After the recent success of my bread baking venture, I thought I would try my hand at making a few more loaves of wheaten bread in celebration of World Bread Day ’06, also an event hosted by kochtopf. Wheaten bread, or brown bread as it’s simply known in some parts of Ireland, is one of my favourite breads. The appeal lies in it’s rustic look and taste, and the ease with which it can be whipped up.

The trouble is, the difference in ingredients between countries has meant that in the past I was never able to whip up a convincing loaf of this bread when in Sydney. Once, due to desperation, a loaf was even secretly smuggled over the border, past the usually sharp eyes of Australian customs officials.

The aim of my baking session today was to try to make a more international-friendly batch of wheaten bread. I used spelt flour because I have seen it being sold in Sydney shops, and tried an alternative to buttermilk because the buttermilk in Sydney is a little different also. The resulting bread is a bit finer in texture but retains the taste of the original.

This recipe is my version of Mother Linda’s, the original of which can be found here.

Wheaten Bread :

3 cups organic spelt flour
1 1/2 cups oatmeal
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g butter
1 egg
1 1/2 cups milk, mixed with 3/4 lemon juiced and left to stand for at least 15 minutes

In a bowl, combine the spelt flour, oatmeal and baking soda. Rub the butter into this mixture. Mix the egg with the soured milk and pour this over the dry ingredients. Stir gently with a fork or wooden spoon to bring the mixture together. Transfer the dough onto a flat tray lined with greaseproof paper. Cut a cross into the top of the dough (but don’t cut all the way through to the bottom of the dough). Bake at 190’C for about 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the loaf comes out clean. Cool, slice thickly and eat toasted or as is, with a topping of your choice.

[13/10/2007 update : Note that a new and improved recipe is now here instead.]

I love cooking with new ingredients. The sense of excitement starts from the moment you bring the item home from the shops and culminates in the final product being pulled out of the oven or off the stove. I still remember the first time I used a real vanilla bean for a batch of vanilla ice-cream, tender saffron threads for a saffron and tomato broth, and blue cheese in a cream of broccoli soup. The last ingredient was particularly memorable because I unknowingly smudged a bit of cheese into the arm of my coat and the smell followed me for the rest of the evening.

My latest new ingredient is organic spelt flour. I spied it a couple of weeks ago in a recipe by Nigel Slater for Damson Spelt Cake. The name alone sounds so positively tea-with-mrs-norris that I couldn’t resist. Nigel says that the benefit of spelt flour is that it “..gives a tender and open crumb to the cake”, but plain flour can be used instead, if spelt proves to be elusive.

It’s getting quite late in the year for plums, so I had difficulty finding Damsons. Instead, I picked up some English Plums and Greengages. The Greengages were fantastic eaten as they were, and the English Plums with their lovely red skin, went into the cake. The following is the original recipe by Nigel Slater.

Damson Spelt Cake :

150g butter
150g unrefined golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
110g spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
75g ground almonds
400g damsons
an extra tbsp of sugar
icing sugar to finish

You will need a square cake tin measuring about 20-22cm across the base. Set the oven at 180’C. Line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. It is easier to do this with an electric mixer, but some prefer the wooden spoon method. Don’t stop until the mixture is almost white. Crack the eggs and beat them gently, then add to the mixture a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each lot.

Mix the flour and baking powder, and add to the ground almonds. Fold into the cake mixture, gently but firmly. If you overmix, the cake will be heavy. Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin with a rubber spatula, then lay the damons on top and shake over the tablespoon of sugar. (The damsons will sink during cooking, leaving one or two peeping through the surface.)

Bake for 45 minutes, covering with tin foil for the last 10 minutes if it looks to be browning too quickly. Remove from the oven, leave to settle down and then, when almost cool, remove from the tin. Dust lightly with icing sugar and serve.

For the longest time, silly me always thought a frangipane tart was one scented with frangipanis. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow the idea got stuck in my head that the essence of little white flowers flavoured the tart, and as a result, I was always disappointed by the lack of discernible floral tones in any slice of frangipane I tasted.

It was when I started learning to cook, that I discovered that frangipane is actually an almond based pastry cream commonly used for filling tarts. One of my favourite fruit additions to such a tart is slices of slow-cooked quince, or a generous scattering of fresh raspberries. Inspired by a cherry scone I ate a couple of days ago, I decided to line the base of this tart, with glace cherries and dried sour cherries : a combination of sticky, juicy and chewy cherries.

For a better fruit : frangipane ratio, I wouldn’t usually make the tart as high as this one, but I found a lovely deep-dishy tin that I wanted to use, amongst B’s mom’s collection of baking things – it had a pattern on the bottom, so I’m guessing it’s actually a cake tin.

We had this tart when it was still warm from the oven, with scoops of vanilla ice-cream, and it was still so good eaten on it’s own, the very next day.