Egyptian Mahlab Bread #BreadBakers

Puffy and crispy yet chewy around the edges, this Egyptian mahlab bread is sprinkled with kalongi aka nigella seeds for flavor and decoration. 

First, I have to tell you that this bread doesn’t actually contain mahlab. I haven't even been able to figure out why this particular kind of bread is called mahlab. It has nothing to do with cherries or the spice made from the kernel in their pits. 

Suffice to say that it is Egyptian so it fits this month’s Bread Bakers theme of Mediterranean breads and that’s gonna have to be good enough for me right now. If someone has more info, please let me know. 

Egyptian Mahlab Bread

This recipe is adapted from several I found online. It makes 8 mahlab breads. For some reason, they all didn’t puff up but even the flatter ones were still delicious. 

Ingredients

For the bread dough:

1/2 cup or 120ml warm water

3/4 teaspoon dry yeast

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 1/2 cups or 187.5g flour

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

For the egg wash:

1 egg whisked with 1 tablespoon milk

For flavor and decoration: 

Kalongi aka nigella seeds

Method

In your mixing bowl, mix the warm water with the yeast and sugar. Set aside for a few minutes to make sure your yeast is active. It should start to foam up.

In a separate bowl, whisk together your flour and salt. 

Add the flour and salt to the warm water/yeast bowl a little at a time and stir well until you form a soft smooth dough. I have a Danish whisk that is perfect for this job. 

Knead the dough by hand for several turns then form it into a ball. Place it in an oiled bowl and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in size. 

As you can see from this photo, I let mine over prove but no harm, no foul. Life got in the way. Just punch it down and carry on. 

Divide the dough into eight equal pieces. Mine each weighed about 38g.

Use a cupped hand to roll them into balls against the countertop. 

Roll out the balls to a 1/4 inch or 6mm thickness, brush the tops with the egg wash.

Sprinkle the seeds on top.

Let the little dough circles rest for about 10-15 minutes while you preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. They will rise again slightly. 

Place the pan in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the bottoms are nicely browned.

Remove from the oven. If you'd like the bread crunchier, leave it to cool completely. 

Enjoy!

As mentioned above, it’s Bread Baker time! Yep, it's the second Tuesday of this new year (and month) and that means it’s time for my Bread Bakers to share their recipes. My daughter Cecilie chose the theme of Mediterranean bread and I was grateful since my brain wasn’t working so great. Fortunately, a lot of my fellow bread bakers are more organized than I am. Check out all their links below:

• Bazluma from Magical Ingredients
• Cheese Fatayer from Sneha's Recipe
• Egyptian Mahlab Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Halloumi Cheese, Olive, and Mint Bread from Cook with Renu
• Ka'ak Asfar from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Olive Oil Blueberry Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pita from Passion Kneaded
• Scones with Za'atar and Feta from Palatable Pastime
• Sourdough Man'oushe (Za'atar Flatbread) from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Vasilopita from A Messy Kitchen

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Egyptian Mahlab Bread! 

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Anchovy Deviled Eggs

Filled with salty minced anchovies, lemon zest, mayo and Dijon mustard, these tasty anchovy deviled eggs will disappear quickly from your party table.

Every Christmas Eve our menu is all appetizers, a throwback to the days when we had plenty of presents to wrap and so no one had time for a sit down dinner. 

We pop open a bottle of Champagne and fill our small plates with artichoke dip, smoked or cured salmon with avocado, caviar with its necessary accompaniments of chopped egg and onion, bacon wrapped smoked oysters and, of course, deviled eggs. The cheeseboard also boasts a variety of cheeses and duck liver pâté.  

On Christmas morning, we usually make something special for breakfast but my favorite part is the leftover deviled eggs. They make a perfect Christmas morning meal! 

Anchovy Deviled Eggs

This recipe is adapted from one I read in The Guardian newspaper and saved almost three years ago. I can’t say that they’ll replace my classic deviled eggs which I adore but the anchovies and lemon zest add a lot of flavor. In short, we liked them a lot!

Ingredients for 14 deviled eggs

7 eggs, hard-boiled

7 anchovy fillets, packed in olive oil

1 tablespoon olive oil from anchovy jar

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika, plus an extra sprinkle for garnish

7 tablespoons mayonnaise

Green onions, finely chopped, for garnish

Cornichons or small pickled onions, optional to serve

Method

Using a sharp knife, mince the anchovies very finely. 

Put the anchovies in a bowl with the oil then add the lemon zest, mustard, paprika and mayonnaise and mix until smooth. 

Peel your hard-boiled eggs and cut them in half lengthways. Scoop out the yolks and add them to the anchovy mixture.

Mash them into the rest of the filling with the tines of a fork. Mix well. 

Spoon the filling into each egg white or use a piping bag with a large tip to fill them. If your filling is quite chunky, it might keep getting stuck if the tip hole isn’t large enough. 

Decorate with a light sprinkle of paprika and a few bits of green onion.

Serve chilled or at room temperature with a few cornichons and/or pickled onions, if desired.

Pour your favorite tipple to accompany this excellent appetizer and enjoy! 

Happy New Year!

Last year was extra busy (and frankly a bit fraught) so my blog was fairly neglected. This is a creative outlet that gives me a lot of pleasure, from recipe development, baking and cooking, and then finally writing about the process. I hope to find more time for this hobby I enjoy in 2024. To that end, I am joining my fellow bloggers every other week, to create recipes and work our way through the alphabet, starting with, of course, A. 

Many thanks to the group creator and lead, Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out all the A links below. 

• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Almond Chicken 
• Palatable Pastime: Angel Food Cake 
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Apple Buns 
• Culinary Cam: A Reclaimed Æbleskiver Pan + Æbleskiver Bread Pudding 
• Blogghetti: Air Fryer Glazed Chocolate Apple Hand Pies 
• Food Lust People Love: Anchovy Deviled Eggs 
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Amaranth Paratha 
• Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice: Dried Apple & Bourbon Oven-Baked Sauerkraut 
• Jolene’s Recipe Journal: Spiced Apple Oatmeal 
• Sneha’s Recipe: Afghani Soya Chaap

Pin these Anchovy Deviled Eggs! 

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Classic Gingerbread Muffins #MuffinMonday

Cinnamon, ginger, cloves and molasses give these classic gingerbread muffins their traditional flavor. Tender and light, they make a perfect snack or breakfast.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! 

This month’s Muffin Monday snuck up on me! I was certain that there was one more Monday next week still in December. When I realized I was wrong, I knew immediately that I wanted to make gingerbread muffins. I love the wonderful aroma when gingerbread is baking. It smells like Christmas to me. 

Classic Gingerbread Muffins

This recipe makes 15 regular sized muffins. If you don't have a nine cup muffin pan, I suggest you use a 12-cup and a six cup. Simply add a half cup of water to the empty cups when baking to keep the heat distribution even. 

Ingredients

2 ½ cups or 313g all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup or 113g unsalted butter, softened

½ cup or 100g white sugar

1 large egg

1 cup or 240ml unsulphured molasses (not blackstrap)

1 cup or 240ml hot water

Optional for serving: a sprinkle of icing sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare 9-cup and 6-cup muffin pans by greasing them or lining them with paper muffin cups. 

Whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt in a large bowl.

In another mixing bowl, whisk the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the egg and whisk again. 

Whisk in the molasses until smooth and homogeneous.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold until almost completely combined. 

There may still be a little flour showing. Whisk in the hot water until smooth.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups in your prepared pans. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Insert a toothpick in the center of a muffin at 20 minutes; it should come out clean. If not, cook for a few additional minutes.

Allow the gingerbread muffins to cool before serving. 

Sprinkle with a little icing sugar, if desired, to serve.

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the last Muffin Monday for 2023! Check out the links below:

• Buttermilk Herb and Fontina Cheese Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Classic Gingerbread Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Honey Yogurt Muffins from Palatable Pastime

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Classic Gingerbread Muffins!

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Rough Puff Pain au Chocolat #BreadBakers

These rough puff pain au chocolat beauties are so much easier than regular puff pastry but still have the requisite flaky layers we all love so much.

When our host for this month’s Bread Baker event chose laminated dough as our theme, I really hoped to have time to make actual puff pastry. It’s something my son-in-law used to make and, in true Dai fashion, he made it look easy. I know it wasn't!

Time got away from me, as it does to most of us this time of year so I resorted to rough puff yeast dough. No regrets though. It was delicious. 

Rough Puff Pain au Chocolat

If you have access to the special chocolate batons that French bakeries use instead of chocolate bars, by all means, use them. As you can see from the photos, the chocolate does melt out somewhat but my taste testers all agreed that there was still plenty of big chocolate flavor from the dark 70 percent cocoa.

This recipe was adapted from one on Baking a Moment. 

Ingredients for 10

For the rough puff dough:

2 2/3 cups or 333g flour

1/4 cup or 50g sugar

2 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup + 1/3 cup or 188g unsalted butter, cold

2/3 cup or 160ml milk, (add up to 2 – 3 tablespoons more if needed)

For the egg wash:

1 large egg beaten with a teaspoon or two of water

For the filling: 

4 3/4 oz or 135g good quality chocolate (I used Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate. Bought 2 bars, used about 1 1/3.)

Method

Place the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in a large bowl and whisk together until combined. 

Slice the butter into 1/8-inch or 1/3 cm thick slices and toss in the flour mixture to coat.

Add the milk and stir together until a shaggy dough forms. 

If you still have too much dry flour showing, add the extra tablespoons of milk, one at a time, mixing well in between. 

Wrap the dough tightly in cling film and chill for at least 1 hour. This can also be an overnight rest without any problems. 

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a wide rectangle.

Fold it into thirds (like a letter), turn 90 degrees, and roll the dough out again. 

Repeat 4 to 6 more times, folding and rolling, until the dough has large streaks of butter in it but it is smooth and flat. If your kitchen is warm, chill the dough folded and wrapped in the refrigerator or freezer until stiff, before rolling out again. 

Wrap tightly and chill for 1 more hour, then roll it out to a rough square shape about 12 inches or 30cm wide.

Trim off any uneven edges. (Bake these rolled in cinnamon sugar for an easy treat.)

 Cut the dough into 10 rectangles (about 5x3 inches or 13x7.5cm.) I have a very hard time cutting things evenly when you can't cut halves then halves again but it's easy if you fold the two sides in and leave an equal part in the middle. 

Simply cut that middle piece out, then cut the other two pieces on the fold lines. Voilá, five reasonably even pieces! 

Cut your chocolate bars into short lengths and line a large baking pan with parchment. 

Place one piece of chocolate near the short end of each rectangle. Place another piece of chocolate about 1 1/2-inches from the other short end of the rectangle.

Roll the dough up around the chocolate pieces. Place the pain au chocolat seam side down in your prepared pan.

Cover them loosely with cling film and put the pan in a warm place. Prove until doubled in size. Alternatively, you can prove them overnight in the refrigerator then allow them time to rise at room temperature before baking the next day.

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C and gently brush the pain au chocolate with the egg wash.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until puffed, golden brown, and flaky.

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Baker time! Today we are sharing baked goods made with laminated dough. Check out the treats below! Many thanks to our host Kelly from Passion Kneaded.

• Cranberry Brie Appetizer Pinwheels from A Messy Kitchen
• Croissant Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Herbed Cheese Scrolls from Sneha's Recipes
• Kakaós Csiga from Passion Kneaded
• Rough Puff Pain au Chocolat from Food Lust People Love

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin these Rough Puff Pain au Chocolat! 

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