Measurements

 Made some bagels the other day (stay tuned recipe to follow) but before I started I did a little bit of research and it got me thinking.

A recipe I looked at called for 19gms of sugar and 6 gms of yeast. I thought to myself that if I put in a couple of gms more or less would the recipe be totally f@#@#ed. The answer is no, provided you don't go overboard it doesn't affect it.

Also one recipe said to add yeast and sugar to a small portion of the water and let stand for 5 mins and do not stir. Why? I thought as after 5 mins it said to stir the mix and add to the dry ingredients along with the rest of the water. Does not stirring the yeast mixture at the start really have an effect on the finished product. Would you bite into your bagel and exclaim "Oh no!!! the yeast mixture was not left to stand for 5 mins" Short answer NO.

Conclusion; Some of these instructions are a bit of a wank!!

Sweet Short Pastry (reduced sugar)

 This recipe for sweet short pastry uses CSR Smart Sugar which is readily available in supermakets and enables you to halve the amount of sugar you would normally use. It is a blend of cane sugar and a small amount of stevia.

I reduced the sugar in this recipe from 170gms to 80gms just over 50%. The sweetness of the pastry is not compromised at all and the baked pastry was light and biscuity with a lovely tender bite,

Recipe

 80 gms Smart Sugar                                                                                                                                      265 gms salted butter                                                                                                                                          

 Lightly cream  

 1 egg

 Add to the butter sugar cream and mix until cleared

 400 gms flour                                                                                                                                                5 gms Baking Powder

 Sift together and mix in with 1 Tablespoon of chilled water to form a dough                                             Knead lightly to a smooth ball and rest in a cool place for 30 minutes before using.

  BG                                         

Cheats Sourdough Starter

 Good Afternoon Readers,

As we are now in the midst of covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns I have decided to ressurect this blog.

It will in no way be a pretty glamorous blog full of pretty stylised pictures but more a practical blog with a few photos as we go.

This is how to make a cheats sourdough starter.

To start make what we call a biga (method to follow)

When the biga is ready make a loaf of bread using it.

Leave a little of the biga behind and add some flour and water to it (330 gms/260gms)

and leave for 24 hours.

From here you can feed it again or make another loaf of bread

As you keep doing this the starter will gain strength and approach the quality of a good sourdough starter.

For your first few loaves of bread use your favourite yeasted bread recipe ,with the biga added to it, my suggestion would be to a bread recipe using 500gms of flour add 400 gms of the biga and simply follow your recipe.

BIGA RECIPE

0.75 gms of yeast (1/4 tsp)

60 gms warm water

330 gms flour

200 gms water

Sponge the yeast with the 60gms of warm water and 1/4 cup flour

Add to the remaining flour and water and mix well

Cover bowl and leave overnight (the longer you leave it the better the flavour)

Stay tuned and happy baking.

BG