Easy South African seed bread

I discovered this deliciously nutty bread in South Africa when I first visited back in the 90s and couldn't stop making it but had forgotten about it until I was reminded about it the other day by winemaker Bruce Jack. This is the version I put in my book The Healthy Lunchbox, adapted from one I was given by Silwood School of Cookery in Cape Town.

It really is one of the easiest breads out there

South African seed bread

You will need a 900g loaf tin, preferably non-stick

450g malthouse or granary flour

50g bran

50g sunflower seeds + extra for topping

15g each poppy and sesame seeds + extra for topping

1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

1 1/2 tsp easy blend yeast

2 tsp barley malt extract (available from health food stores) or clear honey

1 tbsp sunflower oil + extra for oiling the tin

Tip the flour, bran, seeds and salt into a large bowl and mix together well.

Measure out 500ml of lukewarm water and stir in the barley malt extract or honey.

Sprinkle the yeast over the flour mix and pour over the oil and half the liquid. Start mixing it together with a wooden spoon. gradually adding as much extra liquid as the flour will absorb. The consistency should be slightly wetter than a normal loaf. Keep stirring until the dough begins to come away from the sides of the bowl (about 2 minutes). Tip the dough into a well oiled loaf tin, pressing it down evenly.

Using a teaspoon carefully shake each of the seeds in a vertical line down the length of the dough (see photo) and press down gently.

Cover the tin loosely with clingfilm and leave to rise for about 25-30 minutes until the surface of the loaf is about 1.5cm from the top of the tin.

Meanwhile heat the oven to 190°C fan/400°F/Gas 6. Bake the loaf for about 40 minutes.

Using a round-bladed knife loosen the sides of the loaf away from the tin, carefully ease it out then return the bread to the oven for a final 5 minutes for the base to crisp up.

Take the loaf from the oven and leave on a cooling rack until completely cold before slicing. It's particularly good with cheese and also with honey!

Bacon sausage bread

If you like a bacon sandwich and/or a sausage sandwich what better idea than combining the two in a bread as Niamh Shields has done in her Bacon: The Cookbook. Stroke of genius!

"Bacon is as intrinsic to Irish food culture as potatoes, black pudding and Irish stew" writes Niamh, who blogs as Eat Like a Girl. "Traditionally, an Irish family would have a pig that they would raise for the year. That pig would then provide meat for the following year. In Ireland, a whole pig could be and was cured as bacon so that it could be preserved for longer. This is less typical now, but joints of bacon for boiling and roasting, bacon chops and bacon ribs are still common and Bacon and Cabbage is a core national dish that everyone loves. Bacon is so much more than a rasher, or streaky bacon. Although we love those too.

"This is one of my favourite recipes in the book and you absolutely need to make it. A soft bread dough, butter or lard and egg enriched with a little milk, so like a porky brioche but not as sweet and rich. You can use butter or lard, and if you have some bacon fat to hand, absolutely mix that in.

The bread is made in a more or less typical way, and proved twice. The second time you prove it is after you shape it as a sausage-and-bacon braid. Brushed with egg wash before baking, it gets a lovely bronze sheen.

For special occasions, double up the amounts and shape it into a circle. During the festive season you can fashion a bow of crisp-fried sage leaves and redcurrant berries and you have a Bacon Sausage Bread Wreath.

Bacon Sausage Bread

Makes: 8 slices

For the bread dough:

330g (11½ oz) bread flour

5g salt

100g (3½ oz) room temperature butter or lard

7g (¼ oz) fast-action yeast

3 large eggs

50ml (2fl oz) milk

For the bacon and sausage filling:

15g (½ oz)/1 tbsp butter

1 red onion, finely chopped

400g (14 oz) sausage meat (or the equivalent in sausages with the meat removed from the skins)

1 tbsp fresh sage, finely chopped

6 slices smoked streaky bacon

1 egg for egg wash

sage leaves, to serve (optional – they look great and are very tasty too)

METHOD

1. Start by preparing your bread dough, using either a dough hook or by hand. It is important that your lard or butter is at room temperature, and therefore soft and easy to work with. This makes it much easier to mix.

USING A MIXER WITH A DOUGH HOOK: Put all of the ingredients for the bread dough in your mixing bowl and mix at a low speed until it has formed a dough. If it feels sticky add a little more flour, a tablespoon should do it, but add more if you need to, slowly and mixing well every time. When it is no longer sticky but before it is dry and flaky, it is good. If it feels too dry, add a tablespoon of milk at a time (flours vary so both of these things can happen). Continue to knead with the dough hook for 5–6 minutes until the texture is no longer rough and it has an elastic quality.

BY HAND: the same as above but it takes longer to knead (approximately 10 minutes).

2. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and allow the dough to double in size in the warmest part of your kitchen or in your airing cupboard. This will be faster in the summer and slow in the winter; I usually put it near a radiator in the winter to help push it along. This proving stage usually takes an hour to an hour and a half.

3. Prepare your bacon and sausage filling. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a low heat and gently sauté the finely chopped red onion in it for about 10–15 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool and combine with the sausage meat and sage and mix well with your hands.

4. When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back by punching the air out of it and allow it to settle for 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl to a floured board and divide into three equal amounts. Roll into sausage shapes roughly twice the length of one of your smoked streaky bacon strips and just as wide. Flatten each log so that the width doubles and lay two strips of bacon on each so that the surface is covered with bacon from top to bottom. Now divide the sausage meat mixture into 3 and place the sausage meat on top of the bacon in a strip. Pull the dough up around the bacon and sausage meat gently and press it closed as best as you can and lay the three strips next to each other. Bread dough can take it, don't worry.

5. Join the three strips of dough together at the top and pinch them together so that they all originate in the same place. Tuck the ends underneath what will become your loaf, and again, press them firmly underneath, without squashing the top, aiming to hide the messy bits and secure the braid. Braid the three strips by pulling the outside strand over the centre one, and repeating with the other side until you have a braid. These look best if done a little tightly. Join the ends as neatly as you can, and tuck underneath, just as you did the start. Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and allow to sit at room temperature while you preheat the oven.

6. Preheat the oven to 200°C/180° Fan (400°F). Beat the egg and gently brush the surface of the braided bread with it. Bake your bread for approximately 25 minutes until golden brown. Best eaten warm and the leftovers (if any!) make a terrific French toast.

What to drink: Got to be a good strong cup of breakfast tea IMO!

All content copyright Niamh Shields from Bacon the Cookbook

Porridge, honey and raspberry loaves

The perfect weekend breakfast bake from Richard Bertinet's lovely book, Crumb.

Richard says: I love this bread lightly toasted the day after it’s made with fresh raspberries and goat’s milk yogurt for breakfast.

MAKES 2 MEDIUM TIN LOAVES

50g porridge oats, plus extra for dusting and coating

100g goat’s milk

40g honey

300g cool water

450g strong white bread flour

10g fine sea salt

10g fresh yeast

250g frozen raspberries

a little vegetable oil or butter, for greasing the tins

1 Bring the oats and milk to the boil in a pan. Stir in the honey, then take off the heat, scrape into a bowl and leave to cool.

2 To make the dough, transfer the porridge mixture to a food mixer, add the water, then the flour and salt and roughly break up the yeast on top on the opposite side of the bowl to the salt. Mix for 4 minutes on a slow speed, then turn up to medium for about a further 12 minutes until you have a dough that comes away cleanly from the sides of the bowl.

3 Lightly dust a work surface with oats, then turn out the dough. Also dust a clean bowl with oats. Fold the frozen raspberries gently into the dough but do not knead. then form into a ball and rest for about 45 minutes–1 hour until just under double in size.

4 Divide the dough in half using your scraper and re-shape each piece into a ball as above. Cover as before and leave to rest for a further 10 minutes.

5 Grease two medium loaf tins with oil or butter and place on a baking tray. Have some more oats in a large shallow bowl. Brush the top and sides of each ball with water and dip into the oats to coat, then put into the tins. Cover with a baking cloth or a large freezer bag and allow to prove for 45 minutes–1 hour until just under double in size.

6 Preheat the oven to 230°C. Fill a clean spray bottle with water. Using a sharp serrated-edged knife, make a cut along the length of each loaf, then put the tray into the preheated oven. Just before closing the door, quickly mist the inside generously with a water spray, pumping it for about 5–6 seconds, and avoiding spraying the loaves as much as possible.

7 Bake for about 15–20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 210°C for 10 minutes (leave the oven door very slightly ajar for the last 3–4 minutes to allow some steam to escape in order to enhance the crust) until the tops of the loaves are golden and the oats are light brown.

Extracted from Crumb by Richard Bertinet, published by Kyle Books. Photography © Jean Cazals.

Simit with lemon and thyme-baked feta

If you've ever toyed with the idea of buying a wood-fired oven Genevieve Taylor's new book The Ultimate Wood Fired Oven Cookbook should persuade you. (And it didn't even cost a fortune. She built it herself!)

The recipes which go way beyond pizza are brilliant too* but I picked this intriguing Turkish bread which she serves with baked feta cheese which sounds ridiculously good*.

Gen writes: "Simit are delicious bagel-shaped bread rings from Turkey, liberally covered with golden sesame seeds and often served for breakfast with cheese and olive oil. Here I serve them with baked feta cheese as I love the soft, almost mousse-like texture it gets when it’s hot, perfect for spreading on the crusty bread. Eaten with a salad of ripe tomatoes and a few black olives, this makes a perfectly simple lunch."

220–230°C (425–450°F) MAKES 4

For the simit

400g (3 cups) strong white bread flour

1 tsp instant yeast

1 tsp fine salt

300ml (11⁄4 cups) hand-hot water 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for shaping the dough

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

2 tbsp sesame seeds

For the feta

1 x 200g (7oz) block of feta

2 tbsp olive oil

a few sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves, picked

zest from 1⁄2 a lemon

freshly ground black pepper

You need a fire that has reached a high, steady baking temperature of about 220–230°C (425–450°F), with no live flame, just glowing embers OR if you don't have a wood-fired oven Gen says you can bake the bread in a conventional oven at 220°C or 200°C in a fan oven.

Put the flour, yeast and salt into a mixing bowl and stir together until mixed. Pour in the water and oil and stir together until you have a ragged, loose ball of dough. Cover loosely with a clean tea towel and set aside for 10 minutes for the flour to hydrate.

Lightly oil the worktop and tip the dough on to it, scraping out all the loose bits from the bowl. Spread a little oil on the inside of the bowl and set aside. Use your oiled hands to very lightly knead the dough for 10 seconds, then put back into the bowl and leave to rest for 10 more minutes. Repeat this 10-second knead and 10-minute rest twice more. Cover the bowl and leave to prove on the worktop for an hour. You can also slide it into the fridge and prove it slowly for 4–6 hours if you prefer.

Tip out the dough on to a lightly floured worktop and divide it into eight even pieces. Take two pieces and roll them into long snakes, about 1–1 1⁄2cm (1⁄2–5⁄8in) thick. If the dough snakes are springing back and won’t stay in shape, leave them for a few minutes to relax, then try again.

Twist the two pieces together like a rope, then coil into a circle and pinch the two ends together to join so they look like twisted bagels. Set on a large oiled baking sheet and repeat with the remaining dough so you end up with 4 well-spaced simit. Brush the tops lightly with the pomegranate molasses and sprinkle liberally with the sesame seeds. Set aside to prove again for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, get the block of feta ready for baking by sliding it into a small baking dish. Drizzle over the olive oil, and sprinkle on the thyme and lemon zest. Season with a good grind of black pepper.

Once the dough has finished its second prove, slide the tray into the hot oven. Cook for 15 minutes, then check them, turning the tray around if necessary, so they cook evenly. At the same time, slide in the dish of feta alongside. Leave both to bake for a further 10–15 minutes.

Serve immediately, while the feta is hot and melting.

*the Mexican sweetcorn salad (Esquites) we had at the launch is also ridiculously good

What to drink: If you served this as Gen suggests with a salad of ripe tomatoes and some olives a glass of dry rosé would go down well or, if you can find one, the crisp Turkish white, Narince.

Recipe extract from The Ultimate Wood Fired Oven Cookbook by Genevieve Taylor published by Quadrille at £15. Photography © Jason Ingram.