Traditional Irish Soda Bread with Homemade Buttermilk

As you all know by now, my mother came down for the week and while she was here I got a few new kitchen items, some of which I got to use making today's recipe, or was this recipe an excuse to use them? It doesn't matter, what does is the delicious bread recipe below!

Since today is St. Patrick's day, what better way to celebrate than to make a traditional Irish soda bread?! Plus this won't give you a hangover! This recipe is super quick to make and even quicker to bake! The whole thing, including cooking time takes about an hour and it’s a no knead bread for all you kneading haters!

Now before I start, I ran across a problem right from the beginning: I didn't have any buttermilk! I also didn't have a desire to go to the grocery store for one ingredient... so I made my own, which is very fast and extremely simple to make.

Homemade Buttermilk

Ingredients

-1 Cup of whole milk (since the bread call for 2 Cups of buttermilk just double the recipe)

-Acid of choice, either: 1 and ¾ Tbs of cream of tartar

                                        1 Tbs of white vinegar

                                        or 1 Tbs of lemon juice

I didn’t use whole milk, as all I had in my fridge was Skim, which has little to no fat, but I didn’t particularly care as it was going into my bread. But if you want real buttermilk, definitely use whole milk, as it will definitely not give you the same results.

Mix your milk and acid of choice (mine was white vinegar) stir well and let sit in a warm area for 15 minutes. Your milk should start to curdle if you’re using whole milk; stir it properly and voila!

I don’t recommend using skim for this, but again, I wasn’t in the mood to walk to the grocery store for one item and my bread turned out quite well all the same. 

Traditional Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients

-4 Cups of All purpose flour (I mixed in 1/2 cup of brown into 3 1/2 cups of white instead)

-1 Tbs of granulated sugar

-1 tsp of baking soda

-1 tsp of salt

-2 Cups of Buttermilk

In a large bowl, combine flour or flours, if the case. 

Then add sugar, baking soda and salt; mix until combined and make a well in the center.

Add all of your buttermilk and mix together until it forms a soft dough. Turn dough onto a heavily floured surface! Take my advice to heart, heavily flour that surface, or you’ll learn the hard way like I did. This dough is extremely sticky and will feel unmanageable if you don’t.

Use your hands to mix it all properly and form into a smooth ball.

Place onto a greased baking sheet and with a sharp knife, score a large X onto the top. Place in the oven at 425F for about 35 minutes or until browned and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

I was having a hard time scoring because my dough was too sticky in the middle, so I sprinkled a little bit of flour on top to help make nice deep scores, which is which my bread looks floury in the finished photos.

There you have it, a quick and nutritious bread that is wonderfully delicious with butter and honey or served with a nice hearty meal. 

Enjoy and have a merry St. Patrick's day!

Homemade Bagels with Lox Cream Cheese

I know I haven't updated in a while, I've been quite busy of late but the bagels I mentioned in the previous post were a great success! More so than I expected. I followed a really simple recipe found here for water boiled bagels and I made 3 batches which equals to 24 bagels. They were sooo easy to make and tasted just like bakery or Montreal bagels. I'll write down a quick run through on how to make the bagels, but definitely check out the link for more info.

Homemade Bagels

Ingredients: 

4 cups of flour (use what ever kind, it all depends on what kind of bagel you want)

1 tbs of sugar

1 1/2 tsp of salt

2 tsp of instant yeast

1 tbs of oil, vegetable or olive 

1 1/4 cup to 1 1/2 cup of warm water

In a large bowl, mix all of your dry ingredients together. Then fill a measuring cup with 1 1/2 cups of warm water; make sure the water is warm, more so than room temperature as it needs to be hot enough to dissolve the yeast. Add your vegetable oil to the dry ingredients and immediately add 1 cup of your water. Then begin to mix until you have a dough-like consistency. If there is still a lot of flour that hasn't mixed, add more water. You want to make sure that it is all incorporated and that your dough is slightly on the stiff side but not too sticky. 

Next you need to kneed the dough. A lot of people call this the hard part, but it's actually quite easy if you have an idea of what you are doing. There's a great video tutorial here that I found quite handy.

Kneed for about 10 minutes, then separate your dough into 8 equals balls. Let rise for about 10 minutes and preheat your oven to 425 F. 

Now there are two ways of shaping bagels, I recommend trying both and using the one that you feel more comfortable with.

The first method involves rolling out the dough ball into a long snake, about the width of your two hands, and connecting the two ends by pinching the dough together to fuse it into a bagel-like shape. 

The second method is my favourite as I find it a lot easier and I don't have to worry about the ends coming loose. To do this, you take the dough ball and press your thumb through the middle until it goes through to the other side. Then simply stretch out the hole and shape. Your bagel should be about as big as your hand.  

Now you need to let them rise for about 20 minutes; during this time you should boil your water. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Some people add about a tsp of sugar or salt to their water, others put baking soda, as it apparently darkens the outside of the bagel. I did none of these and they turn out awesome all the same. 

Once your water has started to boil, it should be about time to start boiling those bagels! I put in two at a time as I didn't have a very large pot and you need to make sure that you don't crowd the bagels. Drop two into the water and wait for about a minute and then turn them over and boil for another minute. You'll notice that your bagels will puff out a bit, that’s all normal.

Take the bagels out of the water with a slotted spoon or even an egg flipper, and place onto a cooling rack so that they can dry off a bit. Add the rest of your bagels in and repeat the process. 

Now it's time for the final cooking stage, but before that, you need to decide if you want to flavour your bagels. 

Bagels are fun because you can flavour them anyway you like and there are hundreds of possibilities. You can add coarse ground salt, herbs, cheese, poppy seeds! Just let your imagination soar, but remember that if you want a bagel that's flavoured on the inside like a cinnamon raison bagel, those ingredients need to be added to your dry ingredients before you add your warm water and begin to make your dough.

So for these batches, I decided to make mine: plain, sesame, poppy seed and cheese coated. An easy way to get your ingredients to stick to your bagels is to crack an egg into a bowl and whisk it. Then spread some of the egg wash onto your bagels (have your toppings ready in a bowl) and place the bagel, egg wash side down, into the bowl. This will ensure a nice even coat of seeds. Another way is to put the bagel into a bowl of topping as soon as you take it out of the boiling water, but I don't find this as effective.

Once you've covered all of your bagels with your desired toppings, place them topping side up on a lightly greased baking sheet. Use olive oil to grease it and don't forget to add a bit of egg wash onto the top of your plain bagels as it gives them a nice brown finish. 

Put them into the oven for about 10 minutes, then turn them over and bake for another 10 minutes. Voila! You've got bagels!

If you want cheese bagels, I came up with an easy way to go about making them. First grate your cheese, use whatever kind you prefer, I used a strong cheddar. Now for these, we need to go back a few steps to when you take them out of the boiling water. Once they've cooled slightly, coat with your egg wash and cook in the oven as those they were plain bagels. Once cooked, take them out of the over and let them cool for a few minutes. Spread more egg wash onto your bagels then add the shredded cheese on top and lightly press down so that it sticks. Put your oven on broil and put the bagels back into the oven, cheese side up and let them broil for about 4 minutes or until your cheese has fully melted and is beginning to brown slightly. Take them out of the oven and like any bagels, let them cool for about 20 minutes before eating. 

Enjoy with some butter, honey or some cream cheese!

I made my own lox cream cheese, which is very simple to make. It's essentially plain cream cheese, mixed with red onions and smoked salmon. I didn't have any red onions so I just used green onions but man was it good! Just make sure your cream cheese is room temperature or you might have a hard time mixing it all together.

Don’t be scared make your own bagels; you’ll have a nice healthy and delicious breakfast ready to go in the morning. Just remember to put them in the fridge after a couple of days or they will start to rot, as there are no preservatives. You can also cut them and put them in the freezer, that way you can have bagels whenever you want.

Hope you enjoy!

Bagels, Bagels and More Bagels

Guess what I'm making today?! That's right, homemade bagels!!!
This is my first time making them, so cross your fingers for me!
I'm thinking of making some plain, poppyseed and possibly cheese flavoured bagels.

I'm also going to be making some lox cream cheese... 

Keep you posted on how they turn out.

Cottage Cheese and Apple Pancakes with Whipped Cinnamon Butter

This recipe idea came about in an interesting manner. On Thursdays, Dave and I, both don’t have any classes and so we like to call Thursdays: Special Breakfast Day. Sometimes I make fancy omelets oozing with cheddar cheese; sometimes I make French toast or even Brunch. This Thursday I decided I would find a recipe to finish off the ricotta cheese I had and incorporate one of Dave’s favorite fruits: pears; I went online and found this recipe for Ricotta and Pear Pancakes. Perfect! Or so I thought. Thursday morning turned into a comedy of sorts; first my ricotta cheese went bad weeks before its expiration date. I said: “it’s okay hon, I’ll just replace the ricotta with cottage cheese.” So I began to make my batter and cream my cottage cheese, when I suddenly asked Dave to shred the pears, nearing the completion of my batter.  Yah, that didn’t work out either, the pears had somehow rotted through and were quickly thrown into the garbage bin with anger. Thus using my ability to improvise, I began to slightly modify the recipe and turned it into the one you see below. In a way, I’m glad that all of this happened because I emerged with a wonderful, flavourful pancake that I deemed the best pancakes ever. Hope you enjoy!

Cottage Cheese and Apple Pancakes with Whipped Cinnamon Butter

Ingredients for batter                                    Ingredients for butter

-1 ¼ cup of all purpose flour                           -1/2 cup of butter or margarine           

-1 ¼ tsp of baking soda                                   -2 heaping TBS of white or brown sugar

-Heaping tsp of cinnamon                               -2 heaping tsp of cinnamon

-1 ¼ TBS of sugar

-a dash of nutmeg (optional)

-1/2 cup of cottage cheese

-2 eggs

-1/4 cup of apple sauce (optional)

-1/4 cup milk

-1/4 cup of apple juice

-2 large apples (shredded)

I like to make my butter first but it’s all up to you. Now I’m using real butter because it’s so much better but you can go ahead and use what ever you have lying around. 

If you’re using butter though, make sure that it is room temperature and that you cut it into small cubes otherwise if you’re using a machine like mine, you might over heat the motor and break it.  Now I chose brown sugar to make my butter and in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have as the colour looks unappetizing in pictures but I prefer brown sugar to white granulated sugar. So it really all depends on what colour you want your butter to be; if you’re using white sugar it’ll be a nice caramel-like colour. Put all of your butter ingredients together in a small bowl and mix thoroughly until whipped and smooth then set aside.

Now we’re going to make the pancake batter. For this you’ll need two mixing bowls; in the larger one mix together flour, baking soda, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Now when I say a dash of nutmeg, I mean a dash; nutmeg is very strong and you want to use it sparingly otherwise your pancakes will be very strong, and not in a good way. Once it’s all mixed properly, create a well in the center and put aside.

Next, in your smaller bowl, add your cottage cheese and mix it with your electric mixer until smooth and creamy looking.

Then add your eggs, apple sauce, milk and apple juice to your cottage cheese mixture and blend until all ingredients are combined.

Pour your cottage cheese mixture into the well of your dry ingredients and mix together with a spoon or spatula until everything is blended properly and your mixture is of a batter-like consistency.

Wash and peel your apples. For this recipe I like to use McIntosh apples because of the soft texture and sweet flavour.  You want to shred your apples; I like to use a cheese grater for this. Make sure that you don’t shred the core, that’s for the garbage bin.  Also, don’t worry if your apples turn brown, like McIntosh’s tend to do within a few minutes, as you will be mixing them into your batter.

Fold in your shredded apple and voila! You’re now done your pancake batter.

Now onto the fun part!

I like to use Pam cooking spray when I make pancakes because it’s a lot easier to add between pancake making; and trust me, you’ll want to spray a bit on before each new pancake as they will stick and become hard to handle. Put your heat on medium and spread batter on THINLY as these plump up a bit during the cooking and you don’t want a doughy centre.  Let cook for 1-2 minutes until the underbelly is nice and brown and then flip.  You don’t have to make your pancakes as big as these, I just like to flip gargantuan pancakes but small is good too, just takes longer to cook up your batter, but definitely better if you have guest of multiple people eating these.

Once cooked add your cinnamon butter and watch that yummy buttery goodness melt all over those delicious apple pancakes. You can even put a little bit of maple syrup on top, pour yourself a large glass of milk and enjoy!

Hope you have a very nice Special Breakfast Day!