Going Dutch

I have a fan oven. It's quite enthusiastic. It huffs and it puffs and it makes your bread brown. Dark brown, you know, the dark brown with lots of carbon in it. Even adjusted for fan-ness, at the right bread-making temperature my loaves were all turning out darker than I wanted. I was also finding that my loaves lacked in the oven spring department because introducing baking stones (well, granite chopping boards) had necessitated a rearrangement of oven shelves which meant that there was no room for a steam tray, and the quick-grab-the-spray-and squirt-through-teeny-gap-in-the-door-without-letting-too-much-heat-out approach never seemed to work brilliantly.

One option would be to buy a reconditioned rack oven and convert the garage into my own dream bakery. But, back on planet Earth, I looked for a slightly easier solution. I read about Dutch ovens - a cast iron casserole with a tight-fitting lid would create the steamy atmos I wanted, while at the same time ensuring an even heat distribution and protecting it from burning. I looked online for likely candidates, while Tallboy carefully measured inside the oven. I flirted for a while with this large specimen from Lakeland, but finally lit on this fine example from Ikea, and its friend.

I've been using them for a couple of months and I'm really pleased with the results. I put them into the oven before I turn it on, so that they heat up gradually. I decant the proved loaves from the banneton straight onto a piece of silicone liner, then drop this gently into the hot casserole, slamming the lid on quickly to keep in the heat and steam. I bake at my normal bread temperature (230° C, or rather 210° C in my oven) and leave the lids on for 20 or 25 minutes, then complete the bake topless, leaving the lids on the hob. This gives a lovely rise during the first session, and much better browning during the second. During my initial recuperation from the car accident when I couldn't lift, Tallboy and I got quite good at the ballet sequences involved in my opening the oven door and his removing/replacing the casseroles, but since his motorbike accident coincided with the return of my ability to lift things it's a solo effort nowadays.

Some observations about using a Dutch oven for baking bread:

• Maximum of two loaves at a time - I could do four direct on the baking stones.


• I made sure that the handles on the lids were cast iron too, rather than plastic which might not have been so happy at high bread-baking temperatures


• They get hot. I mean really hot. Seriously hot. So hot that I have hurt myself simply by touching the outside of the oven gloves I used to get them out of the oven.


• I haven't yet gone to pick up a discarded lid with bare hands to tidy it away while still searingly hot. But I fear that one day I will.


• They don't do so well if the loaf is small - it needs to take up a decent volume inside the casserole or it will pancake.


• I have found that the round one works best with my 500g round bannetons, and the oval one with my 1kg oval banneton.


• You can use baking parchment to decant the proved loaves onto but it chars after a few times in the oven.


• Having cast iron casseroles in your batterie de cuisine makes you feel strangely grown up.


• They have helped me produce loaves of which I'm really, really proud.


• Baked on flour residue makes for an attractive spotty finish on the lids. Or so I tell myself.


• The oval one is bigger than the round one. It won't fit on the bottom of the oven, no matter how many times you try.

Here are some pictures from some of today's batch (50% stoneground spelt, 50% strong white)

Silicone liner for decanting proved loaves


The big oval casserole


After twenty minutes - beautifully risen but pale as you like


After another fifteen or so minutes, now with crust


The smaller round casserole


After twenty minutes


At the end of the bake


Round loaf sitting up and looking pretty


Both loaves

No, not like the Italian dictator...

This week's first-time-make was a cream mousseline topping and filling for a coffee and walnut cake. Delia told me to do it.

Tallboy had watched Masterchef yearningly the day before and having seen a parade of patisserie, had evinced a deep longing for a coffee and walnut cake. He then buggered off for the day to give me space to roll up my sleeves and get baking. Indeed, he timed it so well that just as I heard his key in the lock, the oven started beep-beep beep-beep beep-beep to tell me to get the cakes out.

As I had doubled up the cake mixture, I decided to double up the topping/filling too. It seemed only fair. The trouble with doubling things up in your head isn't the simple things like using 120g of sugar instead of 60g. It's when you try to get clever with tablespoonsful and translate them into ml and then into other measurements. Being lazy, I'm not keen on repeated small actions. I'd rather do a single action. That's why I wrote all that code at work, so that I could achieve in a single click what it would otherwise take minutes or even hours of clicking to do. So if a recipe wants 4 tablespoons of something, a quick multiply by 15 gives me the total ml, then I wrestle the appropriate cup measure from the hook and Bob's your uncle - a single measurement. I needed 4 tablespoons of water, 4 x 15 = 60ml. Except of course that I was doubling up, so make that 8 x 15 (or 4 x 15 x 2) = 120ml or half a cup measure. Brilliant. So when I go to make the sugar syrup, I have half a cup of water in my brain. I mean the idea of using half a cup of water, not hydrocephalus. Right, one half cup of water into my pan, and then another, because I'm doubling up, right?

My second deviation from the optimal was employing my old sugar thermometer. There's nothing wrong with it, it has been my trusty friend for decades. But it was a small pan, and the liquid wasn't very deep so the bulb wasn't covered. And I had to identify a temperature of between 103 and 105 °C, an operation which involves a fair bit of squinting and face-screwing-up. Had I thought about it instead of reaching automatically into the drawer for the old-fashioned kit, I'd have used my super duper digital thermometer with the probe.

The sugar syrup needs to boil gently for ten to fifteen minutes until it reaches the right temperature. At about minute 14 it suddenly struck me that I'd used too much water and that I needed to ditch this batch and start again. A further 15 minutes down the line, I was squinting through the steam and deciding that the temperature was approximately between 103 and 105 °C and this surely would be ok.

The trick was now to pour the syrup onto the egg yolks in my mixing bowl in a continuous stream while I carried on whisking with my other hand. As I poured and continued and whisked, the mixture seemed dreadfully thin and not at all cake-coating consistency. In fact, I put the pan down for a few seconds so that I could go back to Delia to check that it was actually yolks I needed - had I managed to get an Italian meringue dreadfully wrong? Delia told me that it was yolks and to get on with it.

Now I pinched bits off the unfeasibly huge amount of butter I had weighed out and whisked them in. With my right arm wilting, I decided to apply the right kind of technology and brought my electric whisk to bear, which made things much easier, but the consistency wasn't changing any. *pinch* *drop* *whisk* Is this right? *pinch* *drop* *whisk* This can't be right *pinch* *drop* *whisk* I'm just going to do a buttercream when I abandon this *pinch* *drop* *whisk*

All the butter was now in the mix but there was no way that it was going to cover the cake for more than a second or two before it succumbed to combination of gravity and its own low viscosity. I kept the whisks going while I leaned over to scan the recipe again. Yes, I'd included what was required, and done what Delia said. Maybe the temperature hadn't been quite right. Maybe I could do with reading glasses nowadays. Maybe I'd been right the first time with the water. I turned back to the sloppy contents of the bowl and regarded them idly as I wondered what I should do. It was then that The Miracle happened and all of a sudden I had a workable cake topping in front of me. For a moment I thought the mixture had split or something similarly awful had come to pass, and turned the whisks off. I realised that all was ok and bunged in the coffee quickly before it changed its mind. A further tentative whisk and I had a perfect coffee-coloured and -flavoured cream for my cake.

I filled and topped (and sided) the cake, perching some half walnuts on top for a hint at the contents. The bowl scrapings were delish - very creamy but light and not too sweet. I was really impressed and very happy with the outcome, and glad that I'd kept whisking beyond what I'd thought was a sensible point.

Offering a slice to Tallboy, I tried to explain the trials I'd been through to satisfy his craving. I told him that I'd never done this kind of topping before, not a standard buttercream but a mousseline. "Oh," he said through a mouthful of crumbs, "like the Italian dictator?"

Beware of Greek bread that doesn't lift

I am determined not to be beaten by this eftazimo. I will make some that turns out all right. I might be 90 by the time I manage it, but I will.

I decided to try Vefa's recipe again, but this time to go for a much looser dough. I achieved that, at least. Much, much looser...

This time I was excited to use my new, specially-purchased-for-pounding-chick-peas pestle and mortar. It's huge and solid and spectacularly therapeutic when it comes to crushing the innocent. It's an absolute monster, weighs half of what Junior did when he was born, and was going to be much more fun than the coffee grinder. With not much effort, the chick peas crumbled at my knees. Well, they split in half and discarded their skins. On the downside, I had to be very precise when attacking them, and give each one its own doink - It's pretty impressive how far a mis-hit chick pea can ricochet round the kitchen. On an entirely unrelated note, stepping on a partial chick pea in stocking feet is not an experience one wishes to try more than once. Or even once, really.

I was left with mostly-in-half chick peas, which I decided was probably ok. I put them in my kilner jar with some salt and boiling water, wrapped it in a towel and left it in the cosy airing cupboard for 25 hours, having alerted the boys that it was meant to be there and didn't need rescuing. After its sojourn in the airing cupboard, the jar showed evidence of extreme activity although the froth that was left wasn't much to write home about. It had clearly risen very high up the jar in a desperate attempt to escape its fate, so I am sorry I didn't peek earlier and rescue it then.

I decanted the froth and the juice and mixed it with a tablespoon of sugar and some of Shipton Mill's finest. Something made me put it in a bigger bowl than last time. A plastic hat, then back in the airing cupboard with it. I did peek this time, just before bed, and saw to my horror (ok, deep joy) that the stuff was almost fermenting its way out of the bowl. I scooted downstairs and decanted it into a bigger one to make sure it couldn't escape. In the morning, it didn't look much different, it hadn't grown any and if anything had fewer bubbles. I think I missed the bus on this one again.

The next morning I wasn't ready to use it, so I gave it a spot of breakfast to keep it going and then made up the dough later on that afternoon. I was more liberal with the water this time and in complete opposition to the tight little mass I made last time, I had the sloppiest slappiest dough which I worked the Bertinet way because there wasn't anything else I could do with it.

I left it to prove in a couple of round bannetons in front of the radiator. I watched it like a hawk but couldn't see any movement apart from when one blew a huge bubble at me in a sticking-out-its-tongue fashion. I decided to bake one on a granite slab in the oven, and one in my smaller dutch oven. Neither of these turned out to be a particularly good idea. The one on the stone spread and spread and didn't look like it would ever stop. 'Pancake' is what came to mind as I peered forlornly through the oven window. The one in the dutch oven didn't fare much better.

Again it has been popular with the boys, so it's not a dead loss. It's just galling that getting the chick peas fermenting seems from the write-ups to be the difficult bit, and that is happening for me. It's what I do afterwards that is drenched in fail.

Next time I am going to be guided by Paula Wolfert so you never know, I might have something neat to show you then...

Behold the power of my granite monster


I'm not sure this adds a great deal, I just quite liked the photo


It didn't seem to smell as weird this time. Maybe I'm getting used to it.


Conclusive evidence of an attempted escape


This wouldn't look any different in 3D


The one on the right looks like a cross between a drop scone and a dodgem car


A valiant attempt at bubble formation

A right pair of Herberts

Last night saw another trip to Bath to see foodie people at Topping and Company . My previous visit was to see Dan Lepard talking about Short and Sweet; this time it was two for the price of one with the Fabulous Baker Brothers putting in an appearance.

The shop was extremely full and although I arrived at the billed door-opening time, there were only really spaces at some distance from the speakers. I chose a seat in the back row which gave me space to stretch out my poorly leg and left my bag on it while I headed to the till to pick up my copy of the book. On my return I found a woman sitting happily in my chair, having stashed my bag some way under a table. I struggled to bend down to retrieve it and took up another seat, rather bemused.

The brothers were introduced and Tom spoke widely about a range of subjects, allowing Henry to interject on occasion (in between batches of pancakes). Fortunately, the chaps' voices carried all the way down to us at the end, although this wasn't the case for some of the questioners at the end. Tom talked about all sorts: the origins of Hobbs House bakery, the Herbert baking dynasty, his own career as a baker, his dad's record-breaking achievements. Oh, and bread. Henry talked about being banned from stuff, his career as a chef and latterly as a butcher (not quite so gripping from a veggie point of view, but I knew the score when I bought the ticket), and they both talked about the Channel 4 series and the book, which was produced in a miraculously short turn around time.

The brothers clearly share great enthusiasm for food in general and bread in particular, and work well as a sibling double act. Henry produced an enormous double stack of sourdough pancakes which elicited loud cries of 'Ooooh!' when periodically held aloft. At least they did after the crowd was coached to respond thus in true pantomime style. Tom and Henry both spoke entertainingly and welcomed questions which they answered readily. I couldn't always hear what was being said as the four women in the row in front kept up an unselfconscious conversation for the latter part of proceedings - for the second time that evening my unerring sense of where to sit had struck gold...

When the talking and questions were over, the boys adjourned to the far end of the store for signing, and I shuffled to the end of a long queue of signees. The queue didn't move very fast as the boys took time to talk to everyone who approached them, and (as I discovered as I got within sight) to practise the impressive art of synchronised defacement of the books presented to them. When my turn came, I presented my book and Tom stood up to greet me and shake my hand in a very gentlemanly manner. When I divulged that I had worked at Hobbs House in Chipping Sodbury for several weeks one summer when a student (an awfully long time ago now), he raised my still captive hand to his lips. (I didn't do anything interesting at the bakehouse, just cutting up cakes in trays, but it was fun and you got to see mysterious bread making stuff going on, as well as the juddering shuddering bread slicing machines which always looked to me like they were waiting for the opportunity of snagging your cardie and drawing you, screaming, into their slavering maws.) In the meantime Henry had commenced defacement and upon learning that the book was to be a gift, took it all in his stride and redoubled his efforts.

The book itself is absolutely packed with recipes and tips, and I am pleased to have got one to give to someone special, although the dead stuff:other stuff ratio is a bit too high for me to feel it's a good addition to my mainly vegetarian cookery library. I had a great evening listening to the lads and it was a treat to meet them and see their obvious pleasure in sharing their enthusiasm. There's clearly a lot more to come from them as artisans in their chosen fields, participants in the wider Real Bread movement, involvement in community projects and no doubt further appearances on screen and/or in print. Whatever's in store, I am sure they will rise to the occasion...