Sunday, while the oven is on for the roast dinner, is another day that finds me flouring the kitchen and baking up a storm. This week I wanted to try something new (and use up a few olives left over from the pizza evening on Saturday) so I attempted an olive bread. This bread is based on a 2:3 ratio of water to flour, flavoured with olives added before proving. It is useful to get used to this method of gauging loaves of bread, as the ratio of flour and water has a big effect on consistency and will allow the expert to recreate breads sampled elsewhere. It will be advantageous if you have seen the post where I formed a bloomer to get an idea of how to shape this bread, and it is slightly unusual in that it is slashed before proving rather than baking, giving you the opportunity to fill those slashes with olive oil and make a crisp and golden crust when brushing prior to baking. The photo was taken by my wife and the loaf is cut because I only remembered we needed a photo when we were already sat down for tea!
No Sunday tea is complete without a nice slice of cake, and it is a sticky-topped chocolate cake I chose to make on this occasion. This is similar to the ginger cake mentioned earlier, using the same technique, but with cocoa instead of ginger for the flavouring. This one also benefited from the vanilla essence I brought back from Zanzibar, the like of which I have never tasted before.I hope this tickles your fancy and encourages you to get up from the computer and bake either something new or something sweet, it was this blog that encouraged me to do something out of the ordinary this weekend, having baked my standard breads all week (not worth posting again) and going without cake (a crime).
Bye-bye bakers.
