Breadsticks and the Bready Steady Go! July Linky

I'm delighted to be hosting Bready, Steady, Go again this month.  My co-creator Jen hosted last month and there were some delicious entries.  It's great to see so many people enjoying the process of baking their own bread.  It tastes so much better than a shop bought loaf and you can vary the recipe to suit your own preferences.  All 3 of my girls know how to bake a basic loaf, and a couple of fancier ones, and it is such a useful skill for them to have mastered.

I baked these breadsticks on a Sunday afternoon, thinking they could be used for packed lunches or snacks during the week.  How wrong I was! They were devoured in less than 15 minutes.  I managed to keep my family from eating them long enough to take photos but once I had a decent shot or two they were devouring them at great speed.

I used some brown bread flour to add a little more flavour and texture to the breadsticks but you can use just white bread flour if you prefer, just decrease the water to 300ml.  I served the sweet breadsticks with some Berry Yoghurt Dip.

Breadsticks

350g strong white bread flour 

150g strong brown bread flour

7g sachet instant yeast

1 Tblsp sugar 

2 tsp salt

320ml lukewarm water

50ml oil

Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a big bowl. Mix the water and oil together then add to the dry ingredients and until a soft dough forms. Turn out onto a lightly floured and knead for 10 minutes (or use the dough hook attachment on your mixer).

Lightly grease the mixing bowl with some oil. Put the dough into the bowl and cover with clingfilm. Leave until doubled in size. Knock back the dough by gently kneading for a minute or two. Leave the dough to rise again if you haven't time to shape and bake it. I did this as I was stuck under a sleeping baby so one of my older children knocked the dough back and covered the bowl again so the dough could rise a second time.

Divide the dough into quarters. Pinch off small amounts of dough and roll them into sticks. I was able to get approximately 60 breadsticks from the dough. Put the shaped breadsticks onto lined oven trays and leave to prove for 15 minutes before baking.

Should you wish to flavour the breadsticks, either knead herbs or additions in before shaping or brush the breadsticks with melted butter and sprinkle over toppings. I sprinkled cinnamon sugar over half of the breadsticks then the other half were a mixture of freshly ground pepper and grated Parmesan. 

Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas Mark 4. Bake the breadsticks for 12-18 minutes, until golden and crisp. Cool on wire racks.

Challenge Guidelines

Bready Steady Go! will run from 1st until the 28th of each month and then a round up will be posted by the hosting blog at the end of the month.

You can link up any bread recipe, sometimes we may also run themed challenges, and feel free to join in with other challenges if your post also meets their guidelines. If you really love baking bread then you can add multiple entries up to a maximum of 3 per blog each month.

Please link back to Jen’s Food and Utterly Scrummy Food For Families and include the badge to help spread the word.

We’d prefer to see entries from new blog posts where possible but you can also add old posts if you add the badge and link back to our blogs as well.

You can tweet your entries to @JensFood and @UtterlyScrummy using the hashtag #breadysteadygo and we will retweet all that we see.

All entries will also pinned to our new Pinterest board as they come in.

If you make a recipe from a book/magazine/website etc please respect copyright and do not reproduce the recipe verbatim. Instead of copying out the recipe from the book, describe it in your own words and if it’s from an online source please link to the original content rather than copying full recipe.

So what are you waiting for?! Bready, Steady, Go bake some bread!

An InLinkz Link-up

7 comments Basics, Bread, Party, Snacks

OUR FAMILY MEAL PLAN FOR WEEK OF 19/02/18 - £60

Last week was Half Term Week and we largely stuck to our Meal Plan, although there were a couple of deviations, the meals we made used what we had so there were no extra expenses due to the change of plans. My daughters wanted Tacos for lunch instead of the soup I'd planned and they were delicious. We ended up having the soup, which I had made and frozen, for lunch today instead of Twice Baked Potatoes because we needed something quick and easy.

We've got bread flour, yeast, and other baking ingredients leftover from last week, along with some cheese and a few vegetables so those aren't on our shopping list this week.  

It's back to school this week and back to quick breakfasts and packed lunches for everyone.  Our breakfasts will be porridge with homemade compote, I'll do overnight oats on the days when my daughters need to leave extra early.  We'll of course have pancakes on the weekend.

Packed lunches will be Mini Picnic Bakes with homemade breadsticks, herbed yoghurt dip, a piece or two of fruit and a baked treat. 

Dinners

Spicy Seven Vegetable Stew - Meatfree Monday

Sausage, Vegetable and Peal Barley Hotpot

Oven Baked Risotto

Lamb Meatballs and Root Vegetable Bake

Macaroni Cheese

Slow Cooker Vegetable Stew – Saturday then as pasties on Sunday

1 cup pearl barley

1 onion, finely diced

2 sticks celery, finely sliced

3 carrots, finely sliced

2 peppers, deseeded and diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp chilli powder

2 tins red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 x 400 g tins chopped tomatoes

2 dried bay leaves

1 litre vegetable stock

Put all the ingredients into a large slow cooker and stir to combine everything. Cover and cook on a low for 7 hours. Serve with steamed greens and wholemeal bread rolls.

Shopping List

35 items: £60.00

Frozen

2x   ASDA Smartprice Mixed Vegetables (1Kg)                           £1.64

1x   ASDA Smartprice Peas (1Kg)                                              76p

1x   ASDA Scratch Cook Whole Leaf Spinach (1.3Kg)                 £1.50

1x   ASDA Frozen for Freshness Berry Medley (1Kg)                  £2.75

Tins, Jars and Cooking

1x   ASDA Chopped Tomatoes with Garlic (400g)                        55p

3x   ASDA Smartprice Chopped Tomatoes (400g)                       87p

2x   ASDA Smartprice Red Kidney Beans in Water (400g)           60p

2x   ASDA Smartprice Sweetcorn in Water (326g)                       70p

2x   KTC Chick Peas in Salted Water (400g)                               80p

1x   ASDA Chopped Tomatoes with Chilli and Peppers (400g)     55p

Dairy and Eggs

5x   ASDA British Whole Milk 4 Pints (2.27L)                              £5.45

3x   ASDA Smartprice Low Fat Natural Yogurt (500g)                  £1.35

1x   ASDA Free Range Mixed Weight Eggs (15)                         £2.00

2x   ASDA Ricotta Cheese (250g)                                               £1.78

2x   ASDA Smartprice Hard Cheese Wedge (170g)                     £3.20

Packets and Cereals

1x   ASDA Arborio Risotto Rice (500g)                                        £1.25

1x   ASDA Good and Balanced Pearl Barley (500g)                     50p

1x   ASDA Scottish Porridge Oats (1Kg)                                     99p

Meat, Fish and Poultry

1x   ASDA Butcher's Selection Lamb Mince (500g)                      £3.39

1x   ASDA Extra Special Pork Sausages (6 per pack - 400g)       £2.25

Fruit and Vegetables

20   ASDA Grower's Selection Bananas by Weight (200g)           £3.00

2x   ASDA Grower's Selection Seedless Red Grapes (500g)        £3.00

1     ASDA Grower's Selection Butternut Squash (1.2Kg)             90p

2x   ASDA Grower's Selection Celery                                          £1.10

2x   ASDA Grower's Selection Courgettes (3)                              £2.40

1x   ASDA Grower's Selection Spring Onions                              49p

2x   ASDA Grower's Selection Apples (1.2Kg)                             £3.00

3x   ASDA Farm Stores Pears (500g)                                         £2.10

1x   ASDA Grower's Selection British Parsnips (500g)                 65p

1x   ASDA Grower's Selection Swede                                         50p

2x   ASDA Farm Stores Brown Onions (1Kg)                               £1.18

1x   ASDA Farm Stores Cherry Tomatoes (250g)                        53p

3x   ASDA Farm Stores Plums (400g)                                         £1.50

3x   ASDA Farm Stores Mixed Peppers (3)                                 £2.97

2x   ASDA Grower's Selection Sweetclems (1.2Kg)                     £3.80

Prices and special offers reflect those of the online grocery website My Supermarket, and are correct as of 18th February 2018.  Prices may vary in different in-store locations.

We purchased our grocery items from Asda this week, had we shopped elsewhere our shopping would've cost:

£69.61 from Tesco

£71.29 from Sainsbury's

£78.71 from Ocado

£79.81 from Waitrose

My lovely blogging buddy Ciara from My Fussy Eater has created a fab Meal Planning Facebook Group so we can inspire each other.

And Katykicker, and Naomi from The Organised Life Project have a Meal Planning Linky full of fabulous Meal Planning posts with lots of tasty ideas.

3 comments Dinners, Lunches, Meal Plan, Meatfree Monday, Slow Cooker

Tips for Cake Stall and School Parties

It's that time of year that all parents surely dread, the last few weeks of the school year.  Kids are tired, weather is unpredictable, there are a myriad of school event that parents feel duty bound to traipse to and the dreaded end of year class parties that demand food contributions.

The primary school that my daughters attend has been holding a cake stall each Friday for the past few weeks.  Each cake stall is run by 1 or 2 classes and the proceeds go to that class.  It is a good idea, however, despite only having 2 daughters in separate classes, I have been asked to bake for at least 4 of the cake stalls.  The reason for this is that my baking sells well, and embarrassingly, people specifically ask which baking is mine before they part with their cash. 

Having organised, baked for and cleaned up after loads of cake stalls and class parties in my time, I thought I would pass on my top tips and pitfalls to watch out for.

Cake stalls

Make sure that you use disposable packaging as much as possible.  It is heartbreaking to receive a beautiful cake for a cake stall that is in a tin with no easy way to remove it without damaging the cake. Returning tins to their rightful owners can b a bit of a mission as well so best put it on a cake board, plastic/cardboard plate or use a disposable foil tray to bake your traybake in.

Keep cake and cookie decorations simple.  Save the Sistine Chapel cake for another occasion.  A bit of glace icing and sprinkles will do fine.  In fact, if you bake the sprinkles in to the cookie dough, you don't even have to decorate them. 

People should be able to eat what they buy with their hands, or carry it out in a bag. Anything that’s gooey, messy or too delicate might get damaged and will be hard to carry.

Avoid using fresh, whipped cream if possible.  In summer it might go off, if the cake is sitting around for a while it may go soggy. Neither are a good look.  Use jam, glace icing, buttercream or ganache instead as they tend to be a little more stable.

Make life a bit easier for the organisers of the cake stall by slicing your cake or bagging up cookies into portions suitable to sell.  Mini loaves, muffins and cupcakes on a disposable plate covered with clingfilm are fab and sell well either individually or by plate.

Have some savoury items as not everyone likes sweet bakes.  Savoury scones, pastry twists and palmiers all go down well with those preferring a savoury nibble.

If possible have some bakes for sale or at parties suitable for those who are coeliac and those who need dairy and egg free options, then nobody feels left out.  Make sure allergy free baking is stored appropriately away from contamination.  Also, if you offer food for consumption or sale and say that it is free from a particular ingredient, make 100% sure that it is, otherwise there could be serious consequences for all concerned.

Class Parties

Ask about parties now, even though it is still a couple of weeks before the end of term. Forewarned is forearmed LOL If you know there will be a party coming up either get a few extra baking ingredients with your grocery shop, or some drinks, crisps, breadsticks, etc that you can send to the party instead of baking/cooking anything.

Puff pastry is your friend, especially if you are told at short notice that you need to provide something edible.  Make sweet or savoury pastry twists, pastry parcels or tarts quickly and easily using a muffin tin and some store bought pastry with store cupboard ingredients.

Mini muffins, cupcakes, cookies always go down well as long as they are small and easy to eat.  Check with staff if children in the class have a nut allergy, or other allergy, just in case your recipes have that ingredient in them. 

If baking anything really does bring you out in a cold sweat, ask if you can provide drinks, fruit or crudites instead.  You could always provide disposable plates, cups, napkins or other items that don't require stepping into a kitchen.

Be prepared! That is my one top tip.  End of year class parties are coming so get some appropriate grocery supplies in if you're not baking, and if you are baking, make sure you have some cookie dough and puff pastry in the freezer so you are not caught out.  You can bet you'll get very little notice.

What are your top tips for cake stalls and class parties?

1 comment Basics, Biscuits, Cakes, Party