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.