April month here in Siena.

April is a very rainy month here in Siena.More of 50% of days, are rainy days.

I love when is raining. It seems the Nature thanks the atmosphere. The water in fact washes trees, bushes, flowers and grass. I think every landscape is more beautiful when bathed by the rain.

Even pictures show an special light and fantastic colours….. as into a “dream”.

One more facilitation in my case, is that I don’t need to water my flowers and vegetable in my garden.

When outside is raining I like to cook some bread of biscuits.

One more facilitation in my case, is that I don’t need to water my flowers and my vegetables in the garden.

When outside is raining I like to cook some bread of biscuits.

I don’t like fat or creamy. In fact yesterday I prepared some round shaped cookies, very easy, simple and healthy.

They are nice when to drink a cup of milk.

I mixed

• 1 glass of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 glass of fresh milk
• 200gr. Of white cane sugar
• A pitch of cinnamon
• ½ tea spoon of yeast
• As much as flour as requested.

I firstly mixed in a bowl the milk + oil + sugar. Then, I added the yeast and cinnamon. Finally I added the flour.

In order to mix all ingredients better, I put the dough into the bread machine and I selected the mixed program.

When the dough was ready I took small portions and I shaped them as a doughnut .

I put them into the oven at 180C° for 7 minutes in the bottom part and 7 minutes at 150 C° in the high part (I put a tray between the cookies and the grill, to avoid burning them.

Bon appétit !!

Bread rolls

I love to cook bakery products. Some years ago, some body gifted me a bakery machine to prepare the bread at home…. It was a nice surprise. At the beginning, I programmed it to do everything, so when the cycle was finished, the bread was ready to be eaten. Then, I learnt that I could program it to prepare the dough only, then I could cut it into small pieces and oven them to get bread rolls.

The ones in the picture are sweet. I prepare them in this way:

600 gr. Flour 00

200 ml of warm water

4 tsp of powder milk

5 tsp of sugar

40 gr. Butter

1 tea spoon of dry yeast for bread.

Put all ingredients together into the bakery machine and select dough cycle (mine takes 1 hour and 50 minutes), when finished put the dough on a smooth surface, covered it with some flour, then cover it for around 30 / 40 minutes..

Turn off the oven at 180 C°.

Cut the dough into small pieces, as you prefer. Wet them with some milk and sprinkle some sugar on. Bake for about 15 / 20 minutes (after 10 minutes check cook condition).

They are delicious with only butter…. Or maybe with orange ham.