Well! Hello there everybody!
How are you?
I am good. Here I am in Auckland. Writing a small blogette about being an excited nutritionist, because I am both excited, and a nutritionist. The more times I say "nutritionist" in my head, the less like a word it sounds. Is it even a word? Spell check does think so but, I have my issues with spellcheck (thankyou, autocorrect, icecream.)
In the form of a short list, this is why I am in Auckland:
1. I quit the army (everyone was mutually satisfied by this.)
2. I entered a "fun run" in Otorahanga (where is this? Don't worry, nobody else knows either. I plan to just drive south-ish until I reach a part of the Waikato where there are more swanndris than subarus, and then ask a cow or something)
3. My aunty will pay me to do things like clean windows and mince around in an apron. Ideal!
So! In a spirit of being the best house elf ever, I got up this morning and decided to bake bread! Hurrah!
[This is a picture of my bread, taken with my incredibly terrible camera phone. Gosh it is bad. This shows delicious bread straight after coming out of the oven. It smells AMAZING. But you cannot smell it from this picture. Just imagine. Look at the golden brown loveliness. MMM. Bread.]
I was sort of bullied into crawling out of bed at 8 something by my bladder so had to get up, and as we had eaten all the bread yesterday (my uncle and aunt have a billion jars of exciting little thingies nestled at the back of the fridge and, in a spirit of sound scientific enquiry, I was forced to try all of them. On toast. With cheese) there was a panic moment. No bread! What am I going to put my delicious poached eggs on so that I can gently puncture the yolks and have delicious melty yolk on my toast with salt and pepper and feta and chutney? Enthusiastic Family Friend, attempting to deflect my meltdown, suggested I go down to the dairy (100m away) to purchase bread. I considered this for about thirty seconds before dismissing it as a loser's solution. I would MAKE bread! Go me!
After two coffees and a snuffle into various cupboards I worked out that in fact Uncle and Aunt had no yeast; what you would call a limiting factor in bread construction. No matter! Through my extreme nutritionist's knowledge I knew of another sort of bread. The "quick bread". Quick breads are bread that are leavened with baking soda (or baking powder) instead of with yeast, and are therefore quite quick to make cos you don't have to proof the yeast or raise the dough before baking. Soda bread is the quick bread most people think of, and it is a quintessentially Irish sort of thing; bit stodgy, full of butter, and tastes like a scone. Great with potatoes, probably. I don't know. I don't really like scones that much so tend to avoid making soda bread. Maybe one day I will reinvent it in a delicious way. You will just have to wait and see. Most quick breads have this sort of scone-y taste, APART FROM....
Beer Bread!
Yes. I realise this sounds weird. But let me briefly attack your mind with some sweet science. Beer has yeast in it, right? (Yes, it does, you idiots.) So... if you put it with some flour and various other little bread bitties, it will turn into bread? Remarkably, yes!
There are a few different ways of making beer bread, and I have adapted them to create a very easy, incredibly cheap, way of making bread that will be ready in about an hour (depending how crap you are at measuring things) and taste just like delicious expensive non-student bread. And is also, obviously, more delicious and healthier than the other shit recipes I found on the internet. One called for HALF A CUP of butter! For a recipe that served 6 people! WTF! Ergo, mine is better.
Here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RECIPE!
Ruby's quite delicious beer bread
serves 4 if you are very hungry/large hairy man/small but fat woman or 8 if you are just peckish.
(Alternatively, try out some cool maths by halving the recipe! Fun!)
Ingredients:
6 cups of flour
6 teaspoons baking powder*
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of honey (or white sugar)
2 bottles of beer (the cheaper the better)
1 tablespoon of oil (or melted butter)
Optional: little seeds for sprinkling. E.g. sesame, poppy. Or chunky salt, or rosemary. Take your pick.
Grease large high-edged baking dish. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Can be metal, or ceramic or whatever. Metal will cook your base better.Mix dry ingredients in a big bowl. Make a well. Pour in beers, oil and honey. Fold mixture (this means you fold in the edges to the middle, turning the bowl round a bit with every fold). Do NOT overmix, you fool! Just combine enough that most of the flour is mixed in. It should be quite a wet mixture. Scoop into greased dish. Put into oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Take out and brush a bit of oil over the top and put your sprinklies on. Bake another 10 mins, or, until the top is turning golden and when you tap the loaf it is hollow sounding.
Enjoy! (Amazing with cheese, or soup, or... anything really.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So yes! That is what i have spent my morning doing. Also drinking coffee and patting the poodle. And writing this and eating bread. I shall be off now to make something off my life. Or make a sandwich. It is raining today, typical Auckland. But I will go for a run anyway COS exercise is the flip side of the coin from delicious food. I'm not taking the poodle though because last time I did he ran about a k then just sat down and stared at me and I had to drag him all the way back, up a hill, while he tried to remain sitting.
To look forward to next (possibly) week:
I may or may not tell you how to cook a duck. Anyhow, it will be fun.
Ciao my little beauties
Ruby.
*Note! A sneaky tip. If you have baking powder, and it looks a bit old and scummy, and you don't remember it being new within the last sort of 3 months, it is shit. Don't use it, it won't work. Baking powder is usually just baking soda, which is alkaline, and cream of tartar, which is acidic, and it works by making a reaction which makes little carbon dioxide bubbles make your thing rise. If the powder is old, all the chemicals have broken down a bit, and won't work as effectively, if at all. An alternative is just to make your own baking powder with 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar, to make up the volume of baking powder required.
On a related note, if you are making things with acidic ingredients (like lemons, yoghurt, berries, etc.), you can just use baking soda cos then the acid will balance it out. Fun baking fact for the day.
How are you?
I am good. Here I am in Auckland. Writing a small blogette about being an excited nutritionist, because I am both excited, and a nutritionist. The more times I say "nutritionist" in my head, the less like a word it sounds. Is it even a word? Spell check does think so but, I have my issues with spellcheck (thankyou, autocorrect, icecream.)
In the form of a short list, this is why I am in Auckland:
1. I quit the army (everyone was mutually satisfied by this.)
2. I entered a "fun run" in Otorahanga (where is this? Don't worry, nobody else knows either. I plan to just drive south-ish until I reach a part of the Waikato where there are more swanndris than subarus, and then ask a cow or something)
3. My aunty will pay me to do things like clean windows and mince around in an apron. Ideal!
So! In a spirit of being the best house elf ever, I got up this morning and decided to bake bread! Hurrah!
I was sort of bullied into crawling out of bed at 8 something by my bladder so had to get up, and as we had eaten all the bread yesterday (my uncle and aunt have a billion jars of exciting little thingies nestled at the back of the fridge and, in a spirit of sound scientific enquiry, I was forced to try all of them. On toast. With cheese) there was a panic moment. No bread! What am I going to put my delicious poached eggs on so that I can gently puncture the yolks and have delicious melty yolk on my toast with salt and pepper and feta and chutney? Enthusiastic Family Friend, attempting to deflect my meltdown, suggested I go down to the dairy (100m away) to purchase bread. I considered this for about thirty seconds before dismissing it as a loser's solution. I would MAKE bread! Go me!
After two coffees and a snuffle into various cupboards I worked out that in fact Uncle and Aunt had no yeast; what you would call a limiting factor in bread construction. No matter! Through my extreme nutritionist's knowledge I knew of another sort of bread. The "quick bread". Quick breads are bread that are leavened with baking soda (or baking powder) instead of with yeast, and are therefore quite quick to make cos you don't have to proof the yeast or raise the dough before baking. Soda bread is the quick bread most people think of, and it is a quintessentially Irish sort of thing; bit stodgy, full of butter, and tastes like a scone. Great with potatoes, probably. I don't know. I don't really like scones that much so tend to avoid making soda bread. Maybe one day I will reinvent it in a delicious way. You will just have to wait and see. Most quick breads have this sort of scone-y taste, APART FROM....
Beer Bread!
Yes. I realise this sounds weird. But let me briefly attack your mind with some sweet science. Beer has yeast in it, right? (Yes, it does, you idiots.) So... if you put it with some flour and various other little bread bitties, it will turn into bread? Remarkably, yes!
There are a few different ways of making beer bread, and I have adapted them to create a very easy, incredibly cheap, way of making bread that will be ready in about an hour (depending how crap you are at measuring things) and taste just like delicious expensive non-student bread. And is also, obviously, more delicious and healthier than the other shit recipes I found on the internet. One called for HALF A CUP of butter! For a recipe that served 6 people! WTF! Ergo, mine is better.
Here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RECIPE!
Ruby's quite delicious beer bread
serves 4 if you are very hungry/large hairy man/small but fat woman or 8 if you are just peckish.
(Alternatively, try out some cool maths by halving the recipe! Fun!)
Ingredients:
6 cups of flour
6 teaspoons baking powder*
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of honey (or white sugar)
2 bottles of beer (the cheaper the better)
1 tablespoon of oil (or melted butter)
Optional: little seeds for sprinkling. E.g. sesame, poppy. Or chunky salt, or rosemary. Take your pick.
Grease large high-edged baking dish. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Can be metal, or ceramic or whatever. Metal will cook your base better.Mix dry ingredients in a big bowl. Make a well. Pour in beers, oil and honey. Fold mixture (this means you fold in the edges to the middle, turning the bowl round a bit with every fold). Do NOT overmix, you fool! Just combine enough that most of the flour is mixed in. It should be quite a wet mixture. Scoop into greased dish. Put into oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Take out and brush a bit of oil over the top and put your sprinklies on. Bake another 10 mins, or, until the top is turning golden and when you tap the loaf it is hollow sounding.
Enjoy! (Amazing with cheese, or soup, or... anything really.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So yes! That is what i have spent my morning doing. Also drinking coffee and patting the poodle. And writing this and eating bread. I shall be off now to make something off my life. Or make a sandwich. It is raining today, typical Auckland. But I will go for a run anyway COS exercise is the flip side of the coin from delicious food. I'm not taking the poodle though because last time I did he ran about a k then just sat down and stared at me and I had to drag him all the way back, up a hill, while he tried to remain sitting.
To look forward to next (possibly) week:
I may or may not tell you how to cook a duck. Anyhow, it will be fun.
Ciao my little beauties
Ruby.
*Note! A sneaky tip. If you have baking powder, and it looks a bit old and scummy, and you don't remember it being new within the last sort of 3 months, it is shit. Don't use it, it won't work. Baking powder is usually just baking soda, which is alkaline, and cream of tartar, which is acidic, and it works by making a reaction which makes little carbon dioxide bubbles make your thing rise. If the powder is old, all the chemicals have broken down a bit, and won't work as effectively, if at all. An alternative is just to make your own baking powder with 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar, to make up the volume of baking powder required.
On a related note, if you are making things with acidic ingredients (like lemons, yoghurt, berries, etc.), you can just use baking soda cos then the acid will balance it out. Fun baking fact for the day.
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