A New Baby and Continuing on the Theme of Cheese and Olives.

Great News the long awaited event has happened.

Cleo Harriet Noble was born at 1.50pm 29th July 2007
8lb 8ozs - 49 cms long
Of course what does a good Mother do when her daughter is in labour?
Bake!
October 16th is World Bread Day such fun breads to make and absolutely delicious

So continuing on the Cheese and Olive Theme
I baked Cheese and Olive bread.

I have been very impressed with James Martin. He showed me how to make good pizza and foccacio in fact I have used his recipe frequently, which as it turns out I have never posted…must do that.
So I have been making bread on and off for a couple of years now.
Not bad…usually have a good crumb, tastes really good but usually best eaten on the day. Mind you I think the old adage “practice makes perfect” is very true here.
The more you make the better the feel you have for it.
First the smell as the yeast works in the dough...then as it cooks…divine.
I have also used 00 Italian flour which may also have helped.
He also suggested using packaged yeast. Elfin has 8 gms packets…perfect.
I was always throwing out my bottle of yeast as it had gone past it’s use by dated but the little foil packets are wonderful.
There are a couple of hints don’t put the salt near the yeast till it is mixed with the liquids.
Salt will kill yeast.

Anyway I watched an old episode of James Martin “Sweet” he had a guest Paul Hollywood, (a baker of some note) and this is I think the best bread I’ve made so far.
His recipe was for Mandarin and Chocolate.
I then adapted it on Cleo’s birthday to Cheese and Olives.
Excellent

First the recipe for Mandarin and Chocolate.

500 gms bread flour
15 gms yeast 2 packets Elfin Yeast
15 gms sugar
15 gms table salt
Splash olive oil
260 mls warm water

1 tin mandarins drained and squeezed
1 cup chocolate chips
Little extra flour to soak up the juice from the mandarins

In a large bowl place flour yeast, sugar and salt
Add olive oil
Add water (hand hot)

Mix well with a spatula till all the dry ingredients are mixed and the bowl is pretty clean.
You may need to add a little more water it all depends on the day
The dough should be moist. Dry dough makes tough bread.

Turn out onto flour covered bench and start to knead.

Start off folding from all sides in adding more flour as needed.

Keep this folding motion up till the dough starts to get smoother
Then start kneading with the old push away and bring back method.

Now Paul Hollywood said hold to the dough up and pull in into a circle shape

If it holds and doesn’t break the gluten should have stretched enough.

Roll in into a ball

And place back into your mixing bowl, which you have greased
And cover with a tea-towel until doubled in size .
Should take about an hour depending on the temperature of the room.
Meanwhile drain the mandarins and in a sieve and squeeze as much juice out as possible.

When the dough has risen pull it away from the sides

and push down into a rectangular shape onto a floured bench.

Put the squeezed mandarins and chocolate chips on the dough and

start folding in again Till all amalgamated.

You will need more flour.

Just keep kneading around till smooth
Word of advice, if you intend making lots of bread
Invest in one of these scrapers
Particularly good when working  with wet dough
Pick up and dump
Perfect

 Then shape as below and lay on a floured baking sheet

Dust well with flour and make some slashes along the top with a sharp knife

Leave to rise again covered with the tea towel (about 1/2 hour)

Bake in 220C oven for 30 minutes

Fabulous
So to make the Cheese and Olive bread substitute
Replaced the mandarins and chocolate chips with
½ cup chopped olives and 1 cup of your choice of cheese cubed.
Proceed as above

So the fruits of my labour while Katie was producing

this gorgeous little baby

Welcome to our world Little Cleo