 minutes, to check, gently shake the tin, if the brownie wobbles in the middle put it in for a further 5 minutes. The top should have a papery crust and look shiny. Leave to cool completely before cutting.

Straight out of the oven – Chocolate Herman Brownies

Slice of Chocolate Herman Brownie with papery top and white choc chunks – it is very oily though

As before, this is another Herman experiment so here are my observations.

General Appearance: The top of the cake has the proper Brownie papery look but the edge is very crispy, maybe lower temp for longer.

Aroma: Mmmmmm, Chocolate!

Texture: Very oily, not sure if I need to put less butter in the mix or maybe more flour or both, the recipe definitely needs work.

Taste: Chocolate Brownie

So in all I am quite happy with this bake, it is edible at least, well it is chocolate how could I not it?! However, after my disasters at the weekend I have been a bit upset about the whole ‘Herman thing’, I had thought that I would write a recipe book entirely dedicated to Herman recipes. What do you think? Do you think I should write a Herman recipe book? It is one of my 30 by 30 things that I would love to have a book published before I am 30.

Could you do me a massive favour and leave me a comment or even just like my facebook page or anything you can do to show you think my book is a good idea. Just feeling like I need a bit of support…

For now,

Catherine

PS. Thank you x

Herman Bread and two Herman fails!

As I said in my post last night I had just cooked a Herman Lemon Drizzle Cake and a plain Herman Bread was having an overnight proof, both of which I finished off today as well as trialing Herman Blueberry Pancakes. As you can see from the title of this post it is about Herman Bread and two Herman fails. I am a little upset about this, I know I am experimenting with Herman but putting time into a recipe that then doesn’t work is disheartening, especially when I love lemon drizzle cake and the kids and I love blueberry pancakes.

I had promised the kids blueberry pancakes and had worked out a vague recipe using Herman to make this morning for breakfast, well lets just say we had a few tears (not from me, I must add) and I certainly didn’t take any pictures. They didn’t even look like pancakes, just piles of burnt sticky stuff. Ah well, I will try again with a different recipe.

My next disappointment came with the Lemon Herman Drizzle Cake. The lemon drizzle cake smelled great when it was cooking last night and came out looking lovely, I decorated it this morning and spent time taking photos, trying to set it up in the best light with some good props. I am not sure why but the taste and texture of it was just wrong, it was so dense and the taste of the lemon just didn’t come through the Herman flavour, it did look good though. I may trial a different Lemon Herman Drizzle Cake recipe but I have a feeling that the same will happen with the lemon flavour just not complimenting the Herman flavour.

Lemon Herman Drizzle Cake looking lovely before I cut into it and saw that it just wasn’t right – I was a bit upset

On to the Herman Bread, I wanted to see what a very basic Herman Bread would turn out like and thankfully this one did turn out alright. I am not sure I would just bake this plain Herman Bread but would definitely add to it with fruit, nuts or chocolate.

Herman Bread

• 400g strong bread flour
• 100ml water
• 1 portion of Herman

Combine the ingredients and knead until very smooth, I did this in a freestanding mixer and mixed for about 20 minutes.

I let this stand in the mixing bowl over night at room temperature. This morning I took the dough out, knocked it back and left it to rest on the side for 1/2 hour. I then shaped it to put into a large, greased loaf tin. I then put this into the airing cupboard for 3 hours to rise again.

Preheat the oven to your ovens hottest setting. Place the tin on the middle shelf in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes at the high temperature then reduce to Gas 4/180C and cook for a further 45 minutes.

Put the tin on a cooling rack and leave until cool before taking the bread out of the tin.

Basic Herman Bread – very sweet but very yummy

This is just a basic recipe but would be great with other additions.

For now,

Catherine

An English Summers Day and English Honey Herman Cake

We had another early wake up today, as it is Friday Bella doesn’t go to her pre-school and there are no groups that we go to so I ask the kids what they would like to do. The request was to go to the little park round the corner, so that is where we went, for the whole morning, as the weather was nicer than it has been for weeks. The kids kept remarking how sunny it was. While we were out we spotted some wildlife which the kids were totally thrilled with.

Ladybird on Williams hand

Super fat caterpillar that the kids tried feeding various bits of plant to – it loved daisies!

It was so nice to be out in the sun, really made it feel like the summer may be here soon so we can enjoy being outside more.

Did you know it is National Honey Week? I’m not even sure where I heard that it was, so I did a quick (google) check to confirm, and it is, from 7th – 13th May this year. So I thought what better cake to bake than a Honey Cake, with English Honey of course, nothing less! This was another Herman experiment and I have mixed feelings on the results.

English Honey Herman Cake

• 225g butter
• 150g honey
• 60g dark muscovado sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 portion of Herman
• 225g plain flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2tsp cinnamon
• zest of 1 lemon
• 3tbsp of honey

Cut the butter into pieces and put into a medium pan with the honey and sugar. Melt slowly over a low heat. When liquid, turn up the heat and bring to the boil, take off the heat as soon as the mix is boiling. Leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 3. Butter and line a 20cm/8in round, loose-bottomed cake tin. Beat the eggs and Herman into the cooled honey mixture. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon into a large bowl, add the lemon zest then pour in the egg, Herman and honey mixture, beating until you have a smooth batter.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 50mins – 1 hour until the cake is well risen, golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Turn the cake out onto a cooling rack. Add 1tsp boiling water to the 3tbsp honey in a bowl, and drizzle over the top to glaze, then leave to cool.

General Appearance: The cake looks very brown, I am not sure what it is but my Herman cakes seem to brown very easily, I must learn to cover with silver foil.

Aroma: Buttery, sweet but slightly burned.

Texture: Wonderful texture, very light, I think that might be the addition of bicarbonate of soda and baking powder instead of using a standard Self-Raising flour.

Taste: Not as strong a honey taste as I’d have hoped, I had to reduce the amount of honey for the recipe as the Herman mix has so much sugar in already, more experiments needed.

English Honey Herman Cake with a vase of forget-me-nots from the garden – just me trying to be creative taking photos

My observations of this cake seem a bit bad reading back through them but actually the cake is very nice and I am sure will get eaten up in no time.

Is anyone else experimenting with Herman? Did you go outside today?

For now,

Catherine

PS. Lemon Herman Drizzle Cake just out of the oven, need to leave to cool before decorating, also a basic Herman Bread is having a slow proof overnight. I will write again tomorrow x

Enjoying the garden between the rain

It’s been raining here loads as I think it has almost everywhere in the UK for the past few weeks, actually ever since a hose pipe ban was instated! I am busy busy here as usual but just wanted to share a few photos of my lovely garden on one of our dashes out to play inbetween the rain.

Bright blue forget-me-nots or not-forget-me’s as Bell calls them

Seedlings on our little potting table – doing very well even though it has not been very sunny

The border has gone completely wild, spring bulbs all gone and new flowers taking their place – Bella loves the ‘ladies in the bath’ (the pink one, I can’t remember what it’s called)

I love the water on the leaves of this lily and I just love the bright green, gorgeous!

The most recent plant to bloom in my garden – my clematis – bright pink and as big as your hand, it climbs all the way up to the bedroom window

I love the way the water forms shiny beads on the leaves – the rain isn’t all bad

Have you managed to get out in your garden in the last few weeks? I feel like my garden has been neglected but it seems very happy so I am happy too.

I hope you like my flowers.

For now,

Catherine

Herman Chocolate Cinnamon Loaf

The days are all merging into one for me at the moment, I keep the kids busy in the days, then baking once they are in bed and then to my computer after that. I am shattered but really enjoying myself experimenting with Herman. I have now taken the one Herman out of the fridge and he is absolutely fine, bubbling away after a good whisk and a feed.

On Friday night I tried out another bread type recipe to test the ‘powers’ of Herman. The taste of the loaf was delicious but I must admit I am a little disappointed with the texture, more cakey than bready even though it was kneaded and left to rise. This may be because the batch of Herman I used was on Day 3 of the cycle so had been fed four days before and may not have been as active as he possibly should be. Here is the recipe that I used, it needs testing again, possibly adding more flour as I only just about got it into the tin without all the yummy chocolate goodness coming out of the middle.

Yeasted Chocolate Cinnamon Loaf

INGREDIENTS

BREAD

• 300g/10oz strong flour
• 1 portion of Herman
• 40ml milk
• 112g/4oz butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1 egg

FILLING

• 200g/8oz bitter chocolate
• 120g/4oz granulated sugar
• 1 ½ tbs ground cinnamon
• 60g/2oz butter

TOPPING:

• 30g/1oz icing sugar
• 30g/1oz plain flour
• 60g/2oz butter, cut into small cubes

DIRECTIONS:

To make the bread – this is best done in a free-standing mixer as the dough is very sticky. Put the butter and milk in a small saucepan and heat over a low heat until the butter is melted. Add the melted butter and all other ingredients into a large bowl. Mix until smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 9-10 minutes. Grease a large bowl. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Place in the greased bowl and cover with cling film. Let stand in a warm place until doubled in size. As this recipe is using natural yeasts from the Herman and includes butter and egg this may take 4-6 hours, but keep an eye on it.

To make the filling -  Chop up the chocolate into very small chunks, add this to the butter, cinnamon and sugar and mix until all combined. Reserve 1/2 a cup of this chocolate filling for the topping.

Make the topping – In a small bowl combine the icing sugar, flour, butter, and the reserved chocolate filling.

Grease a 5in by 10in loaf tin and line with baking parchment, leaving an overhang, then grease the inside of the baking parchment. Once the dough has doubled in size, place it on a floured work top. Leave to rest for 5 minutes and then roll it out into an 45cm/18in square. Sprinkle the chocolate filling over the dough, leaving a 2.5cm/1in border. Brush the edges with cold water. Tightly roll the dough from one end to the other, pinch the edges to seal. Fold in half to form a U shape then twist two or three times. Place the dough in the tin and sprinkle the topping over the bread, it’s ok, if the filling falls down the edges.

Herman Chocolate Cinnamon Loaf – rolled out with chocolate filling

Attempted to twist this but the mix was so soft it was very difficult

Sticky topping on top of the loaf

Preheat the oven to your ovens hottest setting. Cover the bread with plastic wrap and let rise for another 30 minutes – 1 hour.

Place the tin on a baking tray and place it on the middle rack in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes at the high temperature then reduce to Gas 4/180C and cook for a further 50 minutes. Then reduce temperature to Gas 3/160⁰C and bake for a final 15 minutes.

Put the tin on a cooling rack and leave until cool before taking the bread out of the tin (if you can wait that long).

Straight out of the oven – mmm, smells great

Very slight swirl in the middle – but tastes amazing

I will have a bit of a break from baking as it is only Day 5 on our Herman cycle today, I know I can bring the cycle forward by a few days by feeding Herman early so I may do that so I can practice some more recipes. I will post when I have tested some more.

Happy baking,

For now,

Catherine

Herman Scones

As I sit here writing, yet another Herman experiment is in my oven, one Herman is in my fridge, one is in the freezer and yet another poor Herman is not going to be fed tomorrow. I do, however, still have one that is not being subject to some experiment that I am feeding and nurturing until Friday next week then he too will come to his own fate in the form of some other delicious cake or bake.

When writing my 30 by 30 list just two weeks ago I wrote:

29. Get a book published.

The reason it was at 29 was that it is something I have always wanted to do, but thought it was one thing that I most likely wouldn’t get accomplished by the time I was 30. Then, last Thursday I had a great idea to create a recipe book for Herman sourdough, I typed it into a search engine and no books were out there for Herman cakes or for sweet sourdough recipes. Since then I have been experimenting with the limitations of Herman and really trying to understand the science behind it all as well as writing the outline of my book and researching recipes. Below is the latest of my experiments:

Herman Scones

• 280g/10oz self-raising flour
• 85g/3oz butter
• 1 portion of Herman

Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and tip in the Herman, all in one go, then using a knife cut through the mix until combined into a soft dough.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly. Roll the dough out to a 2.5cm/1in thickness, then stamp out 5cm/2in rounds with a cutter. Gather up the trimmings, knead again briefly and stamp out more rounds.

Herman Scones ready to go in the oven

Transfer the Herman scones to a baking sheet, spaced a little apart and bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and light golden. Leave the scones to cool on a wire rack and serve with cream and jam.

Herman Scones straight out of the oven

General Appearance: The Herman scones look like scones, I didn’t glaze them as it was late last night and I just wanted to get them in the oven. They didn’t rise as much as I had expected but I do wonder what would happen if I left them in a warm place for 1/2 hour – another experiment.

Texture: The texture is perfect scone texture; light and crumbly.

Light and crumbly Herman Scone

Aroma: Herman scones do smell like Herman, not quite as alcoholic but there is still that hint of yeast fermentation. This is not bad, just different.

Taste: There is still a hint of Herman in the taste of the scones, but again this is not a bad thing and if, like me, you like to have jam and cream on your scones you don’t notice it at all.

Strawberry jam and clotted cream on Herman Scones, with a cup of tea, perfect!

If you have some Herman spare and love scones why don’t you give these a go. Takes about 30 minutes in total, including cooking time and they are super warm with butter on. I will definitely make these again.

Happy baking,

Catherine

Basic Herman Sponge Cake

Today was supposed to be the day that I was going to test out a lot of new ideas that I have had for using my Herman. I spent yesterday evening trawling through recipe books for various cake, pudding and bread recipes and calculating what ingredients are in one portion of Herman mix and how I could substitute this for other ingredients in each recipe. Well, having two small children and even with the best of intentions I only managed one trial on my Herman and that was to bake him into a very Basic Herman Sponge Cake – nothing added!

This being an experiment I am pleased at the result:

General apperance: The cake itself ended up sinking in the middle as I kept taking it out to see if it was cooked and also it is very brown as it just didn’t cook in the time I thought, it ended up needing an hour in the oven.

Basic Herman Sponge – rather brown with a sunken middle

Texture: It makes a very dense sponge so wouldn’t make a very good layered Victoria Sponge but would be great for a birthday style cake that needs icing.

Lovely light colour inside and tastes delicious

Aroma: There is still a hint of the Herman smell to the cake but none of the alcohol smell, just sweet and almost apple like.

Taste: The taste of the cake is what is so wonderful, as my 3 1/2 year old daughter said “it tastes like honey on toast” – I couldn’t have described it better. It is very sweet with an almost floral, vanilla flavour but has that hint of yeast which gives it a bready flavour.

I used a 8inch round tin to bake my Herman Sponge in and as it browned so much before it was cooked I think a larger tin would be better for this recipe, even an 8inch square tin would have been better, just make sure there is enough room for it to rise as it does rise quite well.

Below are the basic instructions.

Basic Herman Sponge Cake

• 225g/8oz sugar (1 cup)
• 225g/8oz plain flour (2 cups)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 175ml/6oz cooking oil (2/3 cup) – I used corn oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 portion of Herman

Pre-heat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line a large tin (see note above). Sieve the sugar, flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Measure out the oil into a measuring jug, add the eggs and Herman and mix well with a whisk. Pour this into the dry ingredients and stir until this is all combined. Pour into the baking tin. Bake for around 45 minutes, check after 30 minutes and cover with silver foil if browning too much. Once out of the oven leave to cool then remove from tin.

Do let me know if you bake this recipe, I’d love to get some feedback on the recipes that I am posting. Hopefully I’ll get time to bake some more tomorrow.

Happy baking,

Catherine

Pride in my garden and 30 by 30

 

These gorgeous Blue Bells appear from no-where every year and I think they are wonderful - I take great pride in my garden

 

Where do these weeks go? It is nearly two weeks since I last blogged but I haven’t been entirely absent from blogging, I have just been posting content in other places….!

I have not done a very good job of telling you about all our adventures in the garden, partly because it is quite difficult to take photos when I have very mucky hands and have two small people who are very keen to ‘help’ with the seeds and seedlings (not the best combination) and also it has actually rained quite a lot for the past few weeks so we haven’t been out much. I have been thinking about my garden a lot though and am very proud of all I have achieved so far in it. I was therefore thrilled when Tom of Growing Up agreed that I could write a guest post for his blog. He asks guest bloggers to write for his Guest Bed on the feeling that their own garden conjures up; what I feel when I think of my garden is Pride – do have a quick read of my post and see what I have been up to and have a look round the rest of Toms great blog.

I have also been working on a second Page to my blog, a list of 30 things that I would like to have accomplished before I am 30 -  30 by 30. These are mostly simple things that I really feel like I can fit into the next (nearly) two years, what with not having much money and having two young children to look after. I don’t have anything really exciting on my list but have a look, tell me what you think, any ideas would be very welcome, especially for numbers 1, 2 and 3.

For those who may be interested Herman is still going. I was quite busy at the beginning of this week so I only baked a standard Apple and Cinnamon Herman but it was still delicious, this time I baked it in two loaf tins and it worked out really well. I will get back to the experimenting next week, I feel like a chocolate version is needed!

I would love it if you have time to check out the links to my 30 by 30 Page and especially to my guest post for Tom in his Guest Bed.

Hope you are well. What have you been up to? Any gardening, any list writing?

For now,

Catherine

Hot Cross Herman Buns

I am a bit of an experimenter, my favourite subjects at school being science and maths, so once I got a little more confident in the kitchen I began to experiment with recipes. It does gain me some praise and also some comments of “do you ever follow a recipe?” but I would say on the whole my experiments turn out well. I am actually, in this case, amazed to say my Hot Cross Herman Buns turned out very well too!

Bread baking fascinates me but I have done very little of this in the past, I could probably count on two hands the number of times I have baked bread from absolute scratch, so when I got my Herman a few weeks ago the scientist inside me started wondering what made it bubble and rise. The instructions that came with my Herman said that it was a sourdough cake starter, which lead me to believe that it was wild yeasts in the included flour that were then feeding on the sugar in the Herman, making a very active mix. After weighing the amount of mix that I had and knowing that the proportions of ingredients were one part flour - two parts sugar - two parts milk, I worked out roughly that there was about 70g flour, 140g sugar and 140ml milk in one cut of the starter once divided on day 10 (the maths part!). I then checked in my favourite bread baking book – River Cottage Handbook No.3 – Bread by Daniel Stevens – for sweet bread recipes and decided on a hot cross bun recipe to experiment with. The following is the recipe I came up with:

Hot Cross Herman Buns

• 450g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 100ml warm water
• 5g salt
• one portion of Herman starter
• 1 medium, free-range egg
• 50g butter
• 100g raisins
• finely grated zest of 1/2 orange
• 1tsp ground mixed spice

If you have a food mixer, combine the flour, water, salt and Herman starter in the bowl and fit a dough hook. Add the egg and butter and mix to a sticky dough. Now add the dried fruit, orange zest and spice and knead on low speed until silky and smooth. (You can do this by hand, but it will be sticky to handle). Cover the dough and leave to rise in a warm place.

I combined my ingredients according to the recipe and put the dough into a bowl, covered over and put into the airing cupboard to rise. I went to have a peak after 20 minutes, then again at about 45 mins and again just after the recommended 1 hour. The dough had not risen at all! This is the point at which I panicked and headed to twitter with a shout for sourdough experts to help! I am totally amazed how many retweets I had and the fantastic advice I was given, especially from Carl Legge.

Due to the advice I was given I left the dough in the airing cupboard for about 4 hours, after this I kneaded it again and as it was late in the evening I actually put the dough in the fridge to slow the rising. The kids got me up early this morning so I took the dough out of the fridge and put it on the dusted side while we had our breakfast. When we’d finished I kneaded the dough and divided into 8 equal pieces, shaped them into rounds then placed these onto a floured baking tray. I covered this again and back into the airing cupboard for one last rise for 2 1/2 hours. I wouldn’t say that the dough doubled in size any of the times that I left it to rise but I believe that sourdough does not necessarily double anyway.

Dough shaped and ready for proving

Buns visibly risen and ready for the oven

I then preheated the oven to its highest setting (Gas 9 or your ovens highest temp), put a deep baking tray on the bottom shelf and put the kettle on. When I put the buns in I also poured the boiling water into the tin and closed the door quickly (the water in the tin creates steam that allows the bread to rise further before the crust hardens). I let the buns cook for 10 mins, then as they were browning nicely I turned the oven down to Gas 4/180C to cook for a further 10 minutes. As soon as they came out of the oven I glazed the buns with a marmalade glaze to enhance the citrus flavour.

Hot Cross Herman Buns - look how much they have risen!

Warm from the oven, sticky on the outside, soft and light on the inside

I took the, still warm, buns round to a friend’s house, another friend was also there, both of whom are fantastic bakers and they were both quite impressed. Needless to say I am rather pleased with myself!

How do your experiments in the kitchen generally go? Have you ever baked bread from scratch?

Hope you had a super weekend,

For now,

Catherine