Just somewhere for me to share recipes easily as well as collect them for my own use. The UX of modern recipes websites is usually terrible with ~50% of space given over to ads and a lengthy preamble about the author’s grandmother’s best friend’s cat’s vet’s son’s life story. If you’d like to avoid all of that, I recommend based.cooking.

Irish soda bread (4/7/21)

Ingredients

  • 170g white flour
  • 170g wholemeal flour
  • 25g butter
  • One egg
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking powder will not work)
  • 250ml buttermilk (titrate it, probably won’t need all, I think 220ml might do it but it’s nice to have more available)

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 200C

  2. Mix dry ingredients

  3. Rub in butter

  4. Add egg to buttermilk and beat

  5. Make well in dry ingredients, add 200ml of buttermilk and mix with a wooden spoon. Add more if required. Mix until you have a shaggy dough.

  6. Do NOT knead, bring together in bowl with hand after mixing

  7. Turn dough onto floured surface and shape

  8. Bake for 45 minutes at 200C

Notes

It took four attempts over several days to get something halfway decent. The key is to handle the dough as little as possible, even if it looks like it will barely hold together, and get it into the oven as soon as possible. Minimise the time between adding the buttermilk and getting it into the oven.

Buttermilk can be substituted for curdled milk made by adding two tablespoons of lemon juice to a cup of milk; I have read one tbsp, but I went for two (although both juice and milk were cold at the time). My fifth attempt came out best and that was made with ‘homemade’ buttermilk.

Sweet Irish soda bread (22/7/21)

From the Food Wishes YouTube channel. It helps to watch the YouTube video in the link.

NB: Recipe was for two loaves, so I have halved all measurements.

  • 1 + 1/2 + 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/8 cup rolled oats
  • 1/2 + 1/8 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/8 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
  • 1 cup substitute buttermilk (whole milk + two tbsp lemon juice)
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tablespoons honey, or more to taste
  • 1 teaspoons grated orange zest
  • 1/2 cup dried currants
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.

  2. Whisk all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Cut butter into flour mixture using a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal.

  3. Beat buttermilk, egg, honey, and orange zest together in a bowl. Pour buttermilk mixture, currants, and raisins into flour mixture; stir with a wooden spoon until a wet, sticky dough comes together.

  4. Turn dough out onto a well-floured work surface; press dough together into a soft ball of dough and cut into 2 pieces. Form each half into a smooth, round loaf. Transfer to prepared baking sheet and let rest for 15 minutes. Cut a 1/2-inch deep “X” into the top of each loaf with a serrated knife.

  5. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown and fragrant, about 45 minutes. Transfer loaves to a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.

Notes

Mixture was far too wet and I had to add quite a bit of flour in excess of that given in the recipe to get something I could shape into a ball for the oven. Once baked for about 50 minutes, it came out ok.

Focaccia bread (16/7/21)

From the Food Wishes YouTube channel. It helps to watch the YouTube video in the link.

Ingredients

  • 1 package (.25 oz) active dry yeast
  • 250ml (1 cup) warm water (105 F.)
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and more to add throughout
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 30g (1/4 cup) semolina flour
  • 2 tsp minced fresh rosemary
  • 330g (2 3/4 cups) bread flour (don’t mix in all the flour in the first step; reserve about 30g (1/4 cup) for the kneading)

As with all dough recipes, you may need a little less or little more flour. The total weight I added was about 12 oz.

Method

  1. Mix all ingredients in bowl until a sticky dough forms, then knead with reserved flour and 2 additional tablespoons of olive oil, for about 7-8 minutes, until you have a smooth, elastic, but slightly sticky dough.

  2. Let rise until doubled (about 1-2 hours proving time), flatten on oiled pan, let rest 15 minutes, drizzle with olive oil, poke dough with finger tips, let rise 45 minutes or until doubled, brush lightly with olive oil, top with more rosemary and sea salt.

  3. Bake at 475 degrees F. for 14-15 minutes

  4. Brush with olive oil to serve

Notes

Recipe seemed to work fine.

Buttermilk pancakes (8/10/24)

Adapted from the ‘Sugar Spun Run’ website (if you wondered what I was ranting about above with respect to website design, this is a good (bad) example; fine recipe, though!) I’ve since modified that recipe to beat the egg whites and incorporate them as the last ingredient before resting the batter.

Note that I started making these with the goal of emulating American diner pancakes, but apparently most such places simply use a batter mix from a packet, like Krusteaz’s buttermilk pancake mix (which I confess is quite good).

Whole but burnt pancake Cut, fluffy pancake
Admittedly a bit burnt but the egg white-beating faff is worth it for the fluffy texture.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour (250g)
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2.25 cups buttermilk (530ml)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter melted and cooled (57g)

NB: The Nutracheck app tells me this makes 1834kcal worth of pancake.

Method

  1. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, until well-combined.

  2. Separate egg whites and yolks, beat the yolks

  3. Whisk together buttermilk, egg yolks, and vanilla extract.

  4. Gradually add melted butter to wet ingredients.

  5. Mix wet and dry ingredients, but do not overmix.

  6. Beat egg whites and incorporate them into the batter.

  7. Rest batter for 30 minutes.

  8. Fry on medium-low heat with no oil or butter (yes, really), flip when you see quite a few bubbles in the batter.

Don’t overmix the wet and dry ingredients. Keeping the batter a little lumpy will give you a heavier texture and will probably prevent you from exhausting the acid-base neutralisation reaction relied upon for bubbles when cooking.

Omitting oil or butter in the pan is how I manage to get the brown finish you see in American diner pancakes (too brown in those photos above, though).