Blue potato focaccia

I’ve done some savoury baking again and there will be more of it getting closer to Christmas. I got some marvellous blue potatoes from a local shop, so I made this focaccia with them to showcase them properly. They would add a nice splash of colour to any dish. This was just a fluffy focaccia with pre-cooked blue potatoes, onion slices and garlic.

Your VegHog

 

Decorated focaccia - Sunflowers

I made another decorated focaccia, because making the first one was so much fun. I was inspired by Vincent van Gogh this time and followed a sunflower theme. The bell peppers were also nice on the focaccia and I’m already thinking about my next theme. Do you have any suggestions or have you made a decorated focaccia?

We will go to the seaside in a minute and will just have a relaxing Sunday picnic there. I hope you’ll have a great day!

Your VegHog

Decorated focaccia

I’ve had a lovely week travelling in Denmark visiting many beautiful places on the shore and several museums. But above all, I’ve been taking it easy trying not to think about work, and it has been great. The government has a summer scheme and one part of that is that museum tickets are half price. I will go to one more museum today, as it’s the perfect timing for it now. The weather hasn’t been the greatest, a bit cloudy all the time, but that’s actually a good walking weather. Today seems to be a bit sunnier.

I’ve been admiring this trend of beautiful decorated focaccia breads for a while now and now I got experimenting myself. My bread is of course not nearly as beautiful as some of the creations I’ve seen online, but it turned alright. Such a bread would be really nice to offer to some guests. I will be practising more to make better ones. The bread dough was alright, I just made my basic pizza dough with a little addition of sugar and made it a bit softer. It was rising well and made a fluffy focaccia. The toppings were heirloom tomatoes, basil, fresh onion stalks, shallots and green olives with addition of sea salt and olive oil.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Your VegHog

Balsamic onion and roasted pepper focaccia

I found these wonderful balsamic infused onions in the shop and had to try them. They were very good indeed and added a perfect flavour to my homemade focaccia. I paired the onions with some antipasti roasted peppers. This was a very nice bread as a side dish or a snack.

My focaccia recipe is so very easy and it can be made with many different toppings. This time I even added a bit of spelt flour into it to have a slightly darker bread. There's hardly any kneading and shaping in this recipe, the focaccia almost makes itself.

Ingredients

300 ml wheat flour

200 ml spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

200 ml lukewarm water

2 tbsp olive oil

Balsamic infused onions

Roasted peppers

20g grated vegetarian pasta cheese

Sea salt

Method

Mix the dry ingredients together, add the lukewarm water and olive oil and mix into a dough.

Stretch the dough onto a baking tray and let rise under a tea towel for about one hour.

Press lightly the halved balsamic infused onions and sliced roasted peppers into the dough and sprinkle some sea salt and grated vegetarian pasta cheese on the top.

Bake the focaccia at 220C for about 20 minutes.

And it's all done!

Your VegHog

Spelt, cider and seed rolls

Is there a better way to start a day than with freshly baked healthy rolls? I think not! I made these lovely rolls, but didn't write down the ingredient amounts. I'm very sorry about that, but they were so good that I'm going to bake them soon again and then post the full recipe here.

The main ingredients of the dough were spelt flour, in dry cider soaked oat flakes and sunflower seeds. This mix made very sturdy and filling rolls. They were so great with some butter and cheese.

Here are couple of my older similar recipes: Spelt and cider rolls & Spelt flake and cider rolls 

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Grilled sourdough sandwiches

The weekend is finally here and I'm only going to do a quick post before I go to town. I want to do some shopping at the health food store and maybe eat out or sit in a pub relaxing.

I made these grilled sourdough sandwiches a while ago and it's about time that they come to the blog. I love sourdough bread, halloumi and oak smoked slow roasted tomatoes and they all came together in this dish or snack.

Sourdough bread slices

250 g halloumi

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 yellow romano pepper

1 red onion

1 garlic clove

1 tsp olive oil

Pea shoots and baby leaves

Oak smoked slow roasted tomatoes

Fresh oregano

Slice the halloumi and fry the slices in vegetable oil until golden brown on both sides.

Pan fry the sliced red onion and romano pepper and also cook the chopped garlic in olive oil.

Char-grill the sourdough bread slices.

Assemble the sandwiches with all components and enjoy!

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog

Potato and rosemary focaccia

I have baked loads of things with potatoes lately, potato pizza and potato pies, and now I've done it again. Now I baked potato and rosemary focaccias with lovely red ruby gem potatoes. I love the taste of these local potatoes and purchase them quite often. I used mainly spelt flour in the dough, which I haven't done before in focaccias.

Here is how I made these focaccias. The recipe makes four focaccias or one large one.

Ingredients

For the dough:

300 ml spelt flour

200 ml wheat flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

200 ml lukewarm water

2 tbsp olive oil

For the filling:

250 g small potatoes

Rosemary

Sea salt

20g grated mature Cheddar

Method

Mix the dry ingredients for the dough (flour, dry yeast, sugar and salt) and then add the lukewarm water and olive oil and knead to a dough. Let the dough rise for about 40 minutes under a teatowel.

In the meanwhile boil the potatoes until they are soft. Let them cool and cut them into chunky bits. I cut one small potato into 2-3 pieces. Mix the pieces in a bowl with a little olive oil, rosemary and sea salt.

Shape small round focaccias from the dough and place the potato pieces on them. Sprinkle grated cheddar on the top and some more sea salt and rosemary if you prefer.

Bake at 220 C for about 20 minutes and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Watercress rolls

Watercress is in season at the moment and I like adding it to salads, but now I made something slightly different with it. I baked spelt rolls with added watercress and they turned out to be quite good. I spontaneously invented this recipe, as I wanted to eat some rolls and at the same didn't want the excess watercress go to waste.

I also want to share this recipe with the Eat Your Greens vegetarian cooking challenge involving green vegetables. This challenge is hosted by Shaheen from the A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table and I thought that a watercress recipe could be a suitable one for April. 

Here is how I made my Watercress rolls:

Ingredients

250 g spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

100 g spelt flakes

200 ml lukewarm water

1 tbsp olive oil

60 g watercress

Poppy seeds for the top

Method

Soak the spelt flakes in the lukewarm water for a couple of minutes.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Add the water with the spelt flakes to the dry ingredients.

Mix and knead to an even dough and also add the olive oil.

Then add the watercress (larger stalks removed).

Knead some more and let the dough rise in a bowl covered with a tea towel for about one hour.

Shape rolls of the dough and sprinkle some poppy seeds on the top.

Bake them at 220C for about 10-15 minutes until crispy and golden brown.

The rolls are at their best when fresh, but can still be consumed a day or two after the baking.

Your VegHog

Rye bruschetta

Almost Friday! I couldn't be happier about it and hopefully I'll have the chance to catch up more with posting and sorting out my holiday photos during the weekend.

Today I wanted to share with you my rye bruschetta idea. A fresh bruschetta is a lovely thing as breakfast or lunch and I made some now because I had tasty heirloom tomatoes at hand. This bruschetta is slightly different to the normal ones, as the base is rye bread, but it's very filling and healthy.

This is what you'll need for my rye version:

Rye bread slices

Heirloom tomatoes

1 small garlic clove

Fresh basil leaves

Pine nuts

Salt

Ground black pepper

Olive oil

Slice the tomatoes and cut the garlic clove in half.

Toast the bread and rub the garlic on the toasted bread slices.

Place the other ingredients on the bread and sprinkle little olive oil on them.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Parsnip rolls

How would you like to start the day with warm freshly baked parsnip rolls during the holiday season? These rolls are very easy to make and with that root vegetable addition they have such a seasonal feel about them. I wanted to try something else after having made carrot rolls for so many times, and I was actually quite happy with the result, as parsnip also goes very well indeed in spelt rolls.

This recipe makes about 6 rolls.

1 parsnip

1 tbsp dry yeast

150 ml lukewarm water

6 dl spelt flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

Poppy seeds

Peel and grate the parsnip.

Mix the dry yeast with the lukewarm water and add the grated parsnip to it.

Mix the dry ingredients: spelt flour, salt and sugar.

Then add the parsnip mix to the flour and knead.

Pour the olive oil on the top and knead a bit longer.

Let the dough rise in a warm place for about one hour.

Shape rolls from the dough and let them rest on a baking tray under a teatowel for further 30 minutes.

Brush the rolls with water and sprinkle poppy seeds on the top.

Bake them at 220C for about 15 minutes until they are fully baked.

Let them cool a bit and then enjoy with butter and/or cheese.

Your VegHog

Garlic knots

It has been raining and raining and raining... A severe weather warning is a good excuse to stay in and bake and cook! I'm lucky enough to do just that this week, only going to the grocery store is the unpleasant bit. Today I'm sticking to the basics, but very tasty basics at that matter!

These garlic knots are a great side to pasta dishes, soups, stews and salads. I got the idea for them in the beautiful cookbook The Forest Feast (p. 28-29) by Erin Gleeson. I think that this book is a great purchase because of the photos and artwork alone, but the recipes are mouth watering as well. All the ones I've tried so far, have also been quite simple, which is nice.

Here is how I made the garlic knots:

Spelt pizza dough (recipe here)

2 tbsp butter

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp parsley

Roll the pizza dough into a long thin rod and tie knots from the pieces of the rod.

Bake the knots in the oven at 200C for about 15-20 minutes.

Heat the butter and finely chopped garlic in a frying pan.

Turn the knots in the pan for a couple of minutes, sprinkle some parsley on them and serve.

Your VegHog

Sun-dried tomato spelt bread

I was so excited when I had the idea of making sun-dried tomato bread. Only later, during the baking I realised that I have made a similar one before. I posted it here and used a recipe from the Great British Chefs page. Today's bread however was a quick and spontaneous one and I didn't consult that recipe before. Once again, this bread is baked with spelt flour. As I have so many tomatoes, I decided to add one fresh one as well, maybe to add just some colour.

Ingredients to make one loaf

1 tomato

4-6 sun-dried tomatoes

1 tbsp dry yeast

150 ml lukewarm water

6 dl spelt flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

Poppy seeds for the top

Method

Peel the fresh tomato by dipping it to boiling water for a couple of seconds. Then the peel comes off well. Crush the tomato to the lukewarm water.

Chop the sun-dried tomatoes finely and add them to the water. Also add the dry yeast to this mix. Leave them in the water for a couple of minutes while you measure the other ingredients.

Mix the flour and salt. Add the tomato and water mix and olive oil. Knead the dough and let it rise for about one hour.

Shape a loaf of the dough and place it to a bread tin. Let it rise for further 30 minutes.

Then bake at 220C for about 25 minutes.

Enjoy it quite fresh, as then it's at its nicest.

Your VegHog

Homemade naan bread

The other day when I was determined to make aloo gobi curry and had already started cooking, I noticed that I hadn't bought naan bread. I find that naan bread is the best side dish to aloo gobi. Then I remembered for having recently read Felicity Cloake's Guardian article How to make the perfect naan bread, and indeed that saved the day! 

It turns out that you don't necessarily need a tandoor to make naan bread. You can make it on a dry very hot pan at home. 

I followed the recipe in the article pretty closely, only instead of 300g strong white bread flour I used 150g wheat flour + 150g spelt flour. Were these possibly the first spelt naans ever? Anyway, they turned out very nice and went perfectly with my curry. There was even this distinct naan taste – a success!

If you like making curries, I would urge you to try making these naan breads as well. Do any of you already have experiences of naan making?

Your VegHog