Beautiful Saturday morning, blue sky, big Mount Fuji covered in snow, it could have been a perfect day if only I were not obliged to spend the best of the day stuck inside doing my duty as department secretary. One beautiful day lost is nothing you can make up for. ..
At least to cheer me this morning I baked us pancake to eat with the amazing Canadian mapple butter our friends from Canada, now visiting Japan, brang us. Mapple butter is made with 100% of mapple syrup and has the creamy consistence of honey. I find it’s the perfect spread for breakfast with wholewheat breads or fluffy pancakes. This mirning I made simple vanilla pancakes to go with. Deliciously simple. Thanks Dana & Chris!
What best after a perfect week-end to start a rainy Monday with a good apple and cinnamon cake, a hot chai and some fresh fruits? We’re heading to autumn a its full and slowly evenings are getting dark early and chilly, so I have plenty of time to spend in the kitchen. Yesterday I decided to prepare a treat for our breakfast with a very simple apple cake. It’s a basic yogurt cake recipe without yogurt, and I use very little brown sugar because I don’t like too sweet breakfasts and instead plenty of cinnamon, which suits perfectly my morning chai tea.
In my quest of an ever changing breakfast menu, I decided to try to make soya flour thick pancakes. It is as simple as making soya flour pancakes but the fluffiness obtain with the thick layer of dough is really changing the whole experience. For this recipe I used a mix of white flour and soya flour (only soya flour makes a strange consistency), 2 eggs, 1 pack of baking powder, a bit of brown caster sugar and a bit of salt and water. After stirring well all the ingredients, in a greased heated pan I form the dough in metal circle and cooked at low heat until the top is almost not moist anymore, then fliffed the crumpets with the circles and cook a few minutes more. Delicious with any kind of topping!
You know how we like seeds with Gentiane, we use them all the time and can put some of them everywhere.
For this quick breakfast, I need yogurt (or creamy fromage blanc), a drop of brown sugar, blackberries, raspberries and of course many different kinds of seeds. I use goji berries, sunflower seeds, pine seeds. You can add some homemade granola. And tada!
Pain de mie is a classic and delicious bread, very easy to use in many different ways: toast for breakfast, sandwiches, snack… There are two ways to prepare it based on the same recipe depending on what you want: a fluffy golden bread or a perfectly square and uniformly baked bread. I was opting for the latter and wanted to use my covered pie dish. Yet this dish is really huge and I needed to prepare a large bread, and needed a large bowl to knead.
Finally all equipped I prepare my bread with the following ingredients and proportions:
500g of flour; 280g of water; 20g of sourdough; 20g of yeast; 13g of salt; 15g of powdered milk; 40g of sugar; 45g of butter. After mixing all the ingredients wait for 90min before putting the dough in the greased dish and close the lid. Wait an extra 60 to 90min before baking at 170deg for 30-35min.
This made a large bread, slightly too big for my dish wich is about 12cmx12cmx30cm but the result was perfect to make our breakfast sandwiches to eat on the beach after our bodyboarding early morning sessions.
The week-end was supposed to be all rainy so I had in mind to do a lot of cooking but in the end it’s a beautiful sunny day ahead! For breakfast I wanted something new to try, and since I bought nice ham and free range eggs, I’ve been thinking about English muffins. I love English muffins, but until now I’ve only bought processed ones. So it was time to give it a try. When cooking British (scones, crumpets…) the BBC website is always my best resource and I found there a recipe for English muffins. It is incredibly simple and the result is just stunning!
Of course I had to adjust a bit the recipe to my taste and the available ingredients in my cupboard. So I changed the white flour for whole wheat flour, and prepared without the finish with semolina. The recipe is vegetarian: milk-egg-butter are needed. I love the fact that it is baked on a hot plate or in a pan, in summer I like not to have to lit the oven. The preparation is also quite quick because it needs only 1h proving and 30min rest. So basically in 2h you can have your muffins ready. For breakfast I served them with egg and ham, or butter and jam but there are so many ways to serve them! And to complete a fresh fruit salad with seasonal fruits. The perfect start for a Sunday in the garden trimming trees.
Recipe: – 300g of whole wheat flour – 6g of instant yeast – 6g of salt -1 egg – 15g of butter – 15g of brown sugar – 150ml of milk – a little bit of oil In a bowl set the flour, and in the middle the yeast, the sugar, the milk, the egg, the salt and the butter. Knead until soft and smooth. Move the dough in an oiled bowl and leave for prove for 1h. When the dough has doubled volume, of a dusted surface roll-out the dough on a 2cm thick rectangle. with a 8cm to 11cm circle cut-out the muffins and leave for prove an other 30 min. Pre-heat a hot plate or a pan at very low heat and set the muffin, bake until golden (5~7min) and flip on the other side and bake again until golden. It’s ready to eat!
Of all meals breakfast is my favorite and I like all of its variations. I also like that my breakfast changes everyday, even if there are some common ingredients. Bread or similar and fresh fruits in salad, smoothy, or just plain are on the menu everyday.
I baked this wholewheat soft bread that accomodates perfectly with jam, honey, butter or cheese. It’s very similar to wholewheat pain de mie but because my covered pie dish was too big the bread occupied only half of it and the result was really delicious with a thin crispy layer covering the soft and tender center.
For the bread it’s really simple. I used 250g of T150 flour, 180g of water, 13g of sordough, 1g of yeast, 5g of salt.
Yuzu is one of Japan most famous Citrus fruit, but actually there exist several varieties of yuzu: green yuzu with a thin skin, orange yuzu with a thick skin, all used at different seasons and for different recipes. The peels of orange yuzu are particularly delicious and candied it’s one of my weak points! It’s not always easy to find some natural ones, recently at the local shop in Koganei and in Isumi they have some, so I couldn’t resist. And I made a chocolate chips and yuzu cake for breakfast using the basic recipe of the pound cake, replacing the sultanas by the chocolate chips and the candied yuzu peel. A perfect start for the week! Have a good week!
When traveling it’s always hectic with food for me, I don’t like eating out 3 times a day. Most portions are way too big and I get quickly bored with the amount of mix tastes that surpasses my imagination. As you may know now, I like simple delicious things. So when in the US I really enjoy organic groceries that can be found pretty easily in main cities and sometimes opened round the clock (even better for jetlag and busy working days). It seems particularly true in Boston. There, you can buy things I didn’t even imagine exist, almond milk yogurt with coconut taste, super delicious cereal bars, fresh cut fruits, natural cheese, teas (i usually pack on Chai), tons of different types of flours (well I’m not baking in my hotel room…) and my favorite drink, non organic though but from sustaible harvested ingredients: the Naked fruit smoothies, just perfect for middle-of-the-night-breakfast!
During this short stay in Boston I tried the new to me (haven’t been to the US for 2 years!) pineapple-mango-coconut water Naked, and just loved it, not as thick as the regular mango one! And I found super delicious bars from Earnest eats, my favorite is the almond trail mix. The taste of almond is really strong but it’s really good and just not too sweet. That and a bowl of fresh raspberries was my post-swimming breakfast.
Because, yes! I always pick hotels with a swimming pool. I love to swim early in the morning to recover from jetlag. Doing laps before starting a long business day, after a long trip is just making me feel really good. How do you do to keep a good balance when traveling?
