Crusty white Italian loaf - unplugged

MsG recently invested in copies of Yotam Ottolenghi's two books: The Cookbook and Plenty. Plenty is packed with recipes from his Guardian Weekend column, such as the smashing Shakshuka. Both MsG and I have made recipes from this book and have found ourselves enjoying a variety of ingredients and combinations we'd previously never tried (and in some cases, vociferously refused) to cook with or eat.

The Cookbook also includes a hefty baking section. I've already made a few of the recipes, including the semolina tart (see pic below; I heretically used strawberries instead of the prescribed raspberries) and focaccia.

One recipe that had to be tackled was the crusty white Italian loaf. A recipe by Dan Lepard, the loaf is described as "having dark crunchy crust, soft waxy centre with giant holes and giant flavour". Sounds very tempting but the recipes states: "To achieve this creation … you need a good mixer as the dough is very wet and sticky and takes a lot of kneading. Don't try to do it by hand or using an old weak machine." For an advocate of hand made bread this caveat had the soft plopping sound of a floury baking gauntlet being thrown down.

The first attempt was a minor disaster. I tried using Richard Bertinet's technique for hand mixing but the final loaf was flat, dense and doughy; just awful. However, I was still convinced the loaf could be made completely by hand and was sure that if I adopted Dan Lepard's mxing style it would work. MsG tweeted Dan about it, and brilliantly, he replied saying that, yes a slow or no knead technique would work.

And so the following Friday I made the loaf using Mr Lepard's slow knead technique and the loaf was a success (see the handsome devil in the first picture above). An almost Faustian have-your-cake-and-eat-it mix of the best bits of all your favourite bread: a rustic crunchy crust, a soft, chewy crumb and a brilliant intense flavour. Definately well worth the effort.

Mills and boon

Over the last few weekends MsG and I have visited some local mills. The Cambridge and Norfolk fens are littered with many remaining sites but only a handful are still complete, and even fewer are actually working.

The best we've seen so far has been the wonderful windmill in Denver. Thanks to the hard working owner, the mill is working well and producing ground flour.

If you should visit this delightful mill, please observe the following advice. Avoid shoving your arms or other appendages into anything that moves and clanks to avoid stomach churning mutilation; watch where your step so you don't plummet to your death; and avoid banging your noggin on the numerous head-height obstacles! Beware: danger! Do all of the above, buying a bag of freshly ground flour, relaxing and enjoying a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich (cake for the veggies!) in their lovely tea room and stop to chat with the owner and you'll have found yourself tucking away another fond memory.

A pint of bread please, Landlord!

This weekend marks the start of a run of beer-based bread antics…

Saturday, I travelled accross several counties to visit the old folks, armed with the gift of loaf: a handsome looking ale-poolish loaf I'd baked the night before.

Sunday: I baked a Guinness and rye flour loaf. It begins likes this: Guinness, flour and yeast are whisked together and left to ferment for a few hours, creating a kind of poolish. More flour and a little salt is added to it before being worked for about 5-10 minutes. Next? You know the score: rest, stretch, rest, shape, prove and bake.

The baked loaf was pretty good, the rye and Guinness imparting a strong malty almost aniseedy taste. With plenty of white flour added to the poolish style ferment the loaf is also surprisingly light. Guinness is generally for drinking in our house, though it it has been sloshed into sausage casseroles before, but it also makes a good sturdy ingredient in bread.

To the lads at Guinness: if want to send me a free keg or two to say, 'thanks for nod' then drop me a line.

Next weekend, I'm planning to make an ale barm loaf: live bottle-conditioned ale mixed with a little leaven. I'm excited. I really am.

Slasher horror

Friday. I made another sourdough loaf. And I forgot to slash it. AGAIN! And so another sourdough loaf was baked sans slash. Nevertheless, it did bake well and we all agreed it tasted pretty good. Slashes? We don't need no stinking slashes!

Sunday. I made another sourdough loaf. I slashed that mother!

It tasted just the same, baked just the same. But this time however, the loaf had a striking pattern of stripes accross it. It would've made a stunning dining table centre-piece for a dinner party with friends. Unfortunately, I wasn't hosting a dinner party. And I don't have any friends.

One slight eff-up: in the early stage of baking, the dough oozed* over the edge of the baking stone, which created a strange kind of loaf-claw* on the edge of the loaf.

*Genuine baking jargon.

Khorasan Klub

This weekend's star turns: Pizza dough! Khorasan loaf!

The pizza dough recipe was taken from Ciril Hitz's book, Handmade Breads. Not using Italian '00' grade flour I can't say for certain just how authentic the recipe was but it made a pair of very tasty pizzas. The addition of cornmeal to the mix gave a crunchiness and a generously fermented poolish added extra zing to the flavour.

The khorasan loaf recipe is a first for me, taken from the recently acquired Crust book. Principle ingredient is kamut khorasan flour (check out the link ) which gives a loaf a richer, sweeter, nutty taste and imparts a pleasant sandy colour to the crumb and a golden hue to the crust. Surprisingly easy to make we all agreed: lovely bread!

Soured DOH!

Over the weekend I made another attempt at a sourdough. The requisite stages all went well: the ferment nice and sour, the mix and kneading smooth, and the transfer from banetton to baking sheet by the book slick. I was thrusting the dough into the steamy oven, slamming the door shut when I realised: I hadn't slashed the loaf. The horror!

I didn't shout but I think I did say the f word approximately 20 times.

It might seem an overreaction but a sourdough loaf without slashes is just plain wrong. It's like Walk on the Wild Side without the sax solo, The Third Man without the Zither score, or E S Blofeld without his white cat. Just a simple, deceptively minor addition that adds so much.

Nevertheless, the final loaf did taste really, very good - even without slashes.

Ale Poolish Loaf

A loaf baked with ale? It sounds like madness, but it seems that if a potential ingredient is at least technically edible then you can put it in a loaf.

Read top bread boffin Dan Lepard's bread book and you'll see recipes that include ale, cider, wine, whey (or the water that mozzarella is packed in), cucumber pickle juice, lard, pork crackling to name a few (not all the same loaf). Yum, yum.

In this instance, ale is mixed with an equal weight of flour and a little yeast to create a poolish ferment. Left to bubble overnight it's added into the dough mix the next morning. The resulting dough has a wonderful, strong sweet aroma which stays with it throughout the whole process, right through to the final baked loaf.

The loaf had a distinct malty taste, with a nice golden crust and soft, sweet white crumb. Another tasty recipe from Crust.

East Anglian Secret Sourdough Society

The first recipe to be tackled from Crust had to be the sourdough loaf. Having made Dan Lepard's leaven loaves a few times I felt I was ready to take on Mr Bertinet's authentic sourdough method.

Using Bertinet's flour / water ratio for his sourdough ferment, I refreshed good old Cuthbert the Leaven. After a few days of cultivating I had nice sweet smelling ferment just like it said in the book.

Anyway I can hear your eyes glazing over: "Oh geez more boring baking tosh!" you rightly wimper. So I'll condense the tale into a few simple, yet thrilling facts.

Eight thrilling sourdough recipe facts: 
• Ingredients included spelt flour. Yes: SPELT!
• 18 hours to prove! (I used a banetton.)
• 35 minutes to bake.
• When baked it had a sweet and sour aroma.
• Thick crunchy, chewy crust.
• Soft, tasty sour crumb.
• Everyone who had a bit said it was nice.
• Makes the best toast ever.

It was a success. Hooray! I'll be making this again soon.

Kingdom of crust

This year's yuletide discharge from Santa's bulging sacks revealed a copy of Crust by Richard Bertinet from my lovely wife MsG. Hooray!

Boasting an impressive length of recipe numbers and an enviable girth of bread analysis, Criust is an extension of his first book Dough, Bertinet taking the reader deeper into the world of fermented vittles. The book includes detailed method for creating a sourdough ferment, along with a recipe for a stunning looking sourdough loaf.

Bracketing the book's impressive looking recipes are detailed, enthusiastic descriptions of the bread baking processes, ingredients, tools and techniques, and a choice list of suppliers.

The author's real gift is the ability to teach fairly complicated baking procedures in simple, logical ways. Baking sourdough for instance, is not an easy task at all, but Bertinet Padawan's can turn out impressive looking loaves, the kind of which overpaid Knightsbridge punters would happily fork out good gelt at their local deli. This is the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn how to bake cool looking bread.

What a tart!

MsG's birthday is woefully close to Jesus's, which means: a double December sized dent on the credit card for presents.

However, nothing furnishes swollen outgoings with welcome relief like a home-made gift. Spousal kudos is raised immeasurably by delivering a small item that (often literally) reeks of toil and sweat. So to counterbalance the presents I've got for MsG I've baked her a smashing cake.

After a rifle through several magazines and books MsG settled on a pine nut and honey tart. It was quite easy to make, the pastry being the trickiest element. It all came together well in the end though, with the final verdict from Judge G: a big thumbs up!

*

Also baked this weekend: crumpets (not a great success), and another bash at the all round favourite lemon barley cob.

I've seen this happen in other people's loaves and now it's happening in mine

Hurrah! At last: I've made a loaf that looks like it wasn't baked by a chimp. In fact, Sunday's loaf could easily have sneaked into a quality baker's display and probably have stayed there all day without being rumbled.

The emergence of this fine loaf leaves behind several months of lumpy, burned and disfigured feakish breads.

Generally the success is mostly down to finally getting right all the different aspects of baking the loaf. Mixing, kneading, resting, shaping, proofing, and critically: transferring into the oven. Everything just went right.

One big difference: when I turned the oven on, I placed an empty loaf tin at the bottom of the oven. When the loaf went in, about 60 minutes later, I very carefully poured a small cupful of water into the loaf tin. This time, the loaf had a nice steamy oven to bake in.

After much deliberation, I finally decided to try a more steamy approach to baking (see earlier posts). And it appears to have worked really well. Note the fine, dramatic tears and ridges in the loaf. The crust had a nice crunch, but not so hard as to bust your crowns.

Cue smug arm folding and a dignified nod to indicate: very satisfactory.

Challah Murphy!

Ms G has put in a request for a challah this Christmas, so on Friday I did a dummy run.

As luck would have it, challah is a great bread to turn out, as it looks impressive but is relatively easy to make. Patience seemed to be the key.

It's pretty quick and easy to mix all the ingredients, and the dough rises without any trouble.

The tricky bit was rolling out the long strands of dough. Platted together to make the distinctive challah shape, they need to be of equal length and of a consistent, even girth (a proper baking term). This means you need to divide your dough evenly by weight, and gently, patiently tease the dough into long, smooth strands.

After that, the finished loaf can be slipped into the oven on the tray it's proofed on which makes life very easy.

The final challah looked and tasted pretty good. Hurrah said Ms G.

May the dough rise with you

Last weekend we went to jolly old London village. We did the essential shoe busting route march across town, looked at stuff. More walking. Looked at some other stuff. More walking. Great fun.

Anyway, London seems to be the only place in the UK where you can buy bannetons. Lovely, linen-lined baskety things. I glommed three of the buggers: big, medium, small. Now who looks like an authentic baker?

Back at the bat-cave: time to give one the new purchases a road-test. After a 60 minute repose in the new snug, cosy banneton, the dough had risen into a perfectly formed round loaf. Brilliant!

Unfortunately, when it was time to hop into the oven, the obdurate, doughy bastard wouldn't budge from the peel. After some typically clumsy tussling, a now lumpy loaf was finally shoved into the waiting cooker.

The important thing, of course is to learn from one's mistakes. Next time: gently tip the proven dough onto an appropriately flour and semolina dusted peel.

Steam Punk

After the thoughts I'd noted in the previous post I was determined to see improvements in bread appearance.

Last week's loaf (shown above) sports a very satisfying, rugged tear right down the middle. Clearly there's still room for improvement but what gave the loaf a shove in the right direction? A generous blast of steam from my water sprayer every ten minutes. Normally the loaf just gets one quick spray before being hurled into the oven.

I've been pretty hesitant about creating too much steam. While it must be true that a lot of oven cooking generates moisture, I'm not convinced that your common domestic oven has been designed to cope with high levels of steam. I want to make cool looking bread but I don't want to wreck my oven.

I did a google search on the subject. I expected to find forum titles such as "When I'm baking bread I like to steam out the oven with gay abandon and now my ovens gone all rusty boohoo!" But no. No reported steam/rust complaints.

Well, I've got an engineer coming round to fix the pilot light on the cooker in a few weeks time so I'll ask him what he reckons. If the Smeg man says, "Steam BAD! Smeg man SMASH" then I'll know I'll have to tolerate bland bread.

*

This weekend I baked nine small, tasty baquettes and a big barleycorn loaf (300g strong white flour, 200g barleycorn flour, 350g water, 10g yeast, 10g salt / mix in bowl, knead for five mins / rest ten mins / knead a little more, form into a ball / rest 60 mins / shape / proof 60 mins / bake 30 mins 250ºc). No photos as they weren't the prettiest loaves you'd have seen. They did however, taste fantastic.

Loaf Shape Woes

This weekend I made a batch of Lemon Barley Cobs (no photo this week). They all baked well and tasted really good (sounds like a boast but the author of the recipe takes the credit) however, I'm still unsatisfied with the overall look of the loaves.

The main problems: the clumsy transfer of proofed dough to the peel, and my inability to get the dough into the oven quickly and smoothly. The shape of the baked loaves thus end up looking anything from wobbly and misshapen to downright vulgar (see earlier post, Handmade in Britain).

The most disappointing aspect however, is the fact that my loaves lack the lovely, dramatic tears you get from professionally baked bread. I'm not sure if it's because I'm slashing the dough too deep / too lightly, if it's down to dough being over-proofed / under-proofed, or if it's a result of my aforementioned loaf/oven interaction.

Top Tip #1

Don't pummel your dough in a blanket of flour: learn to tenderly knead it on a clean surface without any extra flour.

When I first started baking bread about ten months ago, I found the most vocal sources on the internet peddled the above heavy duty technique. After consulting a few authoritative books - and a little of my own trial and error - a simple, more considered approach emerged.

It might seem strange at first, working wet sticky dough in your hands. But any additional flour spread accross the work surface gets picked up by the dough and makes a much denser bread - a brick! Kneading without the extra flour makes for a far quicker method - just keep folding in air, with a gentle, consistent mix for no more than five minutes. Then cover your dough with a clean tea towel and leave it to rest for a further five minutes.

Return to the dough and behold, although still a little sticky the dough is now a smooth cohesive whole; it should feel light and airy. Give it a dozen more kneads and then, with a sparing amount of flour form the dough into a ball on the work surface and transfer to a bowl to rest and rise. Simple.

Lemon Barley Cob

Thanks to the weather gods, we were treated to a wet and windy Sunday this weekend. So we stayed in and baked stuff.

I made a Lemon Barely Cob (from Dan Lepard's bread book). Using white leaven, strong white flour as the base we added into the mix barley flour, lemon juice and zest, and a spoon of honey.

A great bread roundly praised by my lovely wife, Ms G. A nice soft loaf, the lemon and honey doesn't overpower the bread but gives a gentle sweetness particulary in the crust. Sprinkled with a light dusting of salt flakes the bread has a nice spiky crunch. The perfect bread to go with oily sardines, roasted peppers and tomatoes, or a slice of Red Leicester.

Leaven and hell

This weekend I made another pair of Dan Lepard's white leaven loaves.

It all went fairly well. Though I'm beginning to wonder if Mr Lepard's timings aren't a bit wierd. As already mentioned he seems to double all the baking times - I think his timings for the proofing stage are also too long as the baked bread appears to be overproofed.

I am pretty confident that I'm following the recipes closely, including temperatures of the water and leaven, and the locations for resting and proofing dough. Maybe my leaven's too strong. Well, the next time I make them I'll try just two hours proofing time, instead of the suggested four and a half.

More Baguettes

This week I made more baguettes. Small, light and crusty, they makes the perfect tuna mayo sandwich. Yum! Yum!

So anyway, this week I proofed my bread seam side up, which appeared to work a little better than the prescribed seam side down. After carefully rolling the little rascals over from the tea towel and onto the wooden peel, the baguettes seemed to have a smoother, tighter top surface. Which led to some surprisingly satisfying slashing action with the old lame.

Meet Cuthbert

Cuthbert as you can plainly see is a batch of leaven. He lives in a kilner jar.

I first made the leaven using D Lepard's recommended recipe: flour, water, live yogurt and a few raisins. After a couple of days the lively looking concoction was sieved leaving a thin white soup, the basis for my leaven.

From then on, its a case of regularly refreshing the leaven with flour and water. If used daily, you just add the same amount of flour and water that you remove in leaven for you loaf, storing the jar in a warmish place. If you're not using it for a few days, just stash it in the fridge; you get it active again a few days before use by adding some fresh water and flour.

I like the fact that a good leaven can be kept going for years. In his book Dan Lepard waves around a batch of leaven that is reckoned to be about a hundred years old. Cuthbert's only six weeks old! He's just a baby.