Thursday 29 September 2011

Today's batch

Here are the loaves I made from Peter Cook's recipe. I made the dough last night, let it stand for 30 minutes before adding the salt, then left it covered overnight in the fridge (I didn't dare leave it at ambient temperature for that long with so much mother in it, the kitchen would have been filled with a sourdough monster!). This morning I folded it and left it for another couple of hours, then moulded it and left it to prove for a further couple of hours, and gave them 40 mins at 230 °C.



Wednesday 28 September 2011

Catching my eye

Perusing the list of events over at the Real Bread Campaign, I spotted 'The Eye Bread Festival (Herefordshire)' and wondered about going. It wasn't exactly on the doorstep, but with stalls and demonstrations and so on it seemed worth a look. Googling for some more information, I found some about the previous year's inaugural festival, but very little about this one. We decided to take a chance on going up there (via Cardiff - for unrelated reasons - across our second choice of Severn bridge) and arrived at about 1ish to find the day in full swing with band playing, bakers baking and corn dolly man corndollying for all he was worth.

It was £3 each to get in, but there was free entry upon presentation of a loaf of your own home-baked bread. Sadly this detail hadn't been included in the information available on the web, so we were a bread free zone. I offered to show the lady a photo of one of my recent loaves, but for some reason this chicanery wasn't acceptable and we had to fork out the sick squid.

In the main room were several stalls - some very interesting but-far-too-easily-melted-on-the-long-journey-home flavoured butters (note to self, take insulated bag next time), some delicious looking but sadly made-with-animal-rennet cheese, some amazing chutneys and relishes, oodles of honey and beer, and a bookstall heaped with books about bread and bread making, and a very interesting book about building your own wood-fired bread oven. I called Tallboy's attention to it, and while he agreed that it was an interesting intellectual exercise, he flatly refused to contemplate actual construction. The book remained unbought, despite the best efforts of the brace of persuasive booksellers behind the stall.

On the central table were examples of people's baking - a harvest sheaf, some school children's imaginative output, and the home-baked loaves which had gained their creators free admission. No, it's not rankling at all. Honest. A couple of them were an unusual shape that I'd not seen before, and I wondered if they were a special type of bread, but I realised after a while that they were cylindrical because they had been baked in a cake tin. I rather liked them.

Further on, out past the bar and the tea room, were the other delights on offer. A pizza wagon with its own wood-fired stove, a band, a display about bread and bread making over the years, the corndollyist, Victorian girlpower butter churners (we really should have taken an insulated bag), a stall selling an interesting range of flour and a demonstration area with shiny stainless steel workbench. As we milled around a bit between areas, a gentleman waved an A4 sheet in my general direction and offered me the chance for a mere fifty pence to participate in a quiz, the prize for which was a £10 book voucher. Muttering that I wasn't from round these yer parts, I declined - but he said this was no problem and that by simply placing my telephone number at the top of the page I could still participate without problem. Some of the answers I pulled out of my head, and others (such as the length of service of an apprentice baker in medieval times, of which fact unaccountably I was not cognisant) I gleaned from the helpful display.

I bought two bags of flour: Bacheldre Watermill's Stoneground Strong Malted 5 Seed flour (sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, golden linseeds, sesame seeds and fennel seeds), and Stoneground Rye Flour. The additional 3 kgs in my bag did get in my way a bit when I tried to take photos so I had no option but to hand it to Tallboy for the rest of the visit. Ho hum. I also bought some pots of What A Pickle's Red Onion Marmalade and tongue-tingling Roasted Red Pepper and Chilli Jam just to up the weight stakes even more.

A stir of excitement in the demo tent forewarned us that something was about to happen, so we plopped down on a pair of seats with a good view of the demonstration station. We were rewarded with an hour of excellent demo and commentary from Peter Cook of Price's bakery in Ludlow. Peter showed two types of dough - sourdough and a packet breadmix made up with beer as the only liquid.

Peter brought along a pre-fed sourdough mother which he used to make his dough, but he had also brought along a recently started mother to help him explain how you got things going. Throughout his demonstration he was happy to take questions from the growing crowd, and gave commentary and background and insights. I was surprised at first by the response to his weighing the liquid instead of measuring it against the scale on the side of the jug, but then remembered back to my day in the Bertinet Kitchen and how alien it felt to be weighing and not measuring by volume. I hadn't considered that the scale on the side of the jug wasn't desperately accurate, and it took me a while to break the habit.

Once again, I was able to sit back and appreciate the pleasure that there is to be had from watching an expert do what they do best. Peter's handling of the dough was magically understated but without fail it did what he wanted it to. He went on to mould and shape the dough in various guises, again without apparent effort but always with an impressive result.

Peter was kind enough to share his recipe for a sourdough dough with us, and even kinder to give me permission to reproduce it on the web - which I propose to do here (I noted the quantities at the time on my phone, so any errors in the following will be mine)

650g strong white flour
200g stoneground rye flour
100g stoneground wholemeal flour
390g sourdough mother
530g water
25g salt

He recommended leaving the mixed dough for 30 minutes before adding the salt. Mother can be included at the lower value of 10% where it's being used for flavour only with the leavening provided by fresh yeast. I'll be trying this recipe tomorrow.

Laden down with our purchases, we repassed the book stall where we resisted the lure of the build an oven book, pausing only to deposit our completed quiz form at the door and take a photograph next to the village sign. There was no way I could pass up an opportunity like that...

And that was it for the Eye Bread Festival. Except that there was a message on my mobile a day or so ago, kindly informing me that I'd won the quiz and could I please provide an address for the voucher (valid for Border Books in Leominster). The book on building your own wood-fired bread oven was a tenner. And it was on the Border Books stalls at the festival. And they still have it in stock. Looks like I was meant to get it after all...

The mouse is definitely the Best Bit


A caterpillar family showing some interest in a flower


The home-baked loaves


It had to be done, really...


Monday 26 September 2011

All grist to the mill

Today Tallboy and I ventured into Oxfordshire, to go and look round the place that makes the Half and Half bread flour which I love using. I'd spotted on the Wessex Mill website that mill tours were available, and I booked one up to coincide with our day off work. I'd already had the experience of a tour round the larger Shipton Mill, so had an idea what to expect, but this was a first for Tallboy.

We arrived at the mill just before our allotted time and were able to park outside easily. Stepping into the mill shop, we were greeted by an almost dizzying array of flours - I hadn't realised how extensive their range was. I introduced myself and Tallboy as the 11 o' clock tour and we were shepherded through to the back by Paul Munsey, the miller.

Paul started by giving us some history of the business, the mill and the family - all three heavily intertwined. He is a fourth generation miller, his great-grandfather having become a miller in Oxford as Victoria's reign was about to end. The original mill, an image of which is on the front of the flour bags, was in Mill Street, Oxford (opposite the train station) and sadly burned down in 1945. The business then relocated to an existing mill in Mill Street, Wantage (yep, there's a bit of a theme here) with the old damaged mill standing derelict until work started this year on converting it to living accommodation (with a nifty Archimedes' Screw arrangement in the water for the production of electricity). The current building in Wantage (next to the Old Mill) was brought into service in 1980, and is a fabulous warren of busy machinery, steep wooden staircases and multiple levels of activity.

Paul talked about different flours, grains, gluten levels and more about the milling process as we went around the mill, from where the grains are received into the process to the final bagging. He showed us the state of the grist before and after each step, so we had a graphic idea of what was happening and the changes between stages. Tallboy was particularly struck by the sieving cabinets, all suspended on bamboo and moving with a mesmeric action. We were also impressed to see old machinery still living a useful life (some of it had a really old-fashioned encased-in-wood vibe). Paul explained that the machinery they have runs at about half the speed of modern flour rollers, so it produces less heat within the grist.

The final stop was the lab, where the batches of grist are tested and catalogued on the basis of protein content. I'd not heard designations of varieties of wheat before, and was surprised at the rather romantic-sounding names - Gallant, Hereward, Solstice... I was enlightened about the '0' and '00' designation of Italian flour - I'd always assumed it was to do with the strength of the flour, but it's about the degree of processing and fineness of the grinding. Paul also touched on what's involved in getting the product out there to customers, and what lies behind choices they have made about who they supply.

We had a great time - it was fascinating to see the milling process happening in front of us, and to hear about it from someone for whom it's second nature. Paul was knowledgeable, welcomed questions, and was very open in sharing the business with interested customers. What had struck me about the Wessex Mill website was the page showing the grist map - tags show the location and name of the local farms which supply the mill with grain. The backs of the bags flour are printed with the source of the grain, too. It's clear that the mill has a close relationship and dialogue with its suppliers.

The tour lasted for just about an hour, and was very well worth the journey across country. It really makes a difference to see where and how the products you use are produced, and to experience the attitude and knowledge of the people who work there. I won't be able to use my Wessex Mill flour again without picturing the building in Wantage and hearing the mill noises in my head.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Sourdough pretzels

A chum pointed me towards a recipe which uses up unfed sourdough mother - if you discard before you feed, then it does seem a terrible waste. And if you don't discard, it's nice to be able to use a bit up spontaneously, without having to decide the day before what you're going to make.

The recipe I looked at first is Sourdough Beer Pretzels, which looked brilliant. Reading through it, I saw the attribution for the original recipe, and followed the link through to King Arthur Flour. Delicious though the beer version sounds, I decided to go with the original for my first attempt at pretzels (why do I keep wanting to call them bagels?). I adapted the recipe a little to my own taste (find the original here):

3 cups strong white flour (Shipton Mill Baker's No. 1)
3/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup natural yogurt
1 cup sourdough mother (unfed)
1 tbsp olive oil
good pinch of salt
6g fresh yeast

wash made from 1 tbsp caster sugar dissolved in 2tbsp of warm water (I didn't use it all when it came to it)
Cornish sea salt to sprinkle over

I combined all the dough ingredients by hand in a bowl and worked the dough until silky. It was pretty sticky (perhaps I should have added a tiny bit less yogurt?). I left it, covered, in the bowl for 50 minutes or so, then turned it out and divided into a dozen pieces.

I rolled each piece into a long sausage (the target was about 18"), which wasn't as easy as you might think. I had many breakages and adhesions on the way. Finally I looped them around and tried to arrange in a pretzel shape, in some cases going for a poncy double twist. Once safely on the tray (I reckoned if I peeled them in the shape would be even more distressing that it already was) I brushed with the wash and sprinkled with salt. Way, way too much salt.

They then went straight into an oven at 180°C for 20 - 25 mins (top tray out at 20 mins, bottom one to the top for another few mins).

They smelled amazing when they came out, and I was willing them to cool so that I could try one. I wasn't disappointed - a beautiful chewy texture, wonderful flavour, delicious crust. Really, really good. Definitely going to try these again, not only because I clearly need the shaping practice, and I think there's room for a bunch of little modifications here and there. Next time I'll try my smoked sea salt on top.



Tuesday 20 September 2011

Oh the pain, the pain!

So, a whole week in France! What a fabulous opportunity to sample some real bread and talk to French bakers. A quick vocab review and I was ready to question the ingredients and methods that they used. If I dared, when push came to shove, and didn't just scuttle out clutching the nearest baguette without having said anything...

In the first boulangerie I visited, I explained that I liked to make bread at home, and would it be OK if I asked a few questions. It was, so I did. I asked if there was any rye bread - there wasn't. I asked if they used any sourdough or if it was all bog standard yeast - all bog standard. They were baked in an electric oven with injections of steam at appropriate moments. I bought a baguette and a pain de campagne but didn't think to photograph them, and I was rather disappointed that they weren't amazing.

In the next boulangerie, which boasted its artisanal credentials in big letters above the door, I had my spiel down pat and was again allowed to ask my questions by a puzzled boulanger. No, they didn't use any sourdough starter, just normal yeast. No, they didn't have a rye loaf. They did have some huge round rustic looking bread, which was much more attractive than the regimented ranks in the first boulangerie. I didn't really fancy any of it though, apart from one bread, which I knew I had to have as soon as I saw it - an epi, and not just any epi but one made with granary type flour. It was very very good, and sustained me after my long walk up the hill as I sat outside the house I was staying in, waiting for the owner to come back from the village lunch. Waiting, and waiting. And then waiting a bit more. A few chunks of epi, some figs and a beautiful ripe peach plucked from the garden, and a swig or two of water, sat in the sunshine. Heaven!



In the final one, faced once more with a slightly bemused boulanger, I again requested information. Why yes, they did use a sourdough starter for some of their breads. And yes, here was a rye sourdough loaf. And they had a wood-fired oven. Perfect! I bought a rye loaf - it was the most bizarre shape I think I've ever seen - and a pain whose name I forget. It had the most incredible crust, crumb and taste. It was so wonderful that even now I am saddened by the hundreds of miles which lie between me and my next opportunity to have some. The boulangerie is Le Fournil Talludéen, and if you find yourself passing it, stop, turn around, reverse, whatever. You need to go in there.





I also scoured every bookshop I could, and bought a couple of books. The first one offered me the secrets of home-made bread (les secrets du pain « maison » by Hélène Pasquiet), and the second is all about sourdough, including lengthy poetic discourses on the elements that go into making your dough (Apprendre à faire son pain au levain naturel by Henri Granier). It's got some nifty scoring pictures in it too.



It was brilliant to bound into these shops with a feeling of anticipation and excitement, knowing I was going to see new sights and discover new things. The daily experience of buying bread is so different there - there is so much direct contact with the people who actually make the bread, with people who know what goes into it and how it's made. It's so much more tactile too, and if it does get wrapped, it's most likely to be in a quick twist of paper or a paper bag which doesn't seal your bread away from you. And Richard Bertinet is right (but don't tell him, or he'll be smug), I defy anyone to handle a beautiful pain without giving it a squeeze and appreciating the sound the crust makes as it yields, without bringing it up to their nose and breathing in the wonderful scent, without examining it for the first bit they will break off, without trying to resist a little then giving in to the inevitable and taking their first taste.

And the title? Well, yes. I'm sorry it was so painful...

Sunday 18 September 2011

Today's batch

Yesterday didn't get rid of the baking bug so today I rustled up a batch of Schiacciata con l'Uva and with the rest of the olive oil dough I put together something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Chelsea buns.

At the end of working the dough, I added the end of a bag of flaked almonds and some snipped up soft dried apricots. After the rise, I rolled it out on the worktop, spread it with apricot jam, added some more snipped up apricots and a dusting of allspice, then rolled it up, cut it into 9 and placed in a square baking tin to prove. When I took it out of the oven I brushed the tops with an icing sugar wash.



Saturday 17 September 2011

Today's batch

Today I've made a fair few loaves - I clearly missed making bread while I was away in France, so have made up for it this weekend.

I wanted to make some nibbly/breaky breads for dinner tonight with The Cossack, some tin loaves for the week, some pittas, and finally to use my own sourdough mother for the first time.

I fed all three sourdough mothers on Friday morning, leaving my white Clive one in the fridge, and bringing out my rye Clive one, and my own white one onto the worktop to spend the day at ambient temperature. They had both risen up nicely by the time I was ready to make the dough at about ten that evening. I first went for all rye flour with the rye mother, and it made the most horrendous sludge that I just couldn't work at all. Perhaps I should have looked at a recipe before bunging it all together... I tried to rescue it for a while but it became clear that it was beyond redemption and I consigned it to the compost heap, which could have interesting consequences. I took another helping of mother and just used standard white flour, and having worked both doughs I left them under plastic on the worktop in their bowls overnight.

In the morning, I was a bit concerned at the texture of the doughs as they appeared rather runny but once I'd taken them out of their bowls, they were workable and firmer than they'd looked. They had risen beautifully. I took 1.5 kilos of each dough and after folding and moulding placed each into a rye-dusted banneton. The remainder of each dough I pulled together into one lump and folded and moulded into a boule.

I was really pleased with everything today, particularly the sourdough and particularly that from my own homemade mother. I was very happy with the texture of the sourdoughs, much improved from the last time.

For the sourdough, the fougasses and pittas I used Shipton Mill No. 1 Baker's white flour, for the brown tin loaves I used Wessex Mill Half and Half.

Fougasses


My first bread from my very own sourdough mother:







Sourdough loaf from rye mother:





Boule made from the two sourdough doughs:



Brown tin loaf

Saturday 3 September 2011

Today's batch

Today I made an extra large batch to last the boys while I'm away. I'm not entirely convinced it will be enough, but we'll see...

Today also marked my first foray into sourdough, which needed a whole different approach, and which I'm going to need to practise a fair bit more, I can tell. I'm still pretty pleased with them though.

I made two tin loaves with my newly-acquired Shipton Mill No. 1 Baker's White flour (I splashed out on a 25kg sack!). The dough was silky and wonderful to work, and the resulting loaves rose beautifully, had great texture, and smell and taste wonderful. I made a couple of fougasses with the extra left over after filling the tins, and I kept 200g back for my next batch of white bread.

I made two batches of sourdough dough, one with the rye mother and one with the white mother. I chose to use the same white flour to make both batches of dough, rather than rye flour for the rye mother, because I wanted to be able to see, smell and taste the difference between the two. The rye mother went crazy when I fed it, but the white one didn't start up until much, much later - I think it hadn't peaked when I used it, which probably explains the enormous holes in the finished loaf.

Tin loaves




Sourdough

These are made from the dough which was surplus to requirements for the bannetons. I didn't prove them for very long, and I obviously didn't score them well enough as the pictures below show - an object lesson in what happens when the loaves can't expand properly on top. I wasn't sure how long they needed in the oven, and I think they could have benefited from a longer bake. The little loaf from the rye mother is on the left in the next three images.





This is the finished white sourdough loaf, proved in a 1.5 kg oval banneton. The texture of the dough was very wet and the loaf collapsed when I turned it out of the banneton, but it rose very vigorously in the oven. The texure is like Swiss cheese!





This is the finished rye sourdough, which I proved in the 1.5 kg round banneton. It sat up nicely when it turned it out onto the peel, even though it fell out of the basket and slapped itself down quite hard. The texture is much better than the white one. The crust on both of the sourdough loaves is wonderful and crispy.




Friday 2 September 2011

The long and the short of it

I made pastry at the course on Tuesday. With my hands. Using bread flour. It was delicious.

I think it's pretty unlikely that you're reading the above with the same sense of amazement with which I wrote it. I've always found it next to impossible to make decent pastry - the closest I've come is doing the rubbing in in the food processor, but this makes it so hard to get the water right. And even if I did get the water right, I'd then have to handle it and it would transform from pastry into a lump of closely-knit grey stuff.

So the fact that I made pastry with my hands, using strong flour, and that it was delicious is still a source of absolute astonishment to me. Clive demonstrated the method of emulsifying the butter and the water, which we then followed. When I added the emulsion to the flour it produced a pliable, yellow and smooth paste which I handled as if it were Play-Doh and which remained supple and beautifully pale. Clive pinned his out and used it to make jamless jam tarts - just to demonstrate to us the texture and shortness of the finished pastry shells. They were incredible, lovely to eat plain just as they were, short as you like, crisp, wonderful. We took our pastry paste home in our boxes and I stashed mine in the fridge for a couple of days.

I decided that I was going to make biscuits with mine, so I took it out of the fridge and let it come up to ambient temperature. When it was ready to be worked, I zested a lemon onto the worktop then started working the paste on top of it so that the zest was incorporated fully into it. I rolled it out and cut out little circle and star shapes and transferred to a parchment lined tray. I rerolled the trimmings time after time without the paste degrading, and at no point did I need any flour on the worktop. A quick flash in the oven and a sprinkling of sugar and I had the loveliest, lightest, crispest, shortest little biscuits. Which I placed next to Tallboy on the sofa, and which inexplicably disappeared within a very few minutes.

The advantage of paste made with this method is that it is less likely to shrink back or puff up when being baked, which is a relief because in the past, if I did manage to make rollable pastry, I always managed to have it fall in on itself when baking the quiche case blind, with the distressing consequences of quiche filling escaping and pooling in unsuitable places.

This, then, is why I am most excited by this new discovery that I can make pastry, with my hands, even using strong bread flour, which is fantastic and delicious and manipulable and rollable and rerollable and everything. It's magic!