Serrano and mozzarella brioche couronne

This week on the Great British blogger off we are returning to bread once more this week will see a selection from

signature tea loaves
technical couronne
showstopper sweet buns

Wanting to push myself and learn yet another new thing i went for the couronne which took me a while to find out what it was and it is a twisted bread that's like a crown.  As my hubby is fond of all things savory mores the pity i am making a Serrano and mozzarella brioche couronne.

This has to be one of the lightest doughs i have ever worked with.

Ingredients

10g yeast
170ml warm milk
1 teaspoon honey
add all of the above together to activate

500g strong white flour
10g salt
4 eggs
add the above plus the yeast milk together mix till a silky dough

250g butter
gradully add the butter the leave to prove i find it rather handy having a helper with small fingers who can do this job

10 slices of Serrano
125g mozzarella
Fresh basil
knock back dough and then pull out to 1 1/2 cm and line with Serrano and mozzarella and scatter basil.

Then roll up the dough into a long sausage and cut in half length ways so there are 2 long strips and then twist tightly together  to make a rope then join the two ends up to make a ring or crown

leave to prove for a further 1/1/2 hours then brush with egg and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese then cook at 200c for 25 mins its best not to cook this in a fan assisted oven and luckily for me my oven does all sorts of settings and i choose the setting where the heat rises from the bottom of the oven.  i also put a pan of water at the bottom of the oven to create a bit of steam.

Once again this is linking up with the Great blogger bake off Helen and Jenny

Making mozzerella

Sophie and I are busy in the kitchen making mozzarella  if you remember our last cheese making exercise was really easy and very tasty home made goats cheese.

Having the chance to make some of our favorite cheese was most welcome and teaming up with Lakeland we got a fab kit.  Most importantly the kit was a recipe book, a thermometer, rennet, cheese moulds and some cheese cloth too, Although the moulds and cloth are not for mozzarella.

We started out by measuring out the milk and heating this to 32c using the thermometer to gauge the temperature we added lemon juice and rennet and the warm milk curdled in front of our eyes much to the amusement of Sophie who has renamed this to lemon cheese.

After 30 mins waiting for the rennet and milk to do its job the mixture had turned into curds and whey where this was then cut into 2cm cubes and drained out into a sieve and leave for 15 mins and then turn, adding some salt to give the cheese some flavour.  it is very important not to stir or mix the curds up to much.

 Then its time to form the mozzarella its a good idea to have a jug of cold water to hand.  We divided the curds into portions, ours didn't come out cubed curds just curds and then cooked them in the microwave for 30 secs, we saw all the protein break down and more liquid come out which we tipped away, we then had to microwave again for another 20 secs to be able to knead the cheese into balls

As we formed the cheese into balls we squeezed out a little more liquid and we kneaded and squished the cheese and it became drier then we dropped it into the jug of water where it set we then chilled this in the fridge before eating

This was a really simple fun task with surprisingly little effort involved in making something very tasty to eat.  The cheese tasted very cheesy which surprised us but what else could it taste of and we also melted some on a pitta bread pizza to see how it tasted cooked and it was thumbs up all round.