Quick and Easy Bread

I made this fabulous bread in the weekend that I adapted from a Julie Biuso recipe that I cut out of Taste magazine a while ago. It is a really easy bread to make, as all you do is mix the ingredients together, pop into your loaf tin and bake – no rising, kneading or waiting. It’s kind of similar to soda bread, but nicer as it has that yeasty taste to it rather than a soda taste. We ate a few slices warm with butter when it came out of the oven, had some more as mouse traps on Sunday for lunch and I sliced and froze the rest.

For those of you that don’t know what mouse traps are, I guess the best way to describe them is that they are a bit like cheese toasties or even welsh rarebit. I make them by mixing together grated cheese, an egg, my secret ingredient of a good spoonful of wholegrain mustard and then bits and pieces that may be in the fridge – chopped ham, tomato, red pepper, chopped herbs, crushed pineapple – pretty much whatever. On Sunday I used roasted red pepper and corn. Very yummy!

Last night for dinner I made the yummiest pork meatballs. I added fresh breadcrumbs, grated fresh ginger, hoisin sauce and chopped coriander to pork mince, seasoned, rolled into balls and oven baked for 12 minutes. We had these with extra hoisin on the side, brown rice and bok choy stir fried with garlic, ginger and oyster sauce – one of my favourite kinds of meals.

Grainy Bread (adapted from Julie Biuso recipe in Taste)

2 tsp dried fast active dried yeast
½ tsp raw sugar
425ml warm water
3 tbsp each rye flakes, linseed and wheatgerm
1 tsp salt
1 c plain flour
2 c wholemeal flour
1 egg, lightly beaten

• Combine yeast, sugar and water and set aside
• Combine remaining dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre, pour in the egg and then the yeast mixture
• Stir with a wooden spoon to combine – the mixture will be porridge like
• Pour into greased loaf tin and bake 50-60 minutes at 200c until the loaf is crusty and sounds holoow when tapped on the bottom.
• Cool on rack