Cooking from the The Vegan Boulangerie part two

A few weeks back, I spent some time cooking from The Vegan Boulangerie and every recipe turned out a complete winner.

There's something fundamentally pleasing about bread-making - it's a slow process, one which seems almost like sorcery to me. You start off with the most basic of ingredients, and over the course of a few hours, it grows into something entirely different. After time in the oven, it becomes something different again, warm and yeasty and wonderful.

It was a pleasure from start to finish. I just had to it again.

How pretty does this look? These are Apricot Windmills, and are devilishly simple to make. Bit of puff pastry (I used ready made because I am a lazy creature, although the book does give you a recipe to make it yourself).

Here's my Pain de Mie. I had to depart from the book's original recipe on this one - I had no white flour at home, so used wholemeal instead. As a consequence, it wasn't like any pain de mie I've ever had, which are typically white, fluffy and a little sweet. I won't hold it against it though - it was still a great wholemeal loaf.

This is the Fruit Plait. I was rather chuffed with how well it rose and how cute it looked. It was somewhere between a cake and a bit of bread - the sort of slice you want with a cup of tea in the middle of the afternoon.

This is the Sweetcorn Bread. This was the only recipe I've made from this book that I've not loved immediately. There was a bit of a clash here - the sweetcorn made it feel like it should be a savoury bread, but there was a sweetness and cakey texture that through all that up in the air.

After my second stint of cooking from The Vegan Boulangerie, I'm convinced that this is a cookbook that every vegan needs on their bookshelf.