Masters Thesis Due: Back Next Week

Hello all!

My master's thesis is due next week, so I have to knuckle down and do some work on it. I'll be back online after the 21st of July.

I'll be back thereafter with more ice-cream, and otherwise, confections!

Sweetie Pie x

Soda Bread with Oats and Sunflower Seeds (Wheat Free)

Soda bread is ever so simple, and is the perfect bread for a beginner as it needs no yeast. This kind of bread recipe, known as a quick bread, relies on the very basic principle of acid + base = gas for leavening, and as this is an instant reaction it can be cooked straight after preparation. It has been a staple of Irish kitchens for many a year, and its stale crusts has teethed many an Irish country toddler.

However, as nice and easy as it is, it can be really boring if made with plain old flour (even if it is wholemeal, which is flavourful and complex), so to spice things up a bit it's nice to add seeds, herbs and spices, other grains, or even finely chopped nuts. My cousin visited recently and left behind a packet of sunflower seeds, which I found add such a delicious flavour, and bring life and colour to an otherwise visually boring.

Also, soda bread is traditionally made with buttermilk: the acidity of the buttermilk reacts with the bread soda causing lift, and it gives the bread richness. However, if you don't plan on making soda bread often, it would be impractical to keep buttermilk in he fridge, as it would go off before you used it all. If you want to make your own buttermilk, simply add 1 tablespoon (15 millilitres) of lemon juice to every 8 fluid ounces (240 millilitres) of normal milk, stir and allow to rest for 10 minutes, stirring every little while.

Let's get onto the recipe itself.

INGREDIMENTS:
This will yield one 8x4 inch (21x10 centimeter) loaf.

• 1 pound (455 grammes) spelt flour, white or whole meal
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) bread soda (bicarbonate of soda)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) rolled oats
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) sunflower seeds 
• 12 fluid ounces (340 millilitres) buttermilk
• 2 or 3 fluid ounces (60 or 85 millilitres) water, if needed

HOW-TO

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4, or moderate). Grease and flour a loaf tin.
• In a large bowl, mix the flour, bread soda, salt, oats, and sunflower seeds until fully blended. Make a well in the middle.
• Pour the buttermilk into the well, and using your hand (don't use any tools for this, soda bread needs a sensitive hand only) and gently mix together the wet and dry ingredients until just brought together. 
• This mixture should not be like usual bread dough, or even like biscuit dough, it should be  sticky and make an absolute mess of your hand; imagine the texture of thick porridge. If you need to add the water to get the right consistency, add it an ounce (30 millilitres) at a time.
• Pour into the tin and put into the oven. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with one or two crumbs clinging to it, and the loaf sounds hollow underneath.
• Once removed from the oven, wrap in a clean, damp tea towel.

Simple as that! Slice thick, slice thin, eat toasted, eat straight, with butter, jam peanut butter, whatever! This is perfect student food, as it is cheap, keeps well and freezes better. Store in an airtight container, and cut as needed to prolong the shelf-life.

Incidentally, the green bits are sunflower seeds, not mould, before you ask!

Why Bake Everything Myself?

Before I attend to the business of the day, I'd like to announce that my Facebook page is up and running, as well as my Twitter. Find them at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweetie-Pie-Bakes-Stuff/149724028448663
http://www.twitter.com/sweetiepielmk/

I’ve had a few people ask me over the past few days why I bother making everything from scratch. As I mentioned in my post on homemade sprinkles, there are a few reasons. Of course, one gets the satisfaction of having made your sweets and baked goods from scratch, which is a good enough reason by itself before you consider any others, but also I a) get to control the exact ingredients in my products, which is important for someone living a life with any kind of restricted diet (wheat intolerance, lactose intolerance, veganism, organic living, et cetera), and b) it’s much, much, much, much cheaper.

Take this example. When I first began living a wheat-free lifestyle, I went to my local supermarket to get some shopping. At first I thought “this whole wheat-free thing isn’t too bad: I like rice and potatoes, and sure can’t I get maize pasta. No biggie-smalls!” I didn’t worry too much about buying wheat-free bread because I don’t really eat sandwiches or toast, and making soup from scratch to avoid wheat-based thickeners is no skin off my nose. I then thought “you can buy pretty good wheat-free biscuits now, I’m told”, so I went to the ridiculously titled ‘Health Food’ aisle, where things like dairy-free and gluten-free products are hidden. 

Having found the shelf where the biscuits were kept, my heart skipped a beat: not only was the selection as exciting as a magnolia wall, but a packet of Bourbon biscuits, my favourite biscuit, was €2.49. A few weeks previously, I could have bought a normal-person packet of Bourbon biscuits for less than a euro, and that would have enough biscuits in it to make me sick, but this wheat-free packet of biscuits had eight biscuits in it; just eight. Once I had engaged my maths brain, I worked out that this meant the wheat-free ones were over 30c per biscuit, and the normal wheaty ones were less than 5c per biscuit. I left the shop with no biscuits, and a bad taste in my mouth.

However, all was not lost. I discovered a few weeks later that I could eat spelt and not abreact, and once I had done my research, I began happily baking as I always had; and it meant a much cheaper lifestyle.

Let’s crunch a few numbers. Here is an example of a cost sheet; these are the prices as of today, obviously subject to change:

Bourbon Creams	Euro per packet	Grammes per packet	Grammes used in recipe	Cost of grammes used
for biscuits
Spelt flour	2.89	1000	115	0.33
Cornflour	1.19	500	30	0.07
Cocoa Powder	3.45	250	25	0.35
Butter	2.19	450	115	0.56
Icing sugar	1.09	500	55	0.12
Vanilla essence	3.99	60	5	0.33
for fillling
Butter	2.19	450	115	0.56
Cocoa Powder	3.45	250	25	0.35
Icing sugar	1.09	500	255	0.56
Milk	0.75	1000	15	0.01
Vanilla essence	3.99	60	5	0.33
			Total Cost	1.80
			Pieces	18 – 20
			Cost per item	0.10 – 0.09

Compare that to the aforementioned €2.49 packet of eight Bourbon creams. See? You could even make these cheaper again by using margarine instead of butter, omitting the vanilla essence, et cetera, without massively impacting the taste. It will a little, obviously, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Of course, what you save in money your trade for time. But if you get into baking as a hobby, it’ll become a fun way to pass time and save money at the same time. This allows you to make all kinds of different and interesting baked goods that you wouldn’t even be able to get in the shops; I haven’t yet come across a wheat-free gingerbread man, for example, but I can make as many gingerbread men as my wallet will allow at home.

Now, for ingredients: if you buy a packet of biscuits from the shop, there will more than likely be a long list of ingredients which are difficult to pronounce. Glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, humectants, surfactants, emulsifiers, a few vaguely titled ‘flavourings’, dehydrated reconstituted egg protein, and whey powder are all commonplace in mass-produced biscuits, and God knows what else; as you may have guessed, none of these is particularly good for you. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that biscuits and sweeties and lovely things aren’t supposed to be good for you, and are just fine enjoyed in moderation, but there is such a thing as damage control. It’s good to know exactly what has ended up in your biscuits and, if you make them from scratch, you can. You can ensure that nothing but a hundred percent natural everything has been used, you can even make sure that the ingredients are organic and fair trade, if you so please. Obviously, that will make them a little pricier.

So go ahead, become like me: an obsessive baker and saver of money. You know it makes sense.