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.