Flapjack Bread!

This afternoon I experimented with some soda bread, adding oats and golden syrup to a normal soda bread recipe!

This is the result, and I shall call it Flapjack Bread! It has quite a sweet flavour (big shock, I know) but it's very nice.

If you're interested:

250 grams of flour (I use a 50:50 split of white and wholemeal)

2 teaspoons of baking soda

5 grams of salt

150 ml of milk

Some porridge oats (didn't measure them - I'd guess about 50 grams)

2-3 tablespoons of golden syrup

Mix it all together into a very claggy dough, keep mushing it together (or 'kneading' if you want to sound proper, like) for a couple of minutes to make sure it's all properly combined

Give it a dusting of flour and slash the top, then bake at 200 degrees celcius for 20-25 minutes.

Leave to cool for a few minutes...enjoy!

Note for non-UK types pondering about what the hell a flapjack is - this is what I'm referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapjack_(oat_bar)

Bacon and Cheese Bread

A few days back I posted a pic on Twitter of some bread I'd made, cheese and bacon bread to be exact.

I ate a whole one of these in a single day

Somewhat unexpectedly, it got a fairly hefty response from people saying it looked delicious - cue much swelling of egos and puffing out of chests.
For the record, it was really nice!
Anyway, since people seemed very keen on the idea of bread with bacon in it (cos we all know that bacon makes everything better), I thought I'd post up the recipe I used.
This is taken from Paul Hollywood's book, How To Bake (that's a link to the American Kindle edition on Amazon, doesn't seem to be available in hardcover there yet. Here's a link to the British hardcover version).  If you don't know, Paul Hollywood is one of the judges on the BBC show The Great British Bake Off, a favourite show of mine.
If you like bread and fancy trying your hand at making all sorts of different types then this is an excellent book to go with - it's got everything from basic loaves to exotic sounding flavours, sweet and savoury. I recommend it!
But if you can't get hold of the book and you've just got that urge for cheese and bacon bread (and who could blame you), the recipe's below!

The life of a pizza

From birth to death, the life cycle of a pizza.

The dog is not interested until the cheese appears

Don't feel bad for it, it died in a good cause (and was delicious)!
If you're interested in making your own pizza, it's dead easy. The recipe I used is from (Amazon link) River Cottage Veg Every Day! (River Cottage Every Day)
Here's the recipe for the dough, taken from that book:
250g strong white bread flour
250g plain white flour
5g powdered dried yeast
10g salt
325ml warm water
About 1 tbsp olive oil
1 handful coarse flour (rye, semolina or polenta), for dusting

In a bowl, mix the flours, yeast, salt and water to form a sticky dough. Mix in the oil, then turn out on to a clean work surface and knead until smooth and silky. (Alternatively, if you have a mixer with a dough hook, mix the flours, yeast, salt and water on a low speed, add the oil and knead for 10 minutes). Shape into a round, and leave to rise in a clean bowl, covered with a plastic bag, until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven (and pizza stone or substitute) as high as it will go. Take a lime-sized piece of dough and roll it into a 5mm thick round. Dust a rimless baking sheet with coarse flour, lay the dough on it, add your toppings and slip the pizza from the sheet on to the hot stone. Bake until any cheese is bubbling and the base is taking on some colour, seven to nine minutes. Scatter over any leaves or raw toppings, and tuck in.
All these pics taken with my iPhone, hence the slightly iffy quality