Bread - getting started...

My "old" school friend, Sean, has been asking about getting started in home baking and I thought maybe other people might find this brief introduction useful too.  Sean asks:

...And when baking at home, do you knead the dough by hand? Because in my book, "The Larousse Book of Bread" by Éric Kayser, kneading by hand appears to take awhile.

He also advises using a Liquid Starter and Fresh Baker's Yeast.

All this fascinates me but scares me at the same time, because I love cooking as one of my favourite past times, but baking bread is definitely more of a science.....and I was crap at that at SGS*, lol!

(*Shaftesbury Grammar School)

Hi Sean

...

I do all my kneading by hand but kneading is one of those areas about which there is a bit of twaddle talked and written. Dan Lepard in his book The Handmade Loaf recommends minimal kneading but stretching the dough.  Really kneading is done to develop the gluten so that small gas pockets fill up in the dough to raise the bread.  This will happen to some extent anyway through the fermentation process so he suggests returning to the dough every ten to fifteen minutes and just stretching it after the initial mix.  This is quite a useful technique if you are in a busy kitchen with lots of things going on at the same time – which is how he used to work as a restaurant chef.

I personally enjoy the kneading, finding it a bit meditative. I'll knead for five minutes or so and stretch the dough after an hour or so.

I prefer to use fresh yeast too – I get much better results with it.   I get mine for our shop from a local bakery suppliers – 1kg lumps – you have to be a bit careful what you get because lots of commercial yeast have horrible additives and processing agents already in them that don't have to be declared on ingredients lists – frightening really!  That's why so many artisan bakers will go for sourdough fermentation – just flour and water fermenting together.

(Note: in the UK fresh organic yeast is available by mail order from Shipton Mill.  Fresh yeast can be frozen in useful-sized quantities but tends to lose a little potency on defrosting and also tends to turn liquid - which in itself isn't a problem but can be messy if it's in a bag - so if you freeze it put it in a pot to defrost!)

As for liquid starters – there are as many different starter styles (poolish, biga etc) as there are bakers it seems to me.   The basic tenet for bread making is “the wetter the better”. Wetter dough is harder to handle but makes a better bread.

The best advice I can give though is to just have a go... a lot... and don't worry about it – it's only a bit of flour and water so if it goes wrong it's not going to kill anyone!   It is easy to get put off by the science of it but don't be – you don't need to know it to get started. The science becomes more interesting and accessible as you go along and you try to find out why things have gone wrong!

I don't know the Larousse book but, from a brief squint at it, it looks quite a serious one – sourdough starters means more advanced techniques and less predictable results – it may be that you need to allow yourself to be a beginner for a while and could do with a book that takes you right back to basics. I recommend the Dorling Kindersley “Bread” by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno or Andrew Whiteley's “Bread Matters” but even that gets a bit caught up in itself. Richard Bertinet has two books out both great as starter books “Dough” and “Crust”.

I don't know what level you're at, Sean, but I suggest you start with a really basic bread recipe:

• Strong White flour (preferably organic, stoneground) 550g
• Water 350g
• Salt 10g
• Fresh Yeast 10g or Dried yeast 5g
• Oil 15 ml

If you're using dried yeast mix it with a little of the water and a couple of spoonfuls of the flour first and let it get active – some recommend a spoonful of sugar to help.

1. Mix all the ingredients together to get a shaggy mass of dough.  If it's a bit sticky let it sit for fifteen minutes - you'll find it easier to handle.  If it is sticky try to avoid adding more flour to the dough as this will toughen it up.  If you are desperate dust your hands with flour and shake off the excess.
2. Knead it for 5 to ten minutes
3. Let it prove in a warm ( not too warm) place for an hour
4. Turn it out and knead for a minute or two
5. Let it prove again for an hour
6. Turn it out again and shape it by flattening it out into a rough circle then fold in the sides and roll into a swiss roll shape
7. Pop it into a lightly greased or non-stick 2lb tin and prove for another half an hour or so while the oven preheats to 220C
8. When the dough is crowning the top of the tin pop it into the oven for 35 to 40 minutes.
9. Spray the oven as you do so with about twenty squirts of water from a mister spray.
10. I spray again after about 10 minutes and turn the heat down to about 200C or even lower 190C and continue to bake. It depends on your oven.
11. Best way to test for done-ness is with a probe thermometer – the internal temperature should be 95C.   The bread should sound hollow when tapped but this is no guarantee on its own, and the shoulders of the loaf should be firm to the touch (ie you should be able to pick it up!)
12. When it's cool - eat it.
13. Make another one.

Once you've made a few you should become more familiar with how the dough will feel – try a few variations – use butter instead of oil – use half in half milk and water...

Report back to me!

Oatmeal and Millet Loaf

It has been a long time since I posted on this blog and you all must be starving by now!

So…

I made this bread recently and have to consider it one of the nicest I have ever made so I thought I’d share it with you.  It is a half in half loaf with added ingredients and you could adapt it by simply changing those ingredients eg substitute sunflower, pumpkin or sesame seeds for either of the additions.

Ingredients

• 275g Strong White Flour
• 250g Strong Wholemeal Flour
• 50g Millet grain
• 30g Pinhead (Coarse) Oatmeal
• 10g (1.5 tsp) salt
• 1 dsp Honey (or malt extract)
• 2 dsp oil, sunflower or olive
• 300g water
• 10g fresh yeast (or substitute 5g dried yeast – follow the substitution directions on the pack)

Method

Allow four hours as a minimum for this loaf - there are only a few minutes of actual mixing and handling and 40 minutes or so baking - the rest is all just waiting for the dough to prove so get yourself a good book and have a cup of tea or two or dig the garden...

1. Weigh the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix well
2. Add the wet ingredients malt extract, yeast, oil and then water (if using dried yeast you can mix it with a little of the water first)
3. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry until combined
4. Work or knead the dough for five to ten minutes then place back in the oiled bowl and cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling-film. 
5. Leave the dough for an hour or so until it has started to rise[1].  Release the gas from the dough by gently kneading for a minute or two and then return to the bowl for another hour or so[2].
6. Tip the dough onto your work surface and shape the dough for its final prove.       For a tin loaf the easiest way to shape the dough is to flatten it gently to a oval disc approximately 2 centimetres thick.  Then fold in the side edges to create a rough oblong shape the of roughly the same width as your tin.  Roll this into a swiss roll shape           and pop it, seam side down, into your tin (oiled if it’s not non-stick)
7. Cover with a damp cloth and leave for it’s final prove. 
8. Turn your oven on to Gas Mark 8 ( 200°C, 425°F)
9. When the bread dough has filled the tin and is nicely domed, slash it [3] and put it into the
   
   oven.  (In the main picture at the top of this post I had also sprinkled the loaf with oats.  Do that now, too, if you fancy it - just a handful of porridge oats.)
10. Using a water spray mist the oven as you put the loaf in with about twenty squirty sprays of water.[4]
11. Bake for 10 minutes at this temperature then open the door and give it another spray.  Reduce the temperature
    
    to Gas Mark 6 (175°C, 380°F) and continue to bake for a further 25 to 30 minutes.
12. Take the loaf out of the oven and tip it out of its tin.  Try tapping the bottom to see if it sounds hollow but the most reliable method for checking doneness is to take its temperature with a probe thermometer.  Dough cooks at around 93°C so if the internal temperature is 95°C or above it will be done.  If you're not quite sure return the loaf to the oven, but not in its tin, for another 5 minutes.  Allow to cool before cutting. [5]

This bread is great if you enjoy a nice chewy texture in your loaf but find granary a little too much... the oatmeal offers a nice bitey resistance while the millet gives a little crunch.

---

[1] Bread recipes often say leave the dough until it has “doubled in size” but I find that is often a very hard one to judge when the ball of dough is sat in the bottom of a large bowl.  Basically you need to see some growth in the dough ball which shows that the yeast is active and working.  As it expands the gluten stretches and creates the aerated texture of the bread

[2] Degassing the dough, sometimes called ‘knocking back’, allows the gluten strands within the dough to relax again and creates a closer, more even texture in the finished bread.

[3] Slashing the loaf across the top with a sharp knife allows the dough to expand in a more controlled way in the oven.  See also below...

[4] Spraying the oven is a useful technique to help the dough rise in the oven and then set a good crust.  Professional bakeries often have steam injected into the ovens as the baking starts, this prevents the crust from forming too soon and allows the bread to grow in the heat of the oven.  This growth in the oven is called oven spring.  When the growing has stopped the dough is allowed to dry out.  The moisture has mixed with the flour on the top of the baking bread and gelatinised and this now dries to a shiny glaze.

[5] It's hard to resist the tempting smell of newly baked bread but while the bread is hot the gluten is still very indigestible and you may well suffer if you cut it too early.  Also cutting the bread while it's hot will result in the crumb becoming gummed around the knife ... so just have a bit of self control and go out for a walk until it's cooled down!

Kombucha and the art of bread making

Here's a thing...

At the shop, (Beanies) we were recently sent some samples of Kombucha - a lightly effervescent drink made from fermented sweetened tea.  It came in different flavours so I picked a ginger one and unscrewed the cap only to have the contents of the bottle explode all over me and the desk.  (Keep it chilled is the advice - this one was at a warm room temperature!)  After I'd cleaned up and enjoyed the beery flavour of the ginger tea I got to reading the bottle and thinking a bit about it.

Kombucha is made from a live ferment known as a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeasts) and this one seemed particularly lively.  I just wondered whether it would be possible to use the kombucha to start a sourdough culture.  I know this isn't always possible - some fermented products simply don't have the right mix  or varieties of yeasts and bacteria.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say...

So I took a bottle of the original unflavoured kombucha home and used 150ml added to 150gms of strong white flour.  (The photographs are my second attempt where I've used strong wholemeal simply because I've run out of white - I tend to use organic white flour for sourdough starters as they prove more stable: wholemeal starters have a tendency to separate and go mouldy if a careful eye is not kept on them - keep them in the fridge.)

150g wholemeal flour

150g kombucha

So, basically...

150g kombucha
150g flour

Mix together in a plastic tub - cover lightly with a lid or cloth and put aside for 24 hours at room temperature.

By then end of the overnight fermentation the starter was sufficiently bubbly for me to feel confident to move straight to mixing a starter dough.





I added
100g white flour
and a little more water to create a slightly stiffer dough than the original mix.

This I again left overnight, covered and the following day was very happy with the fermentation.

So for the final loaf I added
400g wholemeal flour
1 tsp salt - (I don't use a lot of salt (you might prefer more) partly for health reasons and partly because sourdough bread has good flavour anyway.  Salt does have an effect on both the texture and shelf life of the finished bread though so I do use some.)
1 tbsp Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil - but you could use Olive or sunflower
More water  - (I must admit I didn't weigh the water I used to create the final dough - fool! - but the final dough ball weighed about 1200g so I must have added about another 150 - 200g.  It was a reasonably firm dough.  Don't let it get too wet but obviously the old mantra stands - The Wetter the Better!

I mixed this final dough at around 8.00am.  Kneaded for 5 mins and then left it to stand, covered, until about 12.30pm by which time it was just starting to fall back ready to be degassed and shaped.  (If I'd been around during the proof I would have stretched it a couple of times, but I wasn't so I couldn't.)

Anyway dough weighed to 900g, (leaving 300g for a quick pizza for lunch) then shaped and tinned up for a final proof of about an hour.  Into the hot oven (Gas Mark 7 - my oven is quite fierce) for half an hour, turning the gas down to Mark 4 after twenty minutes...

Final result...

My conclusion is that - yes!  Kombucha can be used to raise bread very effectively!  As a shortcut to a sourdough starter I think it's great.  Of course once you've got your live kombucha you can keep it alive too... but I don't quite know how t do that yet... time for a little research, methinks.

I'd be fascinated to hear whether anyone else has similar experiences.

Simple Roast Vegetable Quiche

How to make a delicious quiche AND pass on a few skills to a daughter!

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 6 (200C).......

Cut up some vegetables into coin size chunks. You can use whatever you have available but these are what we used and are a traditional mixture.
- 1 med Onion
- 1 med aubergine
- 1 Red pepper
- 1 courgette
- 6 - 8 medium to large mushrooms, quartered

add
- 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled and crushed

Place in roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil
Sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt flakes and 1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs.
Place in oven for 20 - 25 minutes
Remove from oven and peel garlic, crush or chop and return to veg mixture.

While veg is roasting make the pastry...

(1oz flour = 30g = ½ level tablespoon)
- 6oz (180g) flour
- 3oz (90g) butter
- pinch of salt

Rub butter into flour and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs
Add enough cold water to bring together into a dough - don't over-knead!

Rest pastry in fridge for 15 mins.
Roll out pastry and line quiche tin.
Turn the oven down a little to Gas Mark 5 (180C)
Bake the pastry blind for 15 minutes until it looks nicely dry.

(Tip: blind baking is best done by lining the pastry case with baking parchment and tipping baking beans into the middle - this prevents air bubbles in the pastry from lifting the bottom. Alternatively you can prick the bottom all over with a fork.)

Brush with beaten egg to seal any cracks in the pastry and return to the oven for 5 mins.

While blind baking the pastry case you can make the egg mixture:........

Beat 2 large eggs with ½ pint of milk and 3oz (90g) cream or cream cheese then season to taste adding salt, pepper, mustard, cheese...

Fill pastry case with veg
Pour on egg mixture
Top with grated cheese
Bake for 35 mins till golden brown.

Serve with some steamed broccoli or a green salad and some salad potatoes...
Delicious!

Pizza Rolls...

Here's a simple recipe for Pizza rolls...
I'm not sure if Pizza Rolls are a real thing, so maybe I've just invented this, but in my mind it's a good enough recipe to share and the end results are deliciously more-ish.  They are a great snack or starter - a tear and share bread good for informal parties, for watching The Voice, TOWIE or the football with friends - well you know what I mean!  I tend to make them with left over dough after a bread baking session, which makes them really quick and convenient, but I've given you a simple dough recipe below so you can make them from scratch.

The filling here is really simple but you could make it much more interesting with the addition of a few roast vegetables or something if you prefer.

So what are pizza rolls?
Can you imagine a chelsea bun type savoury cheese and tomato roll?  Of course you can - it was easy wasn't it!  Well done!... that's a pizza roll

For the dough:

• 300g plain white flour (or pizza flour if you have it - you can use strong bread making flour but not it's necessary for this recipe.)
• 225g water
• 10g salt
• 10g yeast fresh yeast (I prefer to use fresh yeast but you can use 1 tsp dried,  following the manufacturers recommended for activating it if necessary)
• 1 tbsp olive oil

For the Filling:

• tomato purée - I use the double concentrated stuff you get in a tube - it's highly flavoured and quick and convenient - but you could of course make your own tomato sauce, just make sure it's well reduced, it needs to be spreadable rather than pourable. 
• 200g grated cheese - of course mozzarella is the traditional pizza cheese but I use a good mature cheddar - it's got a better flavour for the purposes of this recipe and, besides, I'm much more likely to have it in the fridge than mozzarella!  If you've got some mozzarella you might like to use a combination of the two...
• a sprinkling of dried herbs...

Prepare the dough:

1. Place flour and salt into a bowl.
2. Melt the yeast in the water and add to the flour.  Mix together to a  fairly loose dough.
3. Add the oil and work this in.
4. Tip out the dough onto a lightly oiled worktop and knead for a couple of minutes.  It'll be quite a sticky dough to work with so won't require much in the way of kneading.  By the time it's finished proving it will be much more manageable.
5. Oil the bowl and return the dough to it.  Cover the bowl and leave it to double in size - at least a couple of hours (or overnight in the fridge).  Stretch the dough a couple of times during this period  - just tip it out onto your worktop and stretch the dough out and fold it back on itself then return to the bowl.  this just helps the gluten strands to line up and gives a better structure to the dough.

Prepare the rolls

1. Preheat your oven to 230C, 450F, or Gas Mark 9
2. Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured worktop.  Cut a cross in the top of the dough and where the cross crosses gently ease out the corners opening the dough out.  This should provide the rough basis for a rectangular shape.  Using a rolling pin flatten the dough out and roll it out to form a long rectangle with the dough just a few millimetres thick.  If there is resistance in the dough just leave it for a few minutes to relax and then try again.
3. When you have a nice long rectangle, probably about 18" long by a 12" wide, squirt a good squirt of tomato purée onto the dough, grab your palette knife and spread the tomato paste all over the dough.
4. Sprinkle most of the grated cheese over the whole thing.  Be generous.  This recipe requires a lot of tangy savoury-ness.
5. Sprinkle your dried herbs over the top - if you're feeling daring you could even go with a light chilli dusting for a bit of heat.  (This is where you could be a bit more adventurous with the filling - add some veg or some chopped, pitted olives, but for me the simplicity of the filling is part of the attraction!  The combination of the intense tomato purée and the sharp tang of the cheese is to my mind all you really need.)
6. Now roll the whole dough up from the long edge to create a long sausage.
7. Cut the dough sausage into small lengths about 2.5cm (1") long.
8. I find the best receptacle for Pizza Rolls are the foil baking trays we use at bakery - either the smaller round ones or the rectangular.  At home I'd probably use a swiss roll tray or a shallow roasting tin. Basically, you want something with an edge to it.  whatever you use, line it with some baking parchment so that the ends of the parchment stick out over the sides of the tray.  These are useful for lifting the baked rolls out for serving.  Place the cut "slices" of dough end up in the lined tin so that they nestle quite snugly against each other.
9. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and brush with a little olive oil.
10. Allow to prove for 15 to 20 minutes as the oven comes up to temperature.
11. Bake for approximately 15 - 20 mins until the cheese on top is golden and bubbling.
12. Using the parchment "handles" lift the pizza rolls out onto a large platter for serving to your hungry guests.

Unfortunately I haven't got any helpful photographs for this post yet - next time I do this I'll take some and stick them in.  

If you try this recipe please feed back to me how you got on and any variations you make so that I can improve the writing up!

Cat Lane Chocolate and Cranberry Teacake Bread and Butter pudding

It so happens we had a couple of Cat Lane Chocolate and Cranberry teacakes in the freezer which needed using up so I thought I'd try a bread and butter pudding with them.

Delia always has some helpful suggestions so I had a quick look and adapted her standard bread and butter pudding recipe as follows:

• 2 chocolate and cranberry teacakes
• butter for spreading and for the bowl
• 8 fl oz milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 oz soft brown sugar
• few drops of vanilla extract
• fresh nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4 
2. Butter a small ovenproof dish
3. Slice the teacakes into three slices butter and cut each slice in half
4. Arrange the buttered slices in the dish
5. Beat the eggs lightly in a glass jug and add the milk, soft brown sugar and vanilla extract
6. Pour the mixture over the buttered teacakes 
7. Grate a little fresh nutmeg over the top and sprinkle with a little more sugar - demarara maybe for a bit of crunch..
8. Put the dish in the oven for 30 - 40 minutes until golden brown on the top.
9. Serve with cream or ice cream

Mm-mm ! Delicious...