A French kitchen classic, pain d'épices is one of those delicious cake-masquerading-as-bread treats that covers all bases from the indulgence of a leisurely breakfast to that cosy afternoon on the couch with a good book and long pot of tea...
Read MorePistachio olive oil cake
A little while ago my incredibly lovely and generous neighbours gave me some of their olive oil, made from their very own olives, hand-picked and pressed from a small orchard of trees they keep a few hours north of the city...
Read MoreWalnut quince squares
The first home I lived in was the best place ever to spend one's childhood. A large rambling home in a small country town there were rooms aplenty, a big leafy yard, and a small paddock with space enough to run chickens, milking goats and ducks. There was a wood pile and vegie patch, cubby house and sandpit, and enough secret little...
Read MoreBread board: A loaf for cheese
Taking a step up from baking soda to working with some everyday, commercial yeast, this week's bread is a simple loaf of the fruit and nut variety. Studded with figs, roasted hazelnuts and fennel it is only faintly sweet, making for a nice variation on fruit toast and a wonderful accompaniment to wine and cheese...
Read MoreLemon soda bread
A while back when I posted a recipe for cider bread a reader questioned why you'd bother with such things when you could be eating sourdough instead. It's a fair point, naturally leavened breads are by far my favourite when it comes to both texture and flavour, but there are also two very solid reasons why I like to keep soda bread in my baking repertoire...
Read MoreSalted honey tarts
Salt, sodium chloride, is one of the world's more common minerals with one of its constituents, sodium, being the sixth most abundant element on Earth. Essential for animal life and human health, salt plays a critical role in moving water around the body to maintain fluid balance, and is necessary...
Read MoreThe perfect scone
Every baker worth their salt should have a good scone recipe and, by Jove!, I think I've found it...
Read MoreThe knights who say Knish
Originating in eastern Europe, the knish is a traditional, potato-based snack also common to North America, where it was first popularised by the newly-settled Polish and Jewish communities...
Read MoreBread basics: Flour
As a follow-up to one of my earlier posts discussing the role of autolysis in bread making, I thought it would be worthwhile to go through the various components of flour (specifically, wheat flour), and identify how each impacts the functionality of this ingredient fundamental to the process of baking bread...
Read MoreThe Holy Trinity: Mark I
Autumn is a happy time for bakers. It's cooler, there's less humidity, and while it may take a bit of coaxing to get the levains up and going, all-in-all it's a pretty lovely time to be in the kitchen. For me it's also the season of favourite ingredients and, ever since these tarts, I've been thinking about how to pull some of these together into a shortlist of ideal baked treat combinations...
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