Brioches

Bread making is fantastic, what you need is only flour, yeast and water.  For a rich texture, you need to add, eggs, butter and sugar or dried fruits instead of sugar.  Time is essential, you do need time to prepare correctly, to prove accurately and to bake timely.  The outcome is so great, it is a good feeling. Indeed from just powdery stuff and water, you created the fluffy and wholesome bread, the sustenance of life.

Rich bread-brioches
I want to talk about further than making bread.  I have been trying baking bread for years, and I am not very bad.  For some time now, I have started to bake different sorts of bread, rich bread, based on French bread, it is the famous 'brioche'.  Brioche is a very rich buttery bread and traditionally served warm.  The basic brioches that I ever baked were brioche à tête, cheese in brioche-brie, stuffed brioches with sausages.  These all are only the basic brioche dough.  Once you know to get the composition of basic brioche correctly, you could do so much with it.

Brioches from my Kitchen

Brioche Balls with Filling

Mini Brioche   à tête

Stuffed chicken rolled in Brioche.

Brie in Brioce, Brioche  à Tête and Brioche loaves

Savoury Brioche with Leek and Cheese Filling

Brioche Dough for Easter Bread

 Fillet of Roo in Brioche

Sausages in Brioche

another variation that I baked was Chicken galantine - in brioche

It has been hot days for a late Autumn, but I felt like baking, and of course, it was my favourite rich bread, the brioches - Susy brioches.  To accompany short black coffee is mini brioche à tête.  I indulged myself, I stuffed them with crême pàtissiêre and glace diced apples.

Shaping and baking the mini brioche à tête.

Freshly baked: beautiful and golden brown brioche à tête. 

Wow, look at that, golden beautiful hot brioches come out of the oven.  Am I the queen of brioche or what!!! I said to Rayner.  I did not know what his response was.


The brioches were so light, buttery and also sweet from the filling.  It was a treat to go with our small black coffee.

Recipe the basic brioche is in the older post, look up on the job, dated: 16 Nov 2011.

More tips for baking brioches:

1. Soon after finished shaping the brioches, brush them with egg wash immediately, then proof until doubled again.
2. For large brioches, bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes then reduce to a lower temperature and continue baking according to the recipe.
3. Every mini brioche à tête needs 50 g brioche dough, about 600 g dough to make a dozen, bake in a hot oven 175 degrees C for 16 -18 minutes, or until golden brown.
4. Serve brioche à tête within a day, or keep them in the freezer immediately after they are fresh from the baking.
5. You could keep the brioche dough in the freezer, thaw in the refrigerator.

The rich bread that I like to bake successfully is a pull apart bread (similar), but it is a rich bread that my mother used to buy for me,  the name is Roti Sobek (layers rich bread).  I did try to bake one, but it was not as good as the bought one my mother.  Well, I have to keep on trying.   I will share the recipe with you if I succeeded, it is a promise.


Thank you for visiting
Until Next Post
Susy

Sweet Influence

Happy Easter to all our Greek friends, today is their Easter Celebration.  Everyone with the family gets together for the occasion.  I could see the beautiful, vibrant and plentiful spread of their feast from my home.

The lamb on the spit is going and attended by the gentleman in the family while all ladies are preparing festive food, from savouries to sweets.  Most food preparations are done a few days before as they like to serve their speciality meticulously and beautifully.

Delicious appetisers are served: Dolmathes, Tiropitakia (small cheese pies), Keftethes (meatballs) Tzatziki (cucumber dip), Fish Rou Dip (Taramosalata), just to name a few.

I could imagine, the slow roasted lamb on the spit is served with a variety of salads; Salata-Greek salad: mixed fresh vegetables with Greek Feta cheese, black olives, anchovies fillets dressed in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and fresh herbs.  Also tomato salad, rice salad and many more.

I love their cakes, biscuits and sweets. The cakes and desserts are decadently rich, but you can enjoy them with confidence as they are made out of all fine ingredients.  The coconut cake (Keik Me Karitha) is so light and luscious because of the syrup.  Other sweets are custard slice (Galaktoboureko), Baklava (sweet nuts pie in delicate pastry soaked in syrup), and of course the honey puffs (Loukoumathes).  Biscuits are so beautiful too, the almond shortbread ( Kourmbiethes) is my favourite. Last but not least is the Easter bread (Tsoureki), it is a rich sweet bread which is inserted with coloured boiled eggs, then baked until golden.

Of course, they would have a lot more dishes, they are very generous people who know how to party and feast.

Cheese Pies are very often baked in my kitchen, this is one of them
Cheese and Spinach Pie in Susy water pastry

Our Easter Eggs are influenced by
the Greek cooking, only I love
using herbs for the colour

My cooking is influenced a lot by the Greek cuisine, I love the flavours, the way they cook them and more so my family enjoy the dishes.  The pies are the winner: spanakopita (spinach pie), tiropita (cheese pie) and prasopita (leeks pie).  The pies have crisp and light pastry (Philo).  I fell in love with the dish straight away, and I was lucky enough to learn how to make homemade pastry from Sophia.  She was so generous sharing the family's recipes with me.  Now I make my composition of the pastry as Susy water pastry. I bake the Greek pies very often, they are excellent for lunches and even dinners.

My Cooking Based on The Greek Dishes

Honey Puff ((Loukoumathes).  Delicious to be served hot or
room temperature.

A sliced of Leek and Feta Pie ( prasopita ), one of my savouries
of the Greek cooking

Freshly baked baklava rolls with almond cake in the centre are ready to
add syrup.

The baklava rolls are soaked in the syrup.
It is my way to have baklava; however, I have seen a similar cake somewhere
only. I don't know how to do it properly.  It is my interpretation, but it works

Mini coconut cake in syrup.  The cake is based on the (Keik Me Karitha)

 Serving The Sweets

I wish I could show the photo of my slow roasted leg of lamb, that took me more than four hours to cook.  It was so tender and succulent with special mixed herbs flavour.  I forgot to take a photo. Next time I will share the recipe and show you step by step how to prepare it.

I am sure today is a great day for the Greek community in Australia.  Here today is a perfect day to do outdoor cooking, on that note I believe that everyone had a fantastic celebration of Easter.
Happy Easter To You All.

The sweet influence of Greek cooking will be with my family always.  Thanks to Sophia and her family.


Until Next Post
Susy

Potato To Pastry

Sweet Potato Cakes and Water Pastry with Egg.

Sweet Potato Cakes.

Sweet potatoes are readily available now in the shops or market, and they are inexpensive.  You could do so much with them, from mashed to served with meat or use them for sweet dishes, cakes, muffins, and so forth.

In Java, I used to snacking with 'timus'-fried sweet potato dumpling.  I am reluctant to do any deep frying at the moment; instead I do baking.

Today I baked honey sweet potato cake with nut topping.  The cake looked good and sliced well too. It is a moist and healthy cake; indeed, we enjoyed our morning tea thoroughly.

If you like to try to bake this cake, I will share the recipe with you.

Preparation of Honey Sweet Potato Cake

Freshly Baked Sweet Potato Cake

Honey Sweet Potato Cake with Cashew Nuts Topping

It looks good and sliced a moist and healthy cake beautifully.

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When I have time, and I don't need to go out or working in the garden, I give myself the treat to make homemade bread or pastry.  I love working with dough to get my hands dancing with flour and water.  It is very relaxing and therapeutic.

Susy Water Pastry with Egg
It is very easy pastry, it cannot go wrong, you can achieve it in no time.

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
a pinch of salt
1 egg
3/4 cup warm water and 2 tablespoons olive oil

Place the flour in a large bowl, keep some aside for kneading (1 tablespoon)
Add in the salt and mix thoroughly
Put the slightly beaten egg in the middle and pour the warm water over at once.
Mix all together to make a soft dough
Knead the dough onto a floured surface until smooth and elastic about 6-8 minutes
Wrap the dough with cling plastic to rest for at least 25 minutes
Now you have a lovely mixture to work with, I use the dough for my strudels, sweets, and pies.



I did one batch of dough today, and I had fresh leeks from the market, so the dough came handy for me, I baked leek and Feta pie.

It is a delicious vegetarian dish, you may have to serve a salad, leafy salad with Feta cheese is a tasty garnish for it.



Rice Saffron with Garnishes

Another vegetarian dish and does not have any cheese is saffron rice, garnished with sweet honeyed and spicy mixed nuts, a hot onion and chilli pickle with sliced fresh figs.

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Stretching the pastry is fun to do.  It does need patience and dedication.

The Water Pastry

The pastry is silky and elastic after about 8 minutes kneading.

Wrap the pastry with cling plastic wrap, let it rest for 25 minutes.

Unwrap, knead the pastry lightly, and roll it into a long sausage then
divide it into 8, to make small balls.

Beautiful pastry with smooth textured, are ready to stretch to make a thin pastry.

Roll two pieces at the same time

The sheet of pastry is getting large and thinner.

Keep on stretching by rolling if you wish to make a finer sheet.  Sprinkle with flour
to make rolling easier.

The last stages - the sheet is excellent and transparent.
Now the pastry sheet is ready to use.  You can use it for savouries or sweet pies.



The Pie

Leek and Cheese Pie

Place a sheet of the pastry on an oiled baking tray.

Place 3 layers on top of the pastry, and brush with oil on,  and between sheets.




The Filling

Saute the sliced leek with oil until soft
add some salt to taste

Add three kinds of cheese, grated Cheddar, Parmesan
and Feta, also the eggs.  Mix them together

Place the filling on the prepared pastry, and cover with four layers of the sheets.  Brush
with oil in between the sheets.  Decorate the top with the leftover pastry.

The pie is ready to bake, on a hot oven 175 degrees C (fan forced) for 35 minutes
until the pastry is golden brown.

It did take a lot of time to do it, but as I said, it's fun.

At this stage, you could keep the unbaked pie in the freezer, then bake it whenever you are ready to have it. 

It has been great sharing my baking and pastry making with you.  Have fun and happy cooking.





Thank You For Visiting My Blog

Until Next Post
Susy