Sometimes, I try to experiment too much. A little twist here and there works fine. But when you combine too many twists then there is a chance of failure and makes you ore cautious.So always before going for twists and turns I try to scale down the recipe. Usually I make one fourth of it by scaling down, but this I wish I had not done so as this batter bread turned out to be hearty.
A batter bread is a yeast based bread which is made by whipping /whisking of batter rather than kneading like the regular bread. Basically these are made of eggs and even spoonbread is a type of batter bread ade using cornmeal.You can use any container or pans or dishes to bake the bread as a thick batter is involved which takes the shape of the baking dish after it is done. Though normally this is an eggy whipped bread, I found this simple recipe for white sandwich batter bread from Smitten Kitchen.I first tried the bread, which came out perfect but then I thought a twist was necessary. So I spruced it up by adding sage and onion and baking in muffin pans and also by reducing the recipe to one -fourth. A simple, easy to carry and good to taste muffins.
Ingredients:
Warm Milk: 1/4 cup +1 -2 tsp
Fast Rise Yeast: 1/4 + 1/8 tsp
Unsalted Butter: 2 tsp melted
Onion: 2 tbsp
Sage: fresh/frozen: 1/2tsp or as needed
Sugar: 3/4 tsp
Salt: 1/4 tsp
All Purpose Flour: 1/2 cup
Preparation:
Heat a thick pan and add 1 tsp butter to it. Add finely chopped onions and sage and saute till the onions are transparent and start to brown. You can add pinch of sugar and salt to this to help browning quickly. After done add the remaining butter and remove from heat.
To warm milk in a bog bowl,add the yeast and stir and let stand for five minutes. Its supposed to bubble but its ok even if it does not.
Add in the salt ,sugar and the onion butter mix to the yeast -milk mix. Whisk well using a and blender or whisk. I preferred the blender which is easier. Slowly add in flour little at a time whisking/whipping to remove the lumps in the batter. Finally you will end up with a thick sticky batter.
Pour the whisked batter in buttered muffin tins or loaf tins and let is rise covered with a buttered plastic wrap for 1-1.5 hours. You can remove the wrap once you the bread has risen and is hindered by the wraps.Also you can spoon the muffin tins half up so that there is enough space for the muffins to rise like this ...
After rising they are like....
Preheat the oven to 400F/ 200C about 20 minutes prior to baking. Once this is done, place the muffins in the oven, reduce the temperature to 375F/190C and bake for about 15-18 minutes until the tops are brown and you might also see the muffins separating from the edges of the tins if they are silicon molds, I suppose.
A soft and little crumbly bread. The crust is brown, but slightly soft though perfect for me. The sage onion combo is A1. I think after baking this bread I have developed a leaning towards the batter bread as they are easier to make than the regular breads. Only one rise is involved for batter breads and this makes them quicker as well. The bread if baked in a loaf tin can be used as a sandwich bread. They can soak up soups and sauces and make wonderful soup bread.
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