Wholemeal rolls

Ingredients

• 600g flour (white and wholemeal)
• 10g salt
• 10g yeast
• 450 ml water
• Seeds (sesame and linseed)

Decide on the proportion of while and wholmeal flour you're going to use - I used 50/50 here but any combination will work - you may need more water for a dough with more wholemeal flour in it

Mix the flour, salt and yeast together in a bowl

Add the water and stir / kneed until you've got a nice smooth ball of dough

Cover with a tea towel or transfer to the proving bowl (you can optionally add extra water at this stage to help the proving)

Leave for a few hours (or overnight) until the dough is risen and smelling good

Using plain flour, take the dough from the bowl and place on a large board and roll into a long shape

Split the dough into two, then roll out again before splitting into twelve roughly equal balls

In a small bowl add a mixture of the seeds and dip each dough ball into the seeds with the sticky end down to pick up as many seeds as possible

On the board shape each piece of dough into a ball

Then put on baking trays to rise, cover with a tea towel

And in around an hour they should have risen nicely and be ready for baking

Bake at around 200C for around 25 minutes, check after every 10 minutes or so and when they are brown and look ready, leave to cool on a metal rack

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients:

600g bread flour

10g yeast

10g salt

teaspoon mixed spice

teaspoon cinammon

teaspoon nutmeg

75g sugar

75g butter, melted or choppen into small pieces

ginger, grated

300ml milk

1 egg

75g raisins or sultanas

40g dried cranberries

40g mixed peel

plain flour

runny honey

Step 1: the dough
Mix the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl and add the milk, egg and butter

Kneed until you get a nice smooth dough - add more flour or milk if you need to get the right consistency - pour a little extra milk on at the end to help the fermentation

Step 2: Add fruit and roll out

After the dough has risen - ideally leave for a few hours or overnight - punch it back, flatten into a sheet and then kneed the dried fruit into the dough

When the fruit is evenly spread through the dough, split into 12 pieces, roll into balls and place on baking trays - cover with a tea towel and leave to rise

Step 3: Rising and add the crosses

After an hour or so, the balls should have risen and approximately doubled in size

Mix some plain flour with water to make a paste and pipe over the buns giving the crosses (you can use a piping bag for this, or a plastic sandwich bag with a corner cut off)

Step 4: Baking and glazing

Bake for around 15/20 minutes at 200C until brown, then glaze with some runny honey while they are still warm

Papo Secos - Portuguese Rolls

These tasty bread rolls are typically Portuguese - they are really easy to make and very tasty

Ingedients

• 650 gram Bread Flour
• 400 ml milk (or water)
• 10 gram salt
• 10 gram yeast 
• 1 egg (optional)

Step 1: the dough

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, salt and yeast) in a bowl and mix together - form a hole in the centre and add the liquid (milk or water and egg)

Stir together and kneed until it's a smooth dough - add more flour or liquid if needed during the kneeding

Make indentations in the dough with your fingers and add extra liquid for the rise and cover

Step 2: the rise

Leave to rise - ideally for a few hours during the day or overnight

If you need it to rise more quickly, leave in a warm place

Step 3: shaping

Split the dough into 12 roughly equal balls - normally split first in half, then half again to get quarters, then split each of the quarters into three

Each of the balls should weigh around 100 gram

Leave them for a minute or two to rest

Press each ball into a flat disc, around 8-10 cm in diameter, then press the edge of your hand across the centre of the disc

Fold the disc over along the indentation, roll the ends to make a shape similar to a cornish pasty

Repeat for each of the 12 balls of dough and place on baking trays

Step 4: the rise

Cover with a tea towel and leave at room temperature for around an hour to rise

Step 5: baking

After an hour or so the rolls should have approximately doubled in size

Bake in the oven at around 200C for around 15/20 minutes with a bowl of water in the bottom of the oven

Step 6: cool

Place on a wire rack to cool

Step 7: enjoy

Papo Secos can be eaten with any topping - or none

And washed down with a glass of your favorite drink

Hessen Hot Dogs

Last weekend we saw these wonderful "Hessen Hot Dogs" in Frankfurt at "Land und Genuss" at the Messe

They were being freshly prepared and baked in a traditional wood burning oven and sold for EUR3 each - and were absolutely delicious

Of course, this gave us the idea to try baking them at home

Ingredients:

• 4 good quality sausages (as good quality as possible - ideally fresh made at a local butcher)
• approx 400g of bread dough (any recipe should be ok for this)

Preparation:

Divide the dough into four balls, and roll them into flat circles around 15cm (6inch) diameter

Place a sausage in the centre of each circle of dough and wrap the dough around the sausage

Place the hot dogs on a baking tray with lined with baking paper

Bake for around 30 minutes at around 200C, turning regularly so that the bread has chance to bake evenly

Serve immediately with mustard or ketchup - tastes best with a freshly poured beer

Focaccia

Foccacia is an Italian flat bread based on the same type of dough as pizza - read more about the history and types of Focaccia on wikipedia: Focaccia 

You can find lots of receipes on the internet and in books, ours is a combination of recipes that we've found - we tried to make it as simple as possible, We've used this method for many years and it always comes out great, tasty and fluffy

We normally finish it with mozzarella cheese, red onion and parmesan but you can experiment with whatever you like on top, or whatever you have to hand that needs using up

The amounts are enough to make around a kilo of dough; by changing the quantities but keeping the proportions the same you can produce more or less, depending on how much bread you need

Ingedients for the Dough

• 600g Strong White Flour
• 5g Salt
• 10g Fresh or Powdered Yeast
• 50ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 350ml (approx) cold water

Ingredients for the focaccia dough

Making the Dough

Weigh the dry ingedients into a mixing bowl, crumbling the dried yeast into the flour

Stir the dry ingredients to mix the salt and yeast into the flour, make a well in the centre of the flour, then pour in the olive oil and most of the water

Dry ingredients ready for the liquid to be added

Next, stir the liquid into the flour until it starts to combine together - use some extra flour to clean off the spoon or whatever you used to stir the dough, then start to fold and kneed the dough together

Add more liquid to the mixture if you need to during the folding and kneading until you get a nice smooth dough - this should only take a few minutes, especially when you get the hang of it

If you're using a dough bowl, transfer to the bowl - next, make a few holes in the top of the dough with your fingertips and fill with extra water, then cover (either with the lid of the bowl if you're using a dough bowl) or a towel if it's a standard bowl and leave to ferment

Dough in the bowl ready to ferment

Normally we leave it for up to 12 hours, either overnight or for most of the day, but it can be done much more quickly if you need to, especially if you find a warm place for it

It's ready when you can see the bubbles of gas forming in the dough and you can smell a deep yeasty fermenting aroma

Fermented dough ready for shaping

Shaping the Focaccia

Sprinkle flour round the edge of the dough and take it from the bowl and onto a large floured board or worktop

Fold the dough over a few times and knead until it's a smooth ball - add more flour a little at a time if the dough is too wet and sticky

Divide into two and shape with your hands into two balls - now, first with your hands, then using a rolling pin, flatten out to the approximate size and shape of your baking trays

Two balls of dough ready to be rolled out

Lift onto the baking trays, cover with a towel and leave to rise for around 90 minutes

Dough on the baking trays ready to rise

Risen dough ready for the topping

Topping Ingredients

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Mozzarella Cheese
Medium sized Red Onion
Parmesan Cheese

Topping of cheese and onion

Add the Topping and Bake

Preheat the oven to 200C

Slice the Mozzarella and Red Onion

Brush the top of the focaccia with the oil, put the Mozzarella and Red Onion on the bread and finish by grating Parmesan over the top

Focaccia ready for the oven

Bake for around 25-30 minutes, turning and checking progress every ten minutes or so

Leave to cool for a while then enjoy!

Focaccia fresh from the oven

Sliced focaccia ready for serving

Good luck with the baking and please comment to let us know how you got on and if you have questions or feedback!