Quiche

Quiche is one of the dishes, that I've been obsessed by lately. I used to consider it difficult and time-consuming to make, but I came upon an idea for the crust, that revolutionized my understanding of the dish and quickly turned it into a staple.

I've gathered some pictures from the last two quiches that I baked recently, but the varieties are endless - quiche is more an algorithm, than a recipe.

The main feature of the dish is the crust, which I prepare into the chopper.

Ingredients:

• 90 g wholegrain flour
• 85 g white flour
• 60 g water
• 55 g sunflower or other vegetable oil
• half a teaspoon of salt

Preparation: 

Mix the ingredients in the chopper with short pulses, until a dough is formed. Place the dough in a form and spread it evenly on the bottom, forming a border of 2-2.5 cm on the side. Cover the dough with baking paper and baking weights (I use a bowl of designated beach stones).

Bake in a preheated oven for 20 min at 200C. Take the dish out of the oven, remove the baking paper with the weights and bake the crust further for 5 min.

Meanwhile prepare the filling. For my Quiche Lorraine I cooked a handful of chopped mushrooms, which I spread on the crust.

Then I prepared a mixture of 3 eggs, 140 g milk, 60 g flour and ham, chopped into small pieces, which I poured on the mushrooms. I covered the filling with grated yellow cheese.

I baked the quiche in the oven for about 25 min, until ready.

This dish is equally delicious warm and cold, served with white wine or rose.

The quiche can be also vegetarian, here I made one with two zucchini, lightly cooked with olive oil and chopped dill. Once they were ready, I covered them with a tablespoon of wholegrain flour, to bond the moisture. The filling is made of 3 eggs, lightly beaten, milk, flour and cubes of feta cheese and yellow cheese, spiced with black pepper.

I'm a big fan of the zucchini version, and I've tried the same recipe with broccoli. The brilliant thing about quiche is, that it is an extremely flexible dish, adjustable to the contents of your fridge :)

Coconut Biscuits

I can't claim, that these are the perfect coconut biscuits, but they are pretty close, if that ideal biscuit exists at all. I came up with the recipe last night on a whim and the first batch were by midday today polished, so I made another batch, with a few improvements.

Ingredients: 

• 40 g coconut oil
• 60 g sugar
• 20 g coconut shreddings
• 1 egg
• 100 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• 1 lemon zest
  

Preparation:

There  isn't really much to it - melt the coconut oil, add the sugar, the shredded coconut, the lemon zest, the egg, the flour and the baking powder. The resulting batter is sticky, but because of the high content of oil, very easy to form into small balls. Place them on a baking tray, leaving enough space between each ball and bake for 25 min in a preheated oven at 180C.

The resulting biscuits are flat, very crunchy, aromatic, not too sweet. They can be eaten as they are or as a biscuit sandwich with jam in between. I find them perfect for coffee, but they go well as a desert with a glass of desert wine as well :)

Easy Olive Baguette

It's been a couple of years now, that we almost don't buy bread at home - I prefer to make it myself. This gives me the freedom to experiment with various types of flour, recipes, forms and additives. Today's recipe is one of the variations of my usual bread recipe, but with a twist - literal and figurative :)

Ingredients:

• 300 g all purpose flour
• 200 g lukewarm water
• 7 g fresh yeast or 3 g dry yeast
• salt, sugar or honey, oregano
• two tbsp olive oil
• pitted olives

Preparation:

Activate the yeast with some of the water and the honey. I add a small teaspoon of honey in the water and stir, until the honey and the yeast have dissolved. In a bowl measure the flour, add salt and oregano, mix. Add the yeast and the rest of the water, mix everything well and thorough, until the entire flour is absorbed. At this stage I do not add the olive oil. 

Leave the dough covered to rest and rise for 30-45 min in a warm place (I put my bowl in the oven with the light on). When the dough has doubled, add the olive oil and fold the dough a dozen times, then leave again to rise for at least an hour.

When the dough has doubled again, spread it on a floured surface, cover it with the olives, cut into small pieces, then cut the dough into four and form four baguettes. I made mine by rolling the ends toward the center and enclosing the olives inside, then I twisted the roll a few times.

Cover the baguettes and leave them for the last time to rise. This recipe has no kneading, you need only time and patience. Once the baguettes have doubled again after an hour, brush them generously with olive oil and put the tray in a preheated oven at 250C for 15 min. I put a metal container with water at the bottom of the oven to get a crispy crust. After the 15 min are over, turn the oven temperature to 200C and bake for another 10 min.

These baguettes are so delicious, that you can snack with them directly like buns, or enjoy them with feta cheese, vegetable spreads or any other way you enjoy your bread.

Sugarless Apple Muffins

Last year, on a whim, I decided to stop eating sugar. I love sweets and although I am certainly not overweight and have no health problems, related to sugar consumption, I thought it would be a beneficial experiment health-wise and I was also curious if I could do it. Initially it was only for a day, then a week and now it has been more than six months. 

I'm not religious about not eating sugar and my restrictions apply only to processed sugar, by which I mean that I eat a lot of fruits and dried fruits; it's not a carbohydrate restricting diet, just an abstinence from packed sugar as much as possible.

Even before summer last year, I rarely ate store-bought sweets, my morning coffee was accompanied mostly by home-made desserts. Lately I've been experimenting with my own recipes, replacing sugar with dried fruits. I should mention, that I am not a proponent of artificial sweeteners and I believe in reducing the craving and need for sweet taste by reducing the consumption of sweet taste. I can confirm, that my receptors for sweet have actually changed during these months and I can taste sweetness much more acutely.

I came up with these apple muffins last week and this is my second batch, husband polished most of the first one himself, and he hasn't been on my sugar-free regime, so it should be a testament, that they are delicious enough :)

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 40 g sunflower oil
• 100 g yogurt / sour cream
• 150 g / average apple chopped
• 100 g dried fruits (25 g of each raisins, cranberries, dates, plums)
• 120 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• pinch of salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove

Preparation:

Beat slightly the egg, add the yogurt and vegetable oil, mix. Add the dried fruits (cut the dates and plums into small pieces) and the apple, chopped into small pieces. Finally mix in the flour with baking powder, pinch of salt and spices.

Distribute the batter into 12 muffin forms and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for approx. 25 min. Serve with hot coffee or tea.

Sandwich Pockets

And another baked goody I made from a Turkish video, using google translate.
The video was in my friends' feed on Facebook and I liked the idea so much that I had to try it.

Here's the recipe source and the products I used  - I reduced it a little to get eight sandwich pockets, just enough for one baking tin:

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 7 g instant yeast
• 1 egg white
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

I filled my pockets with tomatoes, Chinese lettuce and feta cheese.

 A very delicious sandwich bread, that I'll be making again for my children's school lunches.

And a glimpse at my current project - socks for my husband. The yarn is 100% wool, which I dyed last year and have been racking my brains what to knit with it, as it is only 100 g. So when husband said that he would like warm wooly socks the problem was solved.

I'm so enjoying the process, I really love the slight variations of burnt orange, red and brown of the stitches and the pattern - Simple Skyp Socks is excellent:

Challah Bread

A post about my today's experiments in baking. Last Black Friday I bought a new standing mixer - a sturdy (semi-)professional one, that can really mix dough. My previous mixer had the gadgets and pretenses of a dough mixer, but it could only beat eggs and mix runnier dough like cake batter. The new one is much more powerful and has proven (to me) that the secret of nice well baked bread is not in the triple sifting of the flour and hand kneading of the dough, but in having a good mixer or bread baking machine. Nowadays I simply and even arrogantly empty the ingredients into the bowl (without  sifting the flour, what a blasphemy!), turn on the mixer 'et voilà - in 6-8 minutes I have the dough ready for rising. Then I take the bowl and just put it in the oven at 30C for an hour - an hour and a half to rise - almost no physical work and engagement on my part apart from opening packets and measuring ingredients. And the results are so much better. So - yey for labour saving appliances :)

So - today I made Challah. I followed this recipe and instructions - an excellent step-by-step challah tutorial that could be followed even by a beginner in baking.

I especially enjoyed the mantra for the braiding - over two, under one, over two. Thus worded, it makes the 6-stranded braid so easy to execute and easy to remember for next time when I'm making  braided bread.

Challah is very similar to Bulgarian Easter bread - kozunak. The dough is enriched with eggs and sugar (I also replaced some of the water with 1/2 cup of milk). However, it is not as sweet as kozunak and can be eaten with cheese or meat too. The new thing for me, apart from the braiding, was the egg wash - it is done with the egg white and not with the yolk, as I usually do. Surprisingly, this egg wash gives the baked bread darker and richer caramel color. i sprinkled mine with sesame seeds too.

I didn't "plump" my bread quite evenly and it has a somewhat irregular shape,

but look at those threads - this challah came out so airy and light textured!

Leopard Bread

And another really interesting recipe, translated from German (with the help of daughter and short and very clear video on how to make).

Ingredients:

• 250 ml milk + 2 tbsp
• 1 vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 25 g corn starch
• 50 g butter
• 375 g flour
• 70 g sugar
• 20 g cacao
• 3.5 g dry yeast

The method of preparation is very different from what I've experienced so far and the resulting dough is very easy to work with. I added about 5 g of cacao to the light brown dough, but my cacao was very strong and there is almost no difference between the lighter and the darker brown dough. Next time I would add cacao only at the tip of the spoon.

Also, this bread is supposed to be sweet, but the quantity of sugar is not enough and it tastes more like neutral rather than sweet. I would at least double the sugar next time and also cover it with granulated sugar before baking.

Because the rolls are arranged irregularly, when cut the bread produces different patterns and each person can be served a different looking leopard slice.