Banneton Bakery and Cheesy Mushroom Pull Apart

Every Sunday is Market date day, I normally work weekends so we just nip out for a quick breakfast, a cuddle and then I head off to work. This has been going on almost religiously since we started going out. We meet up at his house, we walk over to the Boggo Road markets, hit up the Banneton stall for an almond croissant, pain au chocolate or some Turkish bread, go to the Hungarian stall for either a breakfast langos or cheese, dill, shallot, onion pancake that I can't remember the name of and a drink of fruit punch at Marcello's poffertjes. Did you know that whilst running this opening paragraph, I incorrectly spelled croissant but not poffertjes?

Such delicious Turkish bread

Banneton Bakery is a staple of those markets and since we started faithfully attending together in September, has pretty much edged out every other bakery in place. The place has changed a lot, Marcello now has a van, the Hungarian guy has done well enough to hire two helpers, there's now a ginger beer guy, the freshly laid organic egg guy (lucky bastards!), the spice guy is gone but Banneton stays.

So much icing sugar

Every week I crave their delicious, large flakey almond croissants with their earth shatteringly crunchy flaked almonds, their twice baked buttery layers and that moist, sweet frangipane insides. They normally sell out by 11am. Sometimes we get lucky and they make their almond croissants out of pain au chocolate, oh that is a good, good day.

So huge and fluffy

I remember my Boyfriend when we first had the pain au chocolate and almond croissant. He said that he never had one as good as the one he had in Paris. He was suspicious and asked the baker if they were good and he said yes. He took one bite and said, you got lucky.

Industrial much.

That familiar sign!

Anyway, one day we decided to go to the actual Banneton Bakery in Stones Corner/Woolloongabba. Its located in a really odd spot, down in an industrial area beside a few wholesale delis and things but mostly hardware companies and shed things. Despite the odd location though, they do have wonderful bread and they manage to be quite busy on the weekday we went.

Sold out pretty quickly

The upper displays and the breads at the very back

A very blurry shot of their chilled things.

Apologies for the photos, but I don't have the cash for a good camera and I just Samsung Galaxy S2 for pics. The food is wonderfully laid out and Banneton's is split between an actual bakery side and a cafe side.  Most of the loaves are at the back, there's smaller baked goods scattered everywhere, a glass display case of more delicate baked goods and a chilled display cabinet of ready to eat chilled slices, cakes, quiches and baguettes. They also serve freshly made coffee and have a chilled drinks cabinet.

Fancy fanta?

We picked up these drinks when we got there and were deciding our options. He got a Phoenix Organic Orange Fizz, it tasted exactly like Fanta, the real orange juice one not the old one.

Eh, I've had better.

I got this Stolen Recipe white tea with watermelon and raspberry. If you've not seen them before, they're a brand of heavy glass bottled teas which are reportedly stolen from family recipes to share with people. They also use premium loose lea teas to brew with and are only sweetened with fruit juice, they are one of the best iced teas out there to be honest. This one, not such a huge fan of. White tea is such a delicate flavour and watermelon was faintly there as was a sour tinge for the raspberry flavour.

Anyway, the reason we went so out of our way was to pick up a good loaf of bread for this recipe that was posted to the Good Food and Wine page on Facebook. This is the original blog post but.

It didn't turn out quite like it, I changed the recipe quite a bit and didn't follow the recipe instructions at all. I really should have just cut slices of the cheese off rather than grating it, because it does seem to have changed the texture of the loaf a lot and not made it so stretchy cheesey. Mushrooms exuded a lot of moisture making the bread a bit too soggy/dense. It was extremely tasty though and my Boyfriend and I ate most of it and then he used it as a bread soup bowl the next day. I'm going to put down my ingredients and things but change the method a bit so it hopefully turns out like the glorious pictures in everyone else's blogs. Another thought is to perhaps have a slightly stale loaf, a day or two old, to offset issues with moisture.

Cheesy Mushroom, Thyme and Garlic Pull Apart Bread

Uses: Messy sharing.

Ingredients:

1 fancy loaf of bread, I used a New York Deli Rye
250g of sliced cheese
1/2 cup of melted butter
300g of button mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup of green onions
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of thyme
1/2 lime, juiced

Pretty bread, already pre-scored practically!

Cheese!

Onions, lime and melted butter

Lots of garlic

Instructions for mushrooms
1. Peel off outer layer of mushrooms and then slice.
2. Melt some more butter in a pan on medium heat, add the garlic and cook until fragrant.

Goes from this!

To this!

3. Add the green onions, thyme and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms have wilted, mushroom juice has appeared
4. Squeeze over the lemon juice and allow all the juice to evaporate.
5. Strain off any liquid and allow to cool.

Instructions for bread:
1. Slice your bread every 2-3cms horizontally and vertically, do not pierce the bottom.

Up to down.

Left to right.

2. Heat the oven to 180C.
3. Push the slices of cheese between the slots of the bread.

Use your imagination and pretend that is sliced cheese not grated.

4. Pour the mushroom mixture over. Poke down into the slots with your clean, freshly washed fingers.

5. Drizzle the butter over the bread.
6. Wrap the bread in foil, top and bottom, and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Take off the foil lid and bake for another 10. Serve immediately.

Ready!

Set!

Go! Eat, eat, eat!

Banneton Bakery
Atmosphere: 7, attractive displays in a very small space.
Service: 9 for market, 5 for their shop. The market guy and girl are always friendly, can offer a recommendation and are always smiling despite having to do wood fired pizzas on the spot in midday heat. The shop girl was a bit surlier.
Food: 9, one of the best bakeries in town. I want something from their bakery every week and its all delicious.