Week 2: Recipe 5: Rosemary Bread with Sunflower Seeds and Hazelnuts

Bread doesn't get more rustic than this.

And it's crazy delicious.

For fans of rustic food this bread is a must-try because it has everything a good bread needs. A thick and crunchy crust, rosemary seasoned dough, and roast nuts and seeds. It just doesn't get better.

Eat a slice with a bit of salted butter and you won't know what's happening to you.

Ingredients:

• 300 grams of self-raising flour + extra to dust
• 5 grams of baking soda
• 1 tbsp of rosemary, chopped fine
• 240 ml of buttermilk
• 2 tbsp unsalted sunflower seeds
• 2 tbsp unsalted hazelnuts, chopped coarse

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 200°C or 390°F. In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda, rosemary, and 1 tsp salt. Add buttermilk and stir until you have a cohesive dough. 
2. Knead half the sunflower seeds and hazelnuts into the dough. Shape dough into a flat, round bread of about 4 cm or 2 inch thick. 
3. Place bread onto a parchment lined baking sheet and dust with flour. Sprinkle the rest of the sunflower seeds and hazelnuts onto the dough, press a little. 
4. Bake for 20 - 25 min.

Banana Bread with Pecans and Dates

This week's challenge was a first for me as I've never made a sweet bread before (I also hardly ever eat them). So, I pretty much picked a recipe at random and went for the banana bread with pecans and dates. It sounded nice and it looked nice in the picture, so I just had a go with it.

I stuck to all the directions except one: to bake the bread for 40-45 minutes. I was reading a book and forgot the time... oops! The bread baked 5 minutes too long, and the top got a bit dark. It doesn't look perfect but it still tastes good - some of the edges are just a bit crispy!

(On a side note I should mention that your house will smell delicious for as long as the bread is in the oven.)

The bread has a rough texture, with little chunks of dates and pecans. The flavor is the typical banana kind of sweet (no added sugars), but still savory enough to call it a bread and not a pound cake. Personally, I liked the braided bread of last week better but that's just because I'm more a fan of savory food and soft dough.

This banana bread is actually perfect for afternoon snacks or to add to your breakfast (perhaps with a thin spread of butter on it). It's also very healthy. As I mentioned, it has no added sugars: it contains only 380 calories! (But the calorie count will go up per next week I reckon, though!)

Anyway, the recipe:

Banana Bread with Dates and Pecan Nuts
Serves: 10
Takes: 15 min + 45 min baking + 1 hr 30 min waiting.

Ingredients:

• 400 grams bananas
• 100 grams dates without seeds
• 140 grams unsalted pecan nuts
• 250 grams wheat flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• a pinch of salt
• 100 grams butter (room temp.)
• 2 eggs
• 125 crème fraîche
• greased pound cake mold (about 30 cm or 11.8 inch)
• skewer

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C or 392°F. Mash the bananas and cut the dates in small slices. Save about 10 pecan nuts and coarsely chop the rest.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. In another bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth. While beating, add eggs one by one, and next the crème fraîche. Scoop into the flour mixture.
3. Add banana purée, dates, and chopped nuts into batter and knead to mix well. The dough will get a bit thicker and more cohesive, which is good. The scoop the dough into the pound cake mold and smoothen it with a spoon. Press the 10 pecan nuts you saved into the top. Bake 40-45 minutes, until golden-brown and done.
4. After 40 minutes, check if the bread is done by sticking a skewer into it. If the skewer comes out clean, the bread is done. Let cool 30 minutes, take out of the mold, and let cool another hour.

Braided Bread with Chia Seeds

Like many of us, I don't bake as much as I'd like. Baking takes time and life tends to distract, so I usually just end up collecting recipes and not doing anything with them. So, I was pretty excited when I discovered the Fall Baking Challenge on Swap-Bot. For this (email) swap we are challenged to bake one item each week for 8 weeks. It's a proper excuse to bake up something delicious on a regular basis.

The first item of the challenge was this: a savory bread. I chose the braided bread mostly because it looked pretty enough to merit the effort of taking photos of it and sending the recipe to my swap partners. It turned out to be a real hit: it's not just pretty, but also delicious and wholesome. Perfect to serve family and friends for lunch, dinner, or as a snack. My family had some for all three.

The dough of this bread is soft, almost sweet, and neutral enough to go with anything. It is perfect to go with sweet sandwich toppings, garlic butter, or just to dip it in your soup. The best part about it is that it looks fancy, but it's actually very easy to make and it doesn't take long at all. I put all the directions in the recipe below. 

Have fun and enjoy!

Ingredients:

•  500 grams of flour
• 2 tsp fine sugar
• 7 grams of dried yeast
• 45 grams of butter (room temp.)
• 2 tsp fine sea salt
• 2 eggs
• 250 ml lukewarm water
• chia seeds

Directions:

1. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, yeast, butter, water, salt, and 1 egg. Knead until dough is elastic and cohesive.
2. Shape dough into a ball and put in a greased bowl. Cover with plastic foil and let rise for 1 hour, or until dough has doubled in volume. 
3. Knead dough and divide in 5 equally large pieces. Roll each piece into a string of more or less 30 cm (11.8 inch). If the dough is too wet or sticky, dust the working surface with some flour. It will stick to the dough and make it easier to handle.
4. Put the strings on a parchment lined baking sheet and press them together on 1 side. Braid the dough until you've reached the end of the strings and press them together there, too.
5. Pre-heat oven to 200°C or 392°F. Split the 2nd egg and whisk the yoke (you don't need the egg white). Brush or gently rub the yoke onto the bread and sprinkle with chia seeds. 
6. Bake bread 20-25 minutes in the center of the oven. Let cool for 30 minutes.   

How to braid the dough:

1. Bring the outer right string to the left and place it in between the 2 outer left strings.
2. Now, bring the outer left string to the middle. When it's there, take the string left of it and put it over it. 
3. Then begin again by taking the outer right string and putting it in between the 2 outer left strings, and so on.