Sunday, May 17, 2009

SUNFLOWER AND HONEY FLOWERPOT BREAD


It is the first National Family Week 25th to the 31st May 2009 here in the UK and by visiting the website you will find lots of family activities taking place across the country.

Children will love this flowerpot bread I've made to celebrate this week. Making bread with little ones, is a great rainy day activity, (obviously, you will need to use the traditional method). It has to be said, using a bread machine couldn't be classed as 'fun'.

The bread is a mixture of white and malted brown bread flower, sweetened with honey and decorated with sunflower seeds (I wouldn't use the sunflower seeds as decoration for very small children but use something like oat flakes).

I made Feta, Tomato and Rosemary Flowerpot bread last time and you can see the recipe here.

There is a problem using flowerpots for bread making, and that is, the cooked bread can stick to them, making removal of the bread difficult. Last time I lined the pots with parchment which made the bread easy to remove. Unfortunately, the parchment paper stops the bread from crisping.

This time round, I decided to put discs of parchment paper in the base of the pots and greased the inside really well with butter. When cooked, if you tip the pots upside down, the bread is well and truly stuck - so, a palette knife carefully put between the bread and pot, just about manages to remove the bread in one piece!

I've now decided to do some research on the net about using flower pots, and it seems that you need to season them first to stop the bread sticking. If you click here you can see how it's done.

I halved the quantities stated in the recipe, which came from Delicious Magazine, and made enough dough to fill six flowerpots. The dough was made in the bread maker, less liquid is needed if you use this method.

There is nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread and these little flowerpots had a wonderful crisp top, soft within and scented with honey.

No comments:

Post a Comment