October 12, 2021

Paul Hollywood's Ciabatta Breadsticks

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Paul Hollywood's Ciabatta Breadsticks got my attention on last Friday's The Great British Baking Show. Ciabatta should be flat as the name means slippers. What makes this ciabatta recipe not an authentic ciabatta is the method and lack of biga. Ciabatta recipe normally requires a biga and therefore 2 days to complete. But...whatever. 

The fillings are also interesting - green olives, Spanish Manchego cheese, chopped red onions, and coriander leaves - then dipped in tzatziki. It's a mash-up of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek cuisines. I included Portuguese because the other 3 European countries rarely use or maybe never use coriander leaves in their food. Portuguese cuisine uses coriander leaves, maybe influenced by Brazil and Macao.

Paul's recipe is quite large so I reduced it to just a third, making only 6 breadsticks. The breadsticks have crunchy crusts and soft crumbs. I thought the flavor will be weird because of the coriander leaves (cilantro) but it's actually good. The salty olives and cheese dominate the flavor anyway. The tzatziki is not really necessary but is an okay addition to the flavor mix. I suggest you use store bought or eat them without tzatziki.

October 1, 2021

Prue Leith's Malt Loaf

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I've never heard of Malt Loaf until Friday last week when it was presented as the technical challenge on the 9th Season of The Great British Baking Show, currently streaming on Netflix. My reaction of course is Must Bake A Loaf. But the recipe needs a small amount of black treacle and I didn't want to spend $9.00 for a 16-ounces tin of treacle that I know will end up in the cupboard unused for millennia. I made half a recipe that is available from food bloggers and it was disastrous. I slightly burnt the caramel so I made a second one which was a success. I adapted TGBBS Prue Leith's recipe and the loaf is surprisingly moist, malty, and delicious. Nice with a smear of salted butter. The recipe has flame raisins but I used ordinary dark raisins because raisins are raisins and both of them are dark as opposed to golden raisins.

 
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