This weekend I finally got around to trying some more Hairy Biker Bakeation recipes and this week was Eastern Europe. Now there are oodles of recipes to try in this chapter as it covers Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. A couple of weeks back I started to try their Slovakian Sweet Nut Rolls recipe (Kolaches), but my Dried Active Yeast didn't seem to want to co-operate and refused to bubble up. As I was pushed for time, I thought I had over-heated the milk and maybe killed the yeast, so was saving the recipe for another time. This weekend I had all the ingredients ready for the Hungarian Bacon Scones (Pogasca) and Beef Goulash Soup (Gulyas leves).
So I go to warm the milk for the bacon scones and add the yeast.......... oh yes folks it failed to froth again. Normally in my baking I use the Fast Action Yeast, but this was plain old Dried Action Yeast. As I was all set to go I substituted the yeasts and just added the FA Yeast to the flour and followed the recipe as set.
The above liquid ingredients had the flour and other dry ingrediants all mixed together until combined and then kneaded by my trusty Kenwood for 5 minutes.
The dough was then left for 1 1/2 hours to double in size......... or it should do. At this point I realised they weren't going to be the best scones, but I hate wastage, so I cut them out into mini sized scones and left to rise again....... hmmm. Not doing brilliant at this stage.
I also had the Goulash soup bubbling away nicely on the hob - at least something was going to plan!
Now I confess the scones were a little pathetic in appearance and I was too embarrassed to even photograph them. But they did taste OK with the flavours of the bacon, parmesan and caraway seeds coming through and they have real potential. So I will try them again. The soup at least was delicious and very filling.
Today I emailed Allinson to explain my predicament and to see if anyone else had had problems with that batch of yeast. To their credit they replied within 1/2 an hour and asked for my address to send a reply envelope to. I then have to send back the yeast and they will 'investigate'!
There is a wealth of choice of recipes in the Eastern Europe chapter and I know I will be trying more of them. But for the next challenge its Austria........ got to be a chocolate cake recipe in that chapter.
Happy baking!
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