Annie's Seasoned Salt

Most people enjoy salty food, and sprinkle it generously over their chips, popcorn, fried tomatoes, etc.  Unless you have, or are susceptible to high blood pressure, there's not much to say against this habit, however, adding a few herbs and spices brings salt into an entirely different realm of condiment.  There is also a school of thought that reckons herbs and spices have properties that enhance your gut health (as well as tasting delicious) and can be included in our quest to eat a widely varied diet, which is often no mean feat on a small boat with ditto income.  Anyway, I recommend that instead of buying seasoned salt, you make your own.  It's a lot cheaper, for a start.

This recipe is for a modest amount because some of the ingredients are susceptible to damp and tend to absorb moisture and go hard.

7 tbsp salt 

1 tbsp dried, minced garlic 

1 tbsp ground black pepper 

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp ground cumin 

1 tbsp oregano 

2 tbsp celery salt or 1 tbsp celery seed 

1 tsp dried chilli flakes or 1/2 tsp cayenne

Note:

• For a finer mix, you can put everything into a spice grinder, if you have one.  In which case, you can use whole peppercorns and cumin seeds, which will make an even better seasoning!  Mix it up in another bowl and then grind a tablespoon or so at a time.

Basic bread

In case you haven't read the Page about Bread, I’d better introduce you to the oddly-called Vital Wheat Gluten (vwg). This works as a bread improver, particularly with wholemeal flour. Apparently the insistence on kneading one’s bread for a long time is to ‛activate’ the gluten, which takes longer in whole flour than in white. If you add 1 tbsp vwg to 1 cup flour, it makes the dough more ‛stretchy’. I have vwg on board for making seitan, which we’ll explore a lot more thoroughly on another page, so have started adding it. It does make a difference, but it is far from necessary. Thus in the following recipes it will be shown as optional.

It’s worth noting, before going any further, that if the ambient temperature is over 25°C (about 80°F), you can use water straight from the tap – or the sea. This helps reduce one possible cause for your bread not rising properly.

Incidentally, flour varies in how much water it will absorb, so you can’t really make any hard and fast rules here. However, I’ve never found that the amount in this recipe is too much. It’s really quite messy and unpleasant to have to add more water to the dough once you’ve started mixing it by hand.

I find the best way of ensuring the water is the correct temperature, when the ambient temperature is below 20°C, is to boil ¾ cup water and mix it with ¾ from the pump

3 cups wholewheat flour 

1 tsp salt 

1 tbsp instant dried yeast 

1½ cups warm water, at no more than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

3 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Put half the flour (and the vwg) into a large bowl. Add the salt (sweetener) and dried yeast and mix. Add the water and mix everything together into a smooth batter.

• Gradually add the rest of the flour, half a cup at a time. Before it’s all incorporated, you’ll have to abandon your mixing tool and get down to it with your hands. After a few minutes, you should have pleasantly yielding dough that isn’t particularly sticky. If it is, or you can’t roll it easily into a ball, add a little more flour.

• Once it comes away cleanly from the side of the bowl, gather it all together in a ball, flatten it out and roll it into a sausage. Put this into a well-greased (or oiled) ‘2 lb’ loaf tin. Flatten it down and leave it to rise until it’s about 25 mm (1 inch) above the sides of the tin.

• The dough is susceptible to cool draughts and I reckon that the best way to protect it’s to put your mixing bowl over the dough, if it’s large enough or put it in the oven. (I used to put it in a large, polythene bag: if you have one, it might be worth saving just for this purpose.) When your loaf has risen above the tin and is nicely domed, light the oven and cook it at a Moderate heat for about 40 minutes.

• Shake the loaf out of the tin and rap the base with your knuckles. It should (as they say in all the best cookery books) sound hollow. Equally to the point, it should be an appetisingly brown colour and smell delicious.

• Put it on a wire rack and try to leave it for at least 20 minutes before slicing it: warm bread doesn’t cut very easily. Usually, however, at least the crust gets cut off not long after it comes out of the oven!

Additional tips: if the bread doesn’t rise it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either the yeast has gone stale or the water was too hot. Made with cold water, bread will eventually rise, but if the water is too hot you will kill the yeast, so err on the side of coolth.

In cold places, put your loaf in a sunny spot or cuddle it up with a hot water bottle. Alternatively, put it in the oven and use a small oil lamp or pilot light to keep it warm.

Use 1½ cups seawater instead of fresh water and salt. This will not make the loaf too salty.

If you have plenty of time, you can get an even better-textured loaf by mixing in two-thirds of the flour and then leaving the batter to rise for about 20 minutes. This is also a good way of ensuring that your yeast is OK, if you have any doubts. (If the batter doesn’t start to rise, add new yeast.)

‛2 lb’ loaf tins vary in size. If your loaf seems a little undersized, use 4 cups flour (4 tbsp vwg) and 2 cups of water. The other ingredients can stay the same.

The Perfect Ovenless Loaf

For years, I tried to create perfect frying pan bread. It had to be easy to make, not too fuel-hungry, with a proper crust and of a shape that can be cut into suitable slices for toast or sandwiches. Finally, after more than a quarter of a century of experimenting, I discovered how to make the perfect, ovenless loaf.

To make this paragon of loaves, you need the following:

• a frying pan  
• a ‘1 lb’ loaf tin 
• a stainless steel bowl that will fit over the loaf tin 
• a trivet

The frying pan has to be heavy or else it will warp, and a simple cast-iron or alloy frying pan is the best for this. If your frying pan has a laminated base, experiment carefully to ensure that ‘dry frying’ won’t damage it.

If you don’t have a deep stainless steel bowl, buy one. You’ll find it endlessly useful – for making the bread dough, if nothing else.

The trivet can be the one that came with your pressure cooker. If you don’t have one, use half a dozen large nuts (as in nuts and bolts!) to keep the loaf tin away from the frying pan.

For the ovenless loaf, you need about two-thirds of the Basic Bread recipe, ie

2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Make the dough, following the instructions for basic bread, and then put it into a standard, greased, ‘1 lb’ loaf tin. 
• Put the trivet in the frying pan and stand the loaf tin on it. Cover the whole lot with your bowl and let the bread rise.  
• When it’s ready to cook, put the frying pan over a moderate heat and cook for 45 minutes. If you smell burning, reduce the heat, if you can’t smell baking bread, increase it. 
• After the requisite time, turn out the heat and remove the bowl. Leave the loaf to stand for a few minutes and then shake it out of the tin.

That’s all there is to it! And I think you’ll find that it never lets you down, as long as your yeast is fresh and your water isn’t too hot. And of course, the paragon of seagoing loaves, will be made with sea water.

Sadly, I have to add on caveat. My Origo, alcohol cooker doesn’t seem to provide enough heat for this to cook properly.

Therefore I have written a post on the Acceptable Ovenless Loaf for those of us who can't achieve perfection.

Longevity bread

 

If you haven’t made bread before, please read the recipe for Basic Bread, which goes into more detail about temperatures, rising, etc.  If you don't have an oven, follow the directions for: The Perfect Ovenless Loaf

I call this ‘Longevity Bread’, because it has so many good things in it that you should live forever! I reckon that all whole grain bread is good bread, but this has extra goodies, which the pundits would have you believe are health enhancing. There’s every chance, of course, that none of the ingredients actually do make any difference to your health, or risk of cancer, or whatever, but as they won’t do you any harm and because the end result tastes very good, this is a recipe that I use a lot. As you must have access to the Internet to be reading this, I’ll let you look up all the health benefits of the ingredients yourself.

The extras are: pumpkin seeds sunflower seeds, flax seeds (linseed), black and white sesame seeds and hemp seeds. I make up a large batch at a time in the proportion of 2:2:1:1:1:1.

2 cups wholewheat flour 

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten 

1 tbsp instant dried yeast 

1 tsp salt 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

½ cup of mixed seeds 

• 1½ cups water no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 
  

• Put 1 cup of flour (and the vwg) into a bowl, yeast, (sweetener) and salt. 
• Add the seeds and mix everything together. 
• Add the water and stir well until you have a smooth batter. 
• If you have plenty of time, allow this batter to rise for 20 minutes or so. This seems to lead to slightly better-textured bread. 
• Gradually add the rest of the flour, half a cup at a time. Before it’s all incorporated, you’ll have to abandon your mixing tool and get down to it with your hands. After a few minutes, you should have pleasantly yielding dough that isn’t particularly sticky. If it is, or you can’t roll it easily into a ball, add a little more flour. 
• Make a ball of the dough, flatten it out and roll it into a ‘sausage’. Put it in a greased ‘2 lb’ loaf tin and smooth it down. Cover and leave to rise. 
• Let the dough rise in a warm place for as long as is required. It should have doubled in size and be above the sides of the loaf tin when fully risen. 
• Bake in a Moderate oven for 30 to 40 minutes. When you take the loaf out of the tin, it should ‘sound hollow’ when you rap it with your knuckles. 
• Put it on a wire rack to cool. 

Variations:

• Use seawater instead of fresh water and salt. 
• Alter the seed mix to suit your own preferences. 
• Add coarsely chopped nuts. Hazelnuts are particularly good; walnuts are a bit dominating; Brazil nuts will give you your selenium allowance, which is something that is deficient in a lot of soils and therefore diets.

Cheese bread

 

The following is a lovely, crusty bread recipe, which tastes delicious and goes very well with soup or salad. I suggest making a smaller loaf than usual – ‘1 lb’ – because you will probably eat most of it at one sitting, although the fat from the cheese means that the loaf should keep well.

If you’ve never made bread before, please read the recipe for Basic Bread, before making this one. If you don’t have an oven, follow the directions for The Perfect Ovenless Loaf.

2 cups wholewheat flour 

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

2 tbsp olive oil 

½ tsp honey/sugar 

1 cup lukewarm water 

¾ cup grated cheese

• Put half the flour and the vwg) into a large bowl. Add the salt, dried yeast (sweetener) and olive oil. Stir in the water. Mix them together into a smooth batter. 
• Add the cheese. 
• Gradually add the rest of the flour and knead the dough for a few minutes. Roll it into a sausage and put this into a well-greased (or oiled) ‘1 lb’ loaf tin. Flatten it down and cover. 
• Leave the bread to rise until it’s about 25 mm (1 inch) above the sides of the tin. 
• When your loaf is ready to cook, light the oven and cook it at a Moderate heat for about 30 minutes.
  

To enjoy this loaf’s flavour at its best, eat it warm. 

Variations:

• Use seawater instead of fresh water and salt. 
• If you have an oven, you can also use this dough to make up to 8 individual rolls.
  

Herb bread

The following is a simple bread recipe, which tastes delicious and goes very well with soups such as mushroom or leek. I suggest making a smaller loaf than usual – ‘1 lb’ – because you will probably eat most of it at one sitting. If you’ve never made bread before, please read the recipe for Basic Bread, before making this one. If you don’t have an oven, follow the directions for The Perfect Ovenless Loaf.

You can use fresh garlic, if you prefer, but the flavour of the dried seems to permeate the bread more effectively than does fresh.

2 cups wholewheat flour 

2 tbsp vital wheat gluten 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

2 tbsp olive oil 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

1 cup lukewarm water 

1 tsp dried, minced garlic 

1 tbsp Annie’s Mixed Herbs

  

• Put half the flour (and the vwg) into a large bowl. Add the salt, dried yeast, (sweetener) and olive oil. Stir in the water. Mix them together into a smooth batter. 
• Add the garlic and herbs. 
• Gradually add the rest of the flour and knead the dough for a few minutes. Roll it into a sausage and put this into a well-greased (or oiled) ‘1 lb’ loaf tin. Flatten it down and cover it. 
• Leave the bread to rise until it’s about 25 mm (1 inch) above the sides of the tin. 
• When your loaf is ready to cook, light the oven and cook it at a Moderate heat for about 30 minutes.
  

To enjoy this loaf’s flavour at its best, eat it warm. 

Variations:

• Use seawater instead of fresh water and salt. 
• If you have an oven, you can also use this dough to make up to 8 individual rolls.