The Bread Board

Winter is so close you can feel it, literally. The days are getting shorter, the temperature is getting lower, the layers of clothes getting thicker, and the meals becoming heartier. Salads make way for soups, and a light lunch or dinner is a thing of the past.

Aside from the standard casseroles and soups, we thought we would list five of our favourite meals to have in winter, the kind you savour when you get home on a cold and blustery night.

#1 Fish Pie

The food truck industry is growing from strength-to-strength, and we as consumers can’t get enough. But where did this trend suddenly spring from?

In the USA, their history is quite extensive and can be traced back to the 19th century Chuckwagons of old. These cart and horse purveyors were responsible for ferrying basic foodstuffs to cattleman where there was no railway access.

Starring:

White Small Roll – Accompanied by a tasty flakey crust, and a delightfully soft filling, the white small roll is the perfect fit, for lunch and dinner!

Wholemeal Small Roll – Filled with whole grain flower, the Wholemeal roll is the healthy and high-grain hero!

Food trends are always an exciting topic to discuss in our industry. What will reign supreme in 2017? Whilst there will never be a trend to serving good quality, delicious food – particular ingredients, dishes, techniques, styles, cuisines and methods will undoubtedly take center stage throughout the seasons.

It hasn’t been easy keeping up with the predictions of what will take the culinary world by storm in ’17, but we stumbled upon the list of all lists, thanks to Eater.com and thought we would share with you all!

The testing. The tweaking. The long hours. The costing. The portioning. The plating. The arguments. New menus are a lot of hard work and sometimes it can all feel like it is for nothing. Your favourite dishes don’t seem to get ordered, instead the crowd pleasers keep on rolling in. Why is that?

Often the way chefs put together menus is via a labour of love. Their research and inspiration leads them to create a menu of items that they love to eat and want to cook. The dishes are an expression of the flavours and trends that they are enjoying at the time.

Seven is a very special number for some cultures. We are not entirely sure which ones, but within the Bakers Maison culture the number is representative of the number of new products we have just released.

Inside the not-so-top-secret bakeries that produce the Bakers Maison portfolio of pane, our R&D team have been tinkering with new toys and ingredients to create some staples for your menu.

Milk Bun

Walk the streets of Surry Hills or Bondi on a Saturday morning to see Birkenstock-ed punters in throngs, shuffling timber stools and waving meticulously designed documents. The air is filled with chatter, as over-priced and over-bred dogs sit strung to a street sign. One wrong decision and the whole morning could be in ruin, tainted with acutely disappointed statements like… ‘I should have’ and ‘Oh! That looks better than mine’.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s breakfast time in Australia!

Breakfast is widely considered to be the most important meal of the day – replenishing your body from the overnight fast and providing essential nutrients to keep your energy levels up. Whether this is recognised by the masses who venture out to the cafes of Australia every weekend is another story.

On the first day of Christmas, 
We made a special feast, 
With croissants, butter, ham, and cheese. 

On the second day of Christmas, 
We made a special feast, 
With two dinner rolls, 
And croissants with ham and cheese… 

Bakers Maison has an undying love for all things baked. As an authentic French Bake House, one pastry however is the ultimate indulgence. Hand-made with pure butter and a feast for the eyes, the croissant is a momentous part of French history. But what is the history of the croissant?

A brief history of the crisp, crescent comestible we all know and love is a tale full of culinary legends. People often think of France when they hear mention of the croissant, but Austria is the true country of birth for this famous pastry. Its Viennese, not French!

Cronuts, wonuts, crookies, townies, cruffins, and duffins – it’s like everyone has overbaked their brains! Yet for an industry where the iconic white bread roll and its even-steven sliced loaf counterpart have ruled supreme, it’s great to see such innovative new products coming from bakeries both in Australia and overseas.

And the public aren’t complaining either! Hungry punters are lining up in droves to try the Frankenstein treats.

Much of this hybrid hysteria started with the Cronut, a clever croissant-donut creation that launched in New York in 2013. Come 2016, people are still lining up at the Dominique Ansel Bakery about an hour before it opens to collect the gluttonous snack, with the bakery enforcing a strict Two-Cronut per customer limit.

Here's a little video of some of the first Stone Bake products coming out of the oven! We assure you that the loaf in hand was consumed by the beholder.

History is marked with momentous occasions, inventions and innovations.  Stretches of time are often divided by the tools and materials used. In a time of growing agricultural and societal organization, the Stone Age was much more than the use of rocks as a weapon – it set the stage for our evolutionary journey - one that still has a long and exciting way to go.

But most importantly for us, bread was invented.

Since that ingenious moment some 30,000 years ago when the ingredients of ground wheat and water were unified and yeasts were given new life then exposed to the residual heat of an open flame, humans have been creating nourishment for one another.

There is something truly comforting about the simple dish that is baked beans and toast. On a brooding winter’s day as the rain pelts against the windows of the local café, washing away any motivation for that day’s plans – a classic homemade baked beans dish is a remedy for dampened spirits.

For some, memories of the saucy dish are confined to a can, whilst others have more intimate memories of hearty dishes created from a family recipe. Whilst, we have an unconditional fondness for the classic can of variety of baked beans, this particular article hopes to inspire sharpened knives, simmering pots and crusty Bakers Maison bread rolls to serve.

The many ingredients of a great pot of baked beans can vary from scrap book to scrap book, but there is no recipe to beat a Grandma’s. So, in the spirit of lovely elderly ladies we have taken some creative inspiration from Australia’s Grandmas of cooking and adjusted to accommodate for a commercial kitchen (and our own taste).

The month of April marks a true change of season in Australia. As the daylight savings clock moves forward and the night time reaches us earlier, so too do the cooler temperatures that signify the undisputable arrival of Autumn. As brown leaves begin to litter the foot paths of our leafier suburbs and mornings become that little bit harder to climb out of bed, we here at Bakers Maison begin to think of the sensually remedial dishes that accompany the cooler months of the year.

Soups, casseroles, and braises are the decidedly heavier meals that flourish in our homes. With rich and layered flavours, these dishes are hearty in their nourishment and comfort. This is why we have decided to make April’s update about an addition to soups and casseroles that never goes astray: the crouton.

Luckily for us (and you), bread is a fixture throughout the seasons. Whilst it is best enjoyed freshly baked, it is a fact of life and love that bread will go stale. The silver lining to this natural occurrence lies in the humble and wholesome crouton, a crispy, culinary creation that adds delightful crunchy textures to soups and salads.

It is no trade secret that Bakers Maison par baked and fully baked breads have been made with the same authentic French recipe since 1998. In fact, very little has changed except for the quantity of our batches as we continue to supply the chefs and cooks of Australia with the ability to give their customers freshly baked bread, every day. But, we are not closed to the idea of a new recipe at all and each chance we get we are trying to think of something else that we could couple with our products to create something extra delicious.

Sometimes the simplest of partnerships can be the best. Like a good quality butter smeared generously across a steaming pillow of fresh baked sour dough, or the outstandingly tasty combination of a top shelf extra virgin olive oil with it’s subtle, fruit and earth complexities lovingly drowning a crusty chunk of our artisan baguette. Such easy to create flavours are often tied to key points in your taste buds’ history, from ages both young and old – after all food is about the memories that it creates.

With this in mind we have compiled a couple of our team’s most loved and simple dishes, all with a single key ingredient in common – Bakers Maison bread.