Walnut & Honey Bread

Ingredients:

200g/1 cup wholemeal bread flour

300/1.5 cups strong white bread flour

10g/2 tsp salt

100g/3/4 cup walnuts (roughly chopped)

200g/3/4 cup sourdough starter

50g/2.5 tablespoons honey

250ml/1 cup warm water (give or take)

Method:

Put the flour, walnuts and salt into a large bowl and mix together.

Add the starter and honey. Slowly add the water and mix together to form a dough.

It needs to be workable, so as not to stick to your hands too much, but too dry and it will fall apart. You can add more or less water depending on how your dough feels. I find it varies slightly every time.

Tip out onto your worktop and knead for around 5-10 minutes. I don’t bother to flour or oil the worktop, I never really found it necessary.

There are various ways to knead your dough I like to stretch it out, then roll it back in and give it a 90 degree turn, before stretching it out again.

Cover with a damp cloth and leave to prove, somewhere warm, for a couple of hours, or until it has roughly doubled in size.

Tip the dough back onto your work surface and shape into a loaf, then place on a baking tray.

Leave the loaf to prove for a further 30 minutes. Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 250 degrees C.

Slash the top of the loaf, and leave to prove for a further 10 minutes.

Pour some boiled water on the bottom of the oven.

Cook for 10 minutes before dropping the temperature to 200 degrees if the crust is looking pale, 180 degrees if the crust is noticeably browning, and 170 if it seems to be browning quickly. Cook for a further 40 mins.

Remove from the oven, the loaf should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom, if not return it to the oven for a little longer.

This can also be cooked in the dying embers of a fire, just divide the dough into small rolls first, rather than a loaf.

Leave to cool fully before cutting.

Orange Mead

Ingredients:

• 1.8Kg of honey

• 4.5l boiled water

• 4 large oranges

• 1 tsp mead yeast

  Method:

Orange Mead

Put half the honey into a clean, sterile bucket with the juice and rind of the oranges. Pour in the boiling water and stir until the honey is dissolved. When the liquid has cooled to room temperature, add the yeast. Leave to ferment for 2 days.

Strain the liquid through a clean muslin into a demijohn, fit with an airlock and leave to ferment for a further 5 days.

Syphon the mead into a clean demijohn, leaving behind any sediment. Add the rest of the honey and mix well. When fermentation ends (when bubbles pass through the airlock at less than one a minute) siphon the mead into bottles and cork.

Age for a minimum of 3 months before drinking.

Sweet Saxon Bread

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Ingredients:

• 100g/1/4 cup melted Butter

• 250g/3/4 cup full fat cream

• 2 tablespoons honey

• 1 Egg

• 450g/ 2 1/4 cups flour

• Tsp Yeast

• 1/2 tsp Salt

Method:

In a large bowl mix together the butter, cream, honey & egg.

Add the flour, yeast and salt and mix together to form a slightly sticky dough.

Tip out onto a work surface and knead for around 5-10 minutes.

Roll your dough into a ball, and dust with a little flour. Put it into a bowl and cover loosely with a damp cloth, to stop it drying out. Leave to prove for half an hour.

Divide the dough into four, take one piece and roll it into a sausage. Join the two ends of the sausage together, forming a circle. Finally twist the circle in half to form an ‘8’. Continue until you have four ‘8’ shaped mini loaves.

Bake for 20 minutes in a preheated oven at 220 degrees Celsius.

Remove from the oven, the loaves should sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom.

Leave to cool fully before eating.

Halva

The word Halva comes from the Arabic word Hulw, or sweet. There are versions of it appearing all over the world, in different forms, and under different names, with some versions dating back as far as the 7th century!

There are so many ways to make this, you could replace the honey with sugar, for a vegan version, or replace the pistachios with other ingredients, such as, dried fruits, nuts or chocolate.

Ingredients:

• 340g honey

• Handful of pistachios

• Tsp vanilla extract

• 450g tahini

Method:

Heat the honey in a pan until it reaches 115 degrees Celsius, or ‘soft ball’ on a thermometer.

Stir in the pistachios and vanilla extract, followed by the tahini. Mix well, until fully incorporated.

Pour into a greased and lined cake tin, and leave to cool.

Once cool remove from the tin and wrap well in cling film. Refrigerate for a minimum of 24 hrs.

Marinated Fruit

Ingredients:

• A mix of fruits (berries, apples, pears etc)

• Mead or wine

• Honey

Method:

Wash your fruits and slice and core any apples or pears.

Pour over enough mead or wine to cover the fruit and stir in 1 tablespoon of honey for every 3 cups of liquid.

Leave to stew for a minimum of 24 hours before serving.

You can reserve the mead or wine for drinking. Mead flavoured with fruit is known as a melomel.

Sweetened & Infused cream

Similar to a posset these may have been drunk, rather than eaten. Though I have included some modern options for in the Kitchen as well.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup double cream

• 1 tablespoon honey

• 2 egg yolks

• A sprig of rosemary, sprig of savoury & a few thyme flowers

OR

• 1 cup double cream

• 1 tablespoon honey

• 2 egg yolks

• A head of elderflower and a tablespoon of meadowsweet

Method:

Mix the egg yolks into the cream. Gently heat the cream for a few minutes.

Stir in the honey, until dissolved.

Add the herbs or flowers and leave to steep for 30 minutes.

Strain through a sieve or cloth and pour into small bowls.

In a modern context these are great chilled for a couple of hours, or alternatively to make your very own ice cream, freeze for several hours, until set firm.

Elderflower Fritters

Ingredients:

• 200g/1 cup flour

• A pinch of salt

• 4 tablespoons of olive oil

• 150ml warm water

• 1 egg white

• Butter

• 2 heads of elderflower (stalks removed)

• Honey (to serve)

Method:

Mix together the flour and salt.

Stir in the oil and slowly add the water, whisking until it looks like think cream.

Whisk the egg white until light and bubbly, and fold into the batter, with the elderflower.

Heat some butter in a pan and, once hot, add the batter in large tablespoons, leaving space between each one. Once the underside is golden, flip and cook the other side.

Serve while still warm, drizzled with a little honey.

Braggot

Take a look at my older post on the basics of homebrewing if you are new to the subject here

Ingredients:

• 30g hops

• 1362g honey

• 500g amber malt extract

• 12 pints water

• 1 teaspoon Wine yeast

Method:
Put the hops into a large pan and cover with 6 pints of water, boil for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile put your honey and malt extract into a large, sterilised bucket or fermentation bin. Strain the hop water through a muslin cloth into the fermentation bin.

Stir well to dissolve all the honey and malt extract. Pour in 6 pints of cold water and stir.

Check your gravity, it should be around 1060. If not you can adjust up or down by adding more honey or water, as necessary. This should give you a braggot around 7.8%.

Add your yeast and leave to ferment for 2 to 3 weeks.

Don’t forget to check your final gravity, if you haven’t already and want to know the percentage of alcohol in your brew.

Sterilise your bottles.

Add a ½ teaspoon of honey to each bottle and siphon the beer into the bottles. Cap the bottles (or use swing tops) and place somewhere warm for 2 days before moving to somewhere cool.The braggot should be ready to drink in 2 weeks, 3 is better.

Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available on Amazon now