Chocolate raisin bread

I decided not to buy any bread at the supermarket this week and instead bake it all myself. I love kneading the bread, watching it double in size, having the smell of bread baking wafting through the house and then finally eating a slice with lots of butter and homemade jam while it's still hot. We'd normally spend over $10 a fortnight on bread so for that price I figure we can make some delicious loaves ourselves. 

The base ingredient is high grade flour - 5kg costs just over $6. And yes it is possible to carry 2 5kg bags of flour plus all the other groceries to feed 3 adults for a fortnight home by yourself - it's called a backpack! It probably weighs less than what I carried on my back while backpacking and I managed to lug that around at 3000m above sea level, and in the 40 degree Amazon heat. 

There's still wholemeal bread and english muffins in the freezer from last week's bread-making exploits so I'm topping that up so we have a variety of breads to choose from at breakfast time and for lunches. 

Last night I quick mixed up the dough and kneaded Chocolate Raisin Bread and left it to rise while I went to work (and made a triple batch of empanada pastry to chill in the fridge) - it calls for rum to soak the raisins in. I don't keep rum in the house (there was one exceptionally bad hangover from a night out dancing salsa in Colombia...) and so I used brandy. You could also use orange juice if alcohol at breakfast time isn't your cup of tea...

At work I whipped up a batch of orange muffins for the countertop, cut veges for a roast veg salad, taste tested a new recipe for ham and artichoke croquettes (yum!),  and finished off a batch of empanadas. Then it was home again to cook some more (love having a job where I get paid to do what I spend all my spare time doing any way!).

While the chocolate raisin bread had its second rising I folded empanadas for our freezer. If you freeze them 'raw' you can chuck them in the oven for half an hour and voila, dinner in a hurry when you can't be bothered cooking. This time I did corn and cheese (humita) for the vegetarian flatmate and rump steak for the carnivores. 

The two loaves rose overnight ready to be baked this morning. And so breakfast was chocolate bread fresh out of the oven with homemade plum jam and a cup of tea. Mmm. 

Right now I've got lemons squeezed ready to turn into lemon curd and need to pop out to get a jelly bag so I can attack some of the mint for mint jelly to use for Christmas gifts if it turns out well.

Better get cracking on that because I have a dinner date with some friends tonight at the Argentine restaurant because I don't have enough empanadas in my life already!!! So I'll leave you with two things, a photo of the Chocolate Raisin Bread and a video I made of my grandma making empanadas because noone makes better ones than her!

P.S. My neighbour just knocked on the door and gave me a set of brand-new gardening tools that she got given but thought I might use more than her. How lovely is that?! I think a batch of scones or muffins might be making their way over there!

English muffins

The bread stocks have been run down to next to nothing and it's still 4 days until shopping day so tonight I had to bake bread. I say had to but really for me breadmaking isn't a chore. I love kneading it. The only part I don't like is trying to get the bench clean after the kneading!

I made my usual wholemeal loaves which are on their second rising right at this moment, ready to be popped into the oven when I wake up. To mix things up a bit I also made Sophie Gray's english breakfast muffins. I LOVE english muffins but they are quite pricey. These ones taste even better than shop bought and were so easy to make (just a little time consuming if you don't start making them until 10.30pm). 

I'm so looking forward to breakfast in a few hours time when I can top one with fresh spinach from my garden and a poached egg. All that's missing is the hollandaise sauce!

There's also baking in the tin for lunches tomorrow. We ran out of butter so I made a carrot cake - no cream cheese icing though or icing at all for that matter. If I get a chance in the morning I might quickly do a batch of anzac bikkies to tide us over until grocery day. The only other snack food in the house is fresh fruit (getting low at this end of the week) or popcorn therefore baking is more of an essential than a treat (at least that's what I tell myself). 

We've been slightly naughty this week and had peach upside-down cake with custard and strawberry souffles for dessert. How my flatmates stay so skinny I do not know, haha.

When I bake bread I'm reminded of how easy it is to do and that there isn't really any reason why we should buy sliced bread at all. At $4 a loaf vogels is delicious, but expensive. If we put our bread budget towards raw ingredients like grains, dried fruits and nuts to make our breads interesting, I bet we wouldn't miss sliced bread at all. I'd just have to allocate an evening a week to do a whole lot and freeze it. Perhaps bagels for next week...

The other thing we've been thinking about is not buying fresh milk anymore and making it all up from powder. I don't taste the difference and it only takes less than 2 minutes to make up a litre or two and would save us a few dollars each fortnight. We're going to trial that idea next week.

One more thing I've been sneakily doing is topping the juice up with a bit of water once it's half drunk. Nobody has said anything to me yet so maybe they haven't noticed... when we have run out, I've chucked whatever fruit is lying around into the blender with some water. No wasted fruit and one delicious glass of goodness for breakfast. My favourite so far is pineapple/kiwifruit. Yum!