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Spiced stout hot cross buns

20-Apr-11

Full of the joys of Easter, I made a double batch of spiced stout hot cross buns, from this recipe on Dan Lepard’s website (only I used Marston’s Oyster Stout instead of Mackesons). They’re not the easiest thing to knead as the dough is sticky and they are packed full of soft, sweet fruit rehydrated in tea overnight, but the flavour is long and deep. They are powered by a little bit of yeast, mixed with flour and beer and left overnight to produce a sponge, that is mixed with the rest of ingredients the next day. It’s a kind of halfway-house that gives a bit more flavour than a simple yeasted bread, but without needing to breakout the sourdough leaven from the fridge.

Unlike the buns you may have been tempted to buy from your local supermarket (shame on you!), these are definitely an enriched bread and not, squidgy, soft cakey things and so stand up well to (some would say demand) toasting and buttering.

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Fennel and Raisin sourdough bread for breakfast

08-Apr-11

Lou had a hankering for fennel and raisin bread and this is what came out. I jacked up a regular white sourdough with 150g of mixed rasins that had been steeped in boiling water for 20 mins; 40g of fennel, coriander and sesame seed that I dry roasted in a pan and then bashed up a bit in a pestle and mortar; the zests of a couple of satsumas that I had lying around. Before I put it into the banneton to rise, I rolled the loaf in a mixture of untoasted fennel, sesame and poppy seeds.

I know some people let their breads rise overnight and bake them in the morning, but my fridge is so cold, it takes 24 hours for that to happen, so for overnight rising and morning baking, I put the banneton on the cold tile floor and cover it with a big bowl. Oven on at 6am, bread in at 6:30, out at 7:05, warm bread for breakfast at 7:30. It’s very good warm from the oven with butter, but I think it’s going to be excellent cold with paté for supper.

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Dan Lepard’s potato bread

03-Apr-11

I was a bit over-enthusiastic with feeding my starter last week and so I had more left over than I could fit back into the fridge. With the excess I made Dan Lepard’s potato bread from The Handmade Loaf (which I see Amazon currently has the paperback for the incredible bargain price of £5.99). It’s basically a plain white sourdough with 25g of honey and 75g of raw potato grated into the dough. The end result is really good. The potato is barely noticeable in the finished loaf, but the crumb is significantly softer and the kids really liked it. The notes to the recipe say that the potato keeps it moist, so it will be interesting to see how long the effect lasts.

The recipe uses 250g of levain to 500g flour, where my usual recipe uses on 150g. The texture was definitely more open with bigger, more irregular bubbles, which I quite like.  I think I’ll try upping the quantity in my regular sourdoughs to see if I get the same effect. So that’s 6kg of bread baked this weekend!

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Why real bread is cheaper than fake bread

03-Apr-11

Today on asda.com their own brand Asda white sandwich loaf (800g) is £1.20. Well that’s pretty good value, eh? Admittedly, it’s made using the nasty Chorleywood process, has all sorts of undeclared chemical improvers to keep it soft, white and unnaturally long-lived, has the texture of cotton wool and tastes of nothing, but hey it’s cheap.

Er, no.

It’s much cheaper to make your own bread. You can make your own organic three-ingredient sourdough, using best organic bread flour for less than half the price of this supermarket loaf.

Dove’s Farm are currently selling organic strong white bread flour in 25kg sacks for £19. The basic white sourdough recipe I use has 600g flour, plus water and salt. That’s 40 loaves, plus some left over for dusting and rolling. That’s less than 47p a loaf.  47p. And of course there’s no comparison between the two loaves. Mine actually tastes of something, has great texture and stays fresh for about four days. And after that it still makes great toast, croutons and bread salad for the rest of the week. And then it gets turned into breadcrumbs. If it lasts that long.

Incidentally, I see that Asda’s cheapest 800g loaf – the ASDA Smartprice White loaf – Also costs 47p, the same price as my organic white sourdough. And in addition to flour, water and salt, in theirs you get also get Spirit Vinegar , Soya Flour , Vegetable Fat , Emulsifier (Mono and Diacetyltartaric Acid Esters of Mono and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids) , Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid) at no extra cost. What a bargain, eh?

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Big Bread

03-Apr-11

Here’s a two-kilo sourdough that I proved in my biggest, rarely-used banneton. It’s a variation on the Levain de Campagne recipe that I brought back from the Wild Yeast Course at the School of Artisan Food last month. I’ve been disappointed with my results with large boules in the past as they have been a bit flat because one of my (many) mistakes was to use dough that was just too wet for me to handle this way. The loaf has wholemeal, dark rye, white flour and some Dove’s Farm white-with-seeds and grains that I had in the cupboard. For big bake days at the weekend, I’m now taking my starter out of the fridge on Wednesday evening and feeding it with 100g of flour (and enough water to keep the consistency the same), twice a day. By the time I get to Friday night, I have a really active, deliciously sour smelling starter. I take some out for pre-ferments for the levain (sometimes, if I remember) and feed the rest.

On this big loaf, to account for the extra bulk, I left it in the oven for 55 minutes and as a bonus I got even better crunchy caramelisation on the crust. We ate this with puy lentil and salami soup, which was a fantastic pairing and a perfect Saturday lunch.

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Sourdough Provençal Bread

03-Apr-11

Yesterday I made five kilos of sourdough to see us through the week. I thought I’d jazz one up a bit for supper, so I added a mix of the sunniest ingredients in the house. To one kilo of dough, I added two good handfuls of green olives, chopped and another handful of hulled sunflowers seeds. I also added the zest of a lemon and about a teaspoon of Herbs de Provence. I thought about adding olive oil, but held back, thinking that it might change the texture of the bread dough, which was already mixed.

I was really happy with the result. You could taste all the ingredients (although next time I will probably increase the herbs), but nothing was dominent and the flavour of the sourdough still came through clearly. We ate a third of the loaf for supper with home cured salami, feta and salad and dreamed of summer.

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Wednesday’s lunchbox

31-Mar-11

Middle-class giveaways #23: Your six-year old’s favourite packed lunch is sushi, onigiri and fresh mango.

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French Ice Cream v. Italian Gelato

30-Mar-11

Ever since my first visit to Paris, I have believed that the finest ice cream in the world is made by Berthillon, on the Île Saint-Louis right in the heart of Paris. In particular their caramel and chocolate flavours. They are made with the richest, smoothest custard base I have ever tasted, delivering their flavours in a huge, mouth-filling wave of unctuous creaminess. The ice cream on the right is dark chocolate topped with Gianduja à l’orange – a hazelnut/chocolate base studded with chunks of soft candied orange peel. I haven’t had it before and yes, it’s sensational.

But for the first time ever, I was a bit disappointed. Not in the the quality of the ice cream, it’s as perfect as ever, but because two days of eating gelato (six flavours a day!), has turned me into a lover of this more intensely, flavoured Italian twist on the ice cream. In the past I had put the difference down to imagination, or indifferent products, but now it’s clear to me that I do prefer (at least in a cone, on a sunny European street, while wearing sunglasses) the lighter texture and greater intensity of flavour of gelato. Why so different? Well there are slight difference in technique, but mainly it’s the different fat/sugar balance between the two. I don’t know what Berthillon’s daily cream and eggs bill is, but it’s somewhere grand and gigantique. Gelato is lower in fat, generally higher in sugar and often higher in flavour ingredient, giving a sharper, edgier intensity to its flavours and a lighter, cleaner texture. I’m not swearing off custard-based ice cream (not least because I don’t know if I can make a half-decent gelato yet), but there was a clear winner on my recent trip. Although it could just be by the tenth flavour in three days, that my tastebuds had just given up under pressure.

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Paying the Ferryman, Via Giulia, Roma

30-Mar-11

Alms for the perpetual lamp of the cemetery. The skeleton’s banner reads:

“Today for me, tomorrow for you”

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Early morning delivery, Roma.

30-Mar-11

Snapped in the doorway of an unremarkable looking restaurant near the Pantheon in Rome: a better advert for lunch than any menu card.

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The School of Artisan Food – Baking with Wild Yeast course

27-Mar-11

It’s been a couple of weeks since I spend a day on the Wild Yeast bread making course at The School of Artisan Food. I wrote a blog post that evening, but then thought I’d wait and see just how my own bread turned out having been on the course.

I’ve now made half a dozen loaves with the sourdough starters I brought home from the course and each one of them is as good as anything I’ve ever made (in 20+ years of baking). Moist, tasty crumb; brown, chewy crust; well-risen, evenly uneven texture – really I couldn’t be more pleased with them. And each time I’ve fed, mixed and used the starter it’s behaved itself perfectly.

More importantly, I’ve stopped worrying about the process and I’m baking alongside other cooking or gardening or other stuff (fresh bread as part of three courses for 12 – you’ve got to be relaxed).

Emmanuel Hadjiandreou is an excellent teacher. He teaches a simple, but profound process, that has similarities to some of those in the massive pile of baking books sat my bedside, but it differs in important details. We went through the process, the ingredients, the tools, the oven. And yes, although we used the big deck oven for some of the bread, we also put stuff into the domestic ovens and they came out just as good with Emmanuel’s method. And he answered all the stupid, semi-mystical questions and fears we had all built up about sourdough, with patience and good humour. No-one felt stupid. Everyone made great bread. And everyone had fun.

I could give you the recipes I brought home, but that would be missing the point. What I came away with was a much better understanding of the whole process of growing a starter, making sourdough, moulding and baking. I feel more relaxed and comfortable with it and it really shows in the bread.

If you really love bread and if you’d like to have it in your power to put great, real bread on your table everyday without stress, I couldn’t recommend the Wild Yeast baking course more highly.

I am worried, though, that I may not have made enough marmalade to last the year now that we have great bread for toasting everyday…

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Roast Rib of Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

20-Mar-11

Bit of a treat this Sunday: roast rib of beef with Yorkshire puddings. I rub mine with olive oil, salt, coarse pepper and English mustard powder and then cook the Fearnley-Whittingstall way: 20mins at max oven temp, then 15 mins/lb. Rest wrapped in foil and tea towels for at least 30mins (the most important bit for any roast, of course).

Served with Yorkshire Puddings, potatoes roasted in duck fat, parsnips from the garden pan-fired with butter, olive oil and honey, steamed  Savoy cabbage. And lots of onion gravy.

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