FOOD | Soda bread with pesto & olives
I'm not much of a cook (in all honesty our monthly cooking ratio with Justin is probably 30:1 and even then that only happens when the month actually has got those 31 days). Now the new year, new me thing has hit me (not extraordinarily hard, but hard enough to attempt some life standard improvement) and I decided to start testing my cooking abilities yet again - you can see my first documented recipe here (a kale and bacon salad, nomz). This weekend I felt surprisingly brave so I tried baking soda bread with pesto & olives - and you know? It was flippin' delicious!
I found the recipe in my favourite cookbook - it's called Step-by-Step Book's Encyclopedia (bought in it Asda for a fiver almost a year ago - now I can only find it on E-bay here for £21 - although the RRP is £25 so still a decent deal I guess, erm). If you're a beginner then I can't recommend this book enough - it's got fairly simple recipes (you don't have to go out and buy 5234534 ingredients you wouldn't otherwise need), they show you every single step in a photograph and although it's not specifically called a budget recipe book, it's definitely at least pocket friendly.
So what do you need for this ah-mazing soda bread?
250 g plain flour
250 g strong bread flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp pesto
300 ml buttermilk
55g pitted olives
olive oil
milk
Preheat the over to 200ºC. Mix flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Mix pesto and buttermilk together and add into the original mix together with olives. Add water if needed (now this is where I made a mistake - add lukewarm water, not bloody cold otherwise it'll create a sloppy layer inside of your loaf). Shape the dough into a ball and then squash it into a super thick pancake. Make a deep cross cut with a knife across the loaf. Brush with milk and bake on a baking paper greased with olive oil for 30 minutes. Voila - you're a fuckin' baker!!
Seriously, so easy and you can eat it with soft cheese or just on its own because the pesto and olives give it a nice taste anyways.
Have you tried baking bread before? If so, what your favourite bread recipe?
If you'd like to see more of my cooking efforts don't forget to follow me on Instagram (@cityscapebliss) - the land of pretty pictures of food, cats and sunsets.
I found the recipe in my favourite cookbook - it's called Step-by-Step Book's Encyclopedia (bought in it Asda for a fiver almost a year ago - now I can only find it on E-bay here for £21 - although the RRP is £25 so still a decent deal I guess, erm). If you're a beginner then I can't recommend this book enough - it's got fairly simple recipes (you don't have to go out and buy 5234534 ingredients you wouldn't otherwise need), they show you every single step in a photograph and although it's not specifically called a budget recipe book, it's definitely at least pocket friendly.
So what do you need for this ah-mazing soda bread?
250 g plain flour
250 g strong bread flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp pesto
300 ml buttermilk
55g pitted olives
olive oil
milk
Preheat the over to 200ºC. Mix flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Mix pesto and buttermilk together and add into the original mix together with olives. Add water if needed (now this is where I made a mistake - add lukewarm water, not bloody cold otherwise it'll create a sloppy layer inside of your loaf). Shape the dough into a ball and then squash it into a super thick pancake. Make a deep cross cut with a knife across the loaf. Brush with milk and bake on a baking paper greased with olive oil for 30 minutes. Voila - you're a fuckin' baker!!
Seriously, so easy and you can eat it with soft cheese or just on its own because the pesto and olives give it a nice taste anyways.
Have you tried baking bread before? If so, what your favourite bread recipe?
If you'd like to see more of my cooking efforts don't forget to follow me on Instagram (@cityscapebliss) - the land of pretty pictures of food, cats and sunsets.
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