I came across this recipe on a UK blog called The Thermo Queen.  Immediately, I thought this sounds really good!  I love parmesan cheese & I love olive bread, so it sounded like a match made in heaven to me.  I’ve made a few changes to the method of the original recipe & the result is delicious.  This is a great bread to serve when entertaining, as it tastes amazing I bet your guests won’t believe you made it!

Ingredients:
30g parmesan cheese, cubed
1 clove garlic
2 sprigs rosemary leaves
300g water
1 sachet dried yeast (or 2 tsp dried yeast)
500g bakers flour
1 heaped teaspoon salt
20 g olive oil
150-200g whole Kalamata pitted olives

Method:
1) Place parmesan into TM bowl, grate 8 seconds/speed 9. Set aside.
2) Without cleaning TM bowl, add garlic & rosemary, chop 5 seconds/speed 7.
3) Add water & yeast, warm 1 minute/37 degrees/speed 1.
4) In this order, add flour, salt & oil. Mix 6 seconds/speed 6.
5) Knead 2 minutes/closed lid position. Add olives, knead for 1 minute.
6) Remove dough from TM bowl & wrap in thermomat to prove for 30 minutes. The dough is very wet/sticky, so you may need to use your TM spatula to remove all the dough.   As the dough is sticky, to help clean the TM bowl, cover the blades with cold water, a squirt of dishwashing detergent & turbo 3-4 times.
7) After proving, place dough on an oven tray lined with baking paper & shape the dough any way you like. Top with grated parmesan cheese.  Below is my bread dough, prior to going in the oven.

8) Place into a cold oven, turn oven onto 180 degrees celsius & cook for 1 hour.

Notes:

This bread is put into a cold oven, so the dough has it’s second proving as the oven warms up.

Before cooking, you can shape the dough into any sale you like.  I recommend a long, thin shape, as the dough spreads out quite a bit when cooking.

If you love olives, use 200g, however, you can adjust accordingly.

I now make this raisin bread once every week.  Trust me, once you try this, you won’t want to buy it from the supermarket anymore.    Firstly, this tastes so good & doesn’t compare to store bought raisin bread.  Secondly, this bread costs about $1.50 per loaf to make, even less if you buy your bakers flour in bulk like me.   It’s also very easy to slice & freeze, as you will see from the photo’s I’ve included in this post.   This dough is a little sticky, so you will need to give your blades a good clean after, so I’ve included a few cleaning tips in the notes.

Ingredients:
100g sultanas, soaked in water (and/or raisins, craisins or other dried fruit)
300g water
1 sachet yeast or 2 tsp dried yeast
20g olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
500g bakers flour
60g brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice

Method:
1) Place sultanas into a bowl & cover with water, allow to soak for 5 minutes.
2) Zero scales & weigh 300g water into TM bowl. Add yeast & heat for 1 minute/37 degrees/speed 1.
3) In this order add flour, oil, salt, sugar & spices. Mix 6 seconds/speed 6. Then knead for 2 minutes.
4) Drain sultanas & add to dough in TM bowl. Knead for 1 minute.
5) Transfer dough onto Thermomat & work into a ball. Allow to prove in a warm place for 30 minutes or until double in size (see before & after proving photo’s below).

6) Pre heat oven to 200 degrees. Knock back the dough & place into a greased or lined loaf tin. Allow to prove in a warm place for a further 20 minutes.  See photo’s below how much the dough rises again in 20 minutes.

7) Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
8) Allow bread to cool thoroughly, before removing from the loaf tin & slicing.  I will often leave my bread to cool all day or overnight before slicing.  Bread can be frozen in a freezer bag & slices taken for toasting as desired.

Notes:

To clean the blade after making the dough, add some cold water to the bowl (enough to cover the blades) & a squirt of dishwashing liquid.  Please bowl back on your machine & turbo a few times.  This will release most of the dough.  You will find that you still need to remove the blade to give it a good clean though.  I use a baby’s bottle/teat brush for this.

You can substitute the brown sugar in this recipe with 60g of honey.  I prefer using the sugar, as the honey makes the dough even stickier & it can stick to the Thermomat & inside the bowl/blades.

To prove my dough, I simply place boiling water in my Thermoserver & sit my Thermomat on top.  The heat that comes through the lid is enough for proving.

 These Hot Cross Buns are delicious!  There is not a great deal of difference between the Thermomix hot cross bun recipes you’ll find on the internet, but my recipe is a mish mash of the ‘Everyday Cookbook’ recipe & the Chocolate Hot Cross Bun recipe from ‘Devil of a Cookbook’.  The secret is letting them prove for at least 2 hours before baking.  You could even let them prove all day (the longer the better).   Ideally, you would make the dough in the morning, allow it to prove, shape the buns & allow them to prove again, then bake in the afternoon.  This would be a great activity to do with the kids on Good Friday.

To make Choc Chip Buns, substitute the sultanas & currants in step 3 with 150g choc chips.  I usually prove my dough in a ThermoMat on top of my ThermoServer full of boiling water (see notes), however, I don’t do this for the chocolate buns, as the choc chips will melt.  Instead, I’ll prove the dough in a warm place or in my oven that has reached 60 degrees then turned off.  Also add 20g cocoa & 20g water to the piping ingredients.

Bun Ingredients:
250g full cream milk
2 sachets dried yeast (14g) or 30g fresh yeast
500g bakers flour
1tsp sea salt
70g softened butter
50g brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
85g sultanas
45g currants

Piping Ingredients:
80g plain flour
pinch sea salt
5g olive oil
80g water

Syrup Ingredients:
40g water
40g caster sugar

Bun Method:
1) Place milk & yeast in TM bowl, heat 1 minute/37 degrees/speed 1.
2) Add flour first & then remaining ingredients, except for sultanas & currants. Mix 6 seconds/speed 7, then knead 5 minutes.
3) Add sultanas & currants, knead for 1 minute.
4) Transfer dough onto Thermomat & work into a ball. Wrap dough in Thermomat & allow to prove in a warm place for 1 hour or until double in size.

5) Flatten dough into a large square, approx 3-4cm high. Cut dough into 16 bun pieces.
6) Take each bun & pinch diagonal corners to the middle of bun underside, forming a rounded top. Place buns on a tray lined with baking paper & allow to prove & rise for at least 2 hours.

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees.

Piping Method:
1) Place all piping ingredients into clean mixing bowl, mix 30 seconds/speed 4.
2) Pour into a piping bag & pipe crosses onto the top of buns.

3) Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Syrup Method:
1) Place water & sugar into clean mixing bowl, cook 2 minutes/100 degrees/speed 4.
2) Brush buns with hot sugar syrup as soon as they come out of the oven.
3) Allow buns to cool for 5 minutes, before serving, or transferring to a wire rack to cool.

I keep a container of sugar syrup in my fridge, that I use for cake & biscuit decorating using fondant.  Syrup will last for a long time in the fridge – at least a year.  For the hot cross buns, I just pour a little syrup into a bowl or coffee mug  & heat in the microwave for 20 seconds.  If you’re planning to make a few batches of buns, make all the syrup at once, to save you some time later.

Notes:

Adding boiling water to my thermoserver & placing Thermomat on top is warm enough for the dough to prove

Disposable piping bags can be purchased at cake decorating shops or in the cake mix aisle of most supermarkets