Here’s some of the bread I did, catering for a birthday party. From the left: fougasse, apple and oat loaf, alsace loaf with rye.

This one uses polenta, as well as maize flour (I used Cool Chile Co Masa harina).

I thought the result would be crumbly and a bit dry, but it’s not. Instead, it’s got a good crumb and a pleasant yellowing colour. Quite a handsome loaf too.

As with much of my bread-making here, it’s another one from Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf, which I’m slowly working my way through.

My first go at fougasse, which look fab but are actually very simple. I followed Richard Bertinet’s recipe from Dough for these ones. It just involves making his basic white dough then shaping it.

His basic white dough is 10g fresh yeast rubbed into 500g strong white flour, then 10g salt mixed in, and 350g water added. Bring together the sticky dough, knead until it becomes nice and elasticky (don’t add loads of extra flour!), then rested for until doubled in volume (about two hours in my case).

Heated the oven – with baking stone – to 230C.

After the resting, I just cut the dough into four, gently stretching each piece, then cutting slits with the edge of my dough scraper. I gently opened up the slits, then carefully slid/lifted the shaped piece onto a floured, rim-less baking sheet (use peel if you have one) and slid it onto the baking stone. Baked for around 14 minutes, until starting to brown.

Oh, and the word geek in me loves the fact that fougasse is related to foccacia - both words come from focus, the Latin for hearth. As ever, some nifty factology and further explanation on Wikipedia.

More Dan Lepard from the essential book The Handmade Loaf. Some proper teatime muffins. It’s crazy I feel I have to refer to these as “English muffins”, as I’m English and was eating these long before US-style muffins invaded Britain.

Muffins are like yeasted buns, but are cooked on a griddle or hotplate. Alongside crumpets, muffins are wonderful teatime fare, especially when slathered with butter and jam or honey.

Dan L has added toasted buckwheat to this recipe, which adds a nice depth of flavour. Though not a crunch, as he uses 75g of buckwheat, toasted, and then soaked in 100g boiling water and 2 T of cider vinegar, which soften the seeds (they’re not grains, folks).

Make the dough by adding 1 t fine sea salt to 350g strong white flour.
Add 3/4 t fresh yeast to 200g water (at 20c), then add the soaked buckwheat.

Pour the yeasty, buckwheat liquid into the flour, and mix to a soft dough with 25g melted butter.

Give the dough two more short kneads at 10 minute intervals, forming into a ball and putting in a covered bowl in between. Then leave for an hour in the covered bowl.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to about 2cm thick, and cut out rounds with an 8 or 10cm cutter (Dan L says the latter, I used the former and it finished result seemed a suitable size).

Rest the muffins on a floured baking sheet, covered, for another 45 mins.

Preheat a heavy pan or flat griddle over a low-medium heat. Dust each muffin with a little extra flour, then griddle them over a medium heat for about 5-7 minutes each side. Serve warm, or cool, then split and toast.

We had them for afternoon tea along with some rather cute biscuits.

Fran made a big batch of vanilla cookie dough using this recipe:

225g unsalted butter and 225g caster sugar creamed together until light (by hand or with an electric beater).
Add 1 beaten egg and 1/2 t vanilla extract, and beat until smooth.
Incorporate a pinch of salt and 450g of sifted (or is it sieved?) plain flour, then bring together into a ball, or disc, and refrigerate for an hour or two.

It’s from Decorating Cakes and Cookies by Annie Rigg, a book that’s chock-full of cute and novel goodies. And some baddies too, as – and I’ve said it before – food colouring pastes can be really vile things, with some dubious chemical food colourings in them.

Still, we haven’t embraced the vile sugar pastes just yet. Instead, we tried to do most of our baking this weekend using ingredients that had natural colourings. This was a slight challenge for making the rather nifty Stained-glass biscuits.

We visited one of those cutesy “old-fashioned sweet-shops” that have become popular of late, but the shopgirl looked at us slightly blankly when we asked for simple boiled sweets. Really, if you’re going to work in an “old-fashioned sweet-shop”, at least learn some of the basic terminology. Hi ho. We did get a few types of sweets from there, but in the end, the best source for simple boiled sweets made with natural colourings was Sainsbury’s (called “Clear Fruits“).

So anyway – to make the stained glass biscuits, simple cut out shapes, then using smaller cutters, make holes. Place the biscuits on baking sheets lined with parchment, and fill the holes with boiled sweet that has been crushed (I found a pestle and mortar worked best). Bake at 180C (160C fan) for about 12 mins. Remove from the oven, then allow to cool – the crushed sweets will have melted, but will still be liquid, so leave 10 mins or so to allow them to set, then gently lift from the sheets.

We used the smaller cut-outs to make iced-gem type biscuits (again, the colours here a result of using food colourings with natural ingredients – like spirulina for the green, heh). Very cute.

The sort of name to make little boys snigger. And yet my wife Fran even giggled as I typed it…

The macro on my camera couldn’t really cope, but in general it’s a lovely pic with the herbiage, so what the heck.

Great recipe, from Dan Lepard’s Guardian column. Or here’s the recipe again, on the Lepard forums.

I’ve found I don’t need to bake them for quite as long as the recipe suggests; you might want to test them at 20 mins.

Also, nine 150g pieces makes for some pretty hefty buns, so you might want to divide it into say 15 90g pieces. I made round buns this time, but it’d work well for finger buns for sausages too.

Addendum: just found some more photos of another batch I made back in August 2009. You can see the texture better in this one. Indeed, the results looks rather different! The recent ones I did with an egg wash, but that doesn’t explain the inconsistency in the texture. Hm. That soup looks good too. I’m making myself hungry now.

Ok, they’re not entirely perfect shapes with all that rupturing, but they’re pretty tasty.

Pain de campagne – what Richard Bertinent describes as “sourdough’s little brother” – are, alongside baguettes, the classic French bread, though of a decidedly more rustic bent (the name, means “country bread” for anyone with even more rudimentary or non-existent French than me).

This Bertinent recipe uses a ferment that you leave for 4-6 hours, or overnight in the fridge. For mine, I chucked in a few tablespoons of my rye leaven, to hopefully add some flavour and make up for the fact that my fresh yeast stash was looking decidedly tired. So my ferment was 200g strong white flour, 100g rye flour, 10g of salt all mixed dry. Then 350g water,  2T rye leaven, teaspoon or so of sad-looking, not-so-fresh fresh yeast, a sprinkling of dried active yeast all mixed then blended with the dry ingredients (not strictly the Bertinent method).

I left that ferment overnight out of the fridge. Our kitchen was about 15C overnight, and in the morning the ferment looked nice and active.

In a large bowl I mixed: 500g strong white flour with 100 rye flour and 15g salt. I sprinkled 5g of dried active yeast on 400g water, let it ferment a bit, then mixed this, as well as the ferment, into the flours. Kneaded until it felt good, formed a ball, rested for an hour. Then I gave it a turn, formed a ball, rested for half an hour. Then I gave it a turn, formed a ball, and rested it for another half hour. Then I split the dough into two portions or around 650g each, formed two balls, and proved them until doubled in volume – about two hours.

Baked them one at a time in an oven pre-heated to 250C. I misted the oven, slid one onto my baking stone, baked for 5 minutes, then turned the oven down to 220C and baked for a further 25 minutes, until it sounded hollow when knocked on the base.

Very pleased with this one. It’s another recipe from Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf, a book that’s kept me busy for many a weekend, and will doubtless do so for years to come. Although I’m yet to perfect my stick-shaping technique, the flavour was delicious, the texture nice and open, the crust crunchy without being tough or overly thick.

I finally got round to making a rye leaven. I simply took a few tablespoons of my wheat leaven, then started feeding it with 100ml of water and 120g of rye flour every day. After a week or so, it was looking pretty good, gassing away nicely.

This loaf is given distinction by the fact it uses not just a rye leaven, but also rye grains. Use about 120g of rye grains, then boil them for about an hour in water. Save the water, then put the rye grains in another bowl, and, when they’re cool, cover them with white wine and leave in the fridge overnight. This makes them nice and soft, and tangy. The recipe says you can also use yogurt or juice, but I used a Chardonnay we had hanging around. I really don’t like Chardonnay, so this seemed like a perfect way to use it up.

To make the dough, combine 25g honey, 4g crumbled fresh yeast and 325g water (use the water you cooked the grains in, made up with extra if necessary) in a bowl and leave it to sit.

After it’s sat for 10 minutes or so, add 150g of rye leaven and 300g of the wine-soaked rye grains (drained; I used up the rye-ish wine in a stew thing).

In a large bowl, mix:
350g strong white flour
100g wholemeal flour
50g rye flour

Then add the wet yeast/leaven mix and combine by hand until you have a rough dough. Leave to rest for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Stretch it out a bit, and sprinkle with 1 1/4 teaspoons of fine sea salt and 25g of melted butter (or other fat).

Knead briefly, then put it back in the bowl to rest for half an hour. Knead again briefly, then return to the bowl.

Give it a turn after half an hour (ie, take it out, stretch it, then fold it in three). Return to bowl.

Give it another turn after another half an hour. Return to bowl, then leave another half an hour.

After this one and a half hour proving period, divide the dough up into five equal portions, of around 250g. Shape into balls, and leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Shape into batons by flattening out, then pulling the two corners opposite you out slightly and folding them towards the centre of the disc, sealing in. This will create a slight point. Fold that towards the centre too, and seal. Rotate, and do the same with the other side. Fold this in half, and seal. Buy Dan’s book – it’s got some very useful pictures of this process.

Let the batons rest for another 10 minutes.

To shape into sticks, take the baton, and fold in half again, along the length, starting at one end and sealing as you progress along the length. Roll on the work surface, and make pointy ends if you like that look. This is part of the baking process I’ve yet to perfect. The problem is creating a stick with a neat, tight seam, then not twisting it at all, so it will retain a regular shape when you bake. I guess I just need to make a few hundred more.

Lay the sticks, seam-side up, on a baking sheet lined with a floured cloth, making pleats of cloth between them so they don’t stick as they rise. Leave until doubled in height. The recipe says “1 hour”; that’s fine if you have a warm, moist environment, but my kitchen is quite open and cool so rising generally takes longer for me.

Heat the oven to 210C.

Carefully overturn a couple of the loaves, either on a baking sheet, or a peel (or substitute peel) if you use a baking stone. Slash the tops diagonally. As I use a stone, I then slide them into the oven, moistening it with a water spray. Bake for 25-30 minutes, then remove when they’re a nice colour, and sound hollow when knocked on the bottom.

I made this loaf the other day, inspired by but not following Richard Bertinet’s Honey and lavender loaf recipe from Dough.

I’m sure a lavender scented loaf would be lovely, but it isn’t ideal of your basic sandwiches-for-work loaf, so I excised the lavender. Also, I’m finding the very best breads I’m making at the moment all involve using some leaven; I can’t resist adding 3 or so tablespoons full to whatever recipe I’m following.

What I liked most about this recipe from Dough was the form factor. Although the rising in the oven split the loaf more radically along one of my cuts than the others, ruining any chance of pretty regularity, in principle I was very happy with the shape of this loaf.

So anyway.

250g wholemeal bread flour (I used stuff that had been ground on the waterwheel at Otterton)
250g strong white flour
4 good tablespoons of white leaven
5g dried active yeast (my local supplier of fresh yeast was all out)
10g salt
320g water
1 teaspoon honey (optional)

Mix the flours and salt in a roomy bowl.
Mix the water, yeast and honey, then beat in the leaven. (If I’d had freah yeast, I probably wouldn’t have crumbed it into the flour, as per the Bertinent method).
Blend this liquid mix into the dry mix, and bring together to make a soft dough. (I might have bunged a bit more water in here, so it’s nice and moist).
Turn out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead by scooping with your fingers, stretching and flicking the dough over away from you. I kneaded for about 10 mins until the gluten was really making a nice structure.
Form into a ball then return to the bowl (oiled slighly) to rest until doubled in size. This was vary according to how warm or not your resting area is. Took a couple of hours for me.
Turn out gently on to the work surface, and gently press down to even out the gas pockets that have formed.
Form into a ball again, and rest for 10-15 mins.
Take the ball, and, with the most even surface on work surface, stretch it out gently into a squarish rectangle.
Here’s where the form factor comes into play. To create a nice squarish free-form loaf, fold the four corners into the middle, press down gently.
Put the loaf, “join”-side down, on a baking sheet lined with a floured cloth and leave the proof until doubled in volume. Again, this took a couple of hours.

Pre-heat your oven to 220C.

When the loaf has risen nicely, cut a double-cross on the top (I’m using a lame with a razor blade these day – like this).
Spray the inside of your oven with water.
I’m using a baking stone these days, so, using a floured, lipless baking sheet as a peel, I slid it in and baked it for 10 mins at 220c, then turned the oven down to 200C and baked for another half an hour, until the loaf gave a nice hollow sound when knocked on the bottom.

Cool on a rack, under a moist tea towel if you like to keep the crust a little softer.

I was a bit annoyed with the uneven opening of the cuts, but it tastes great.

This was another pass on Dan Lepard’s barm bread from The Handmade Loaf. (I posted an earlier attempt here.)

Very nice it was too.

To make the barm, you need 250g of bottle-conditioned ale. In this case, I used the delicious Admiral’s Ale, produced by the St Austell Brewery in Cornwall (or the “Snozzle brewery”…). Heat it to 70C, then remove from the heat and whisk in 50g strong white flour. Transfer it to a bowl, then allow to cool. When it’s 20c, stir in 4 tsp of white leaven and leave overnight.

Well, I did that and it wasn’t very active the next day, so I bunged in a few more teaspoons of leaven, and left it another 24 hours. By that stage, well, to quote Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein: “Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving! It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!”

Dan L’s bread recipe calls for 150g of barm, but as I had around 300g, I just used the whole lot. My barm mix had quite a lot of liquid under the bubbling foam on top, so the dough came out very wet when combined with 500g of water and 1kg of flour. I used mostly strong white, but finished a pack of wholemeal and even bunged in some millet flour; I also add a few tablespoons of sesame seeds and sunflower seeds.

As the dough was very wet, I differed a little from Dan’s recipe, where he uses the 10 second knead every 10 minutes for half an hour; then a 10 second knead after half an hour; then two more 10 second kneads over the next two hours. Instead, I just did the Bertinet method (strick your fingers into the messy mass, lift, flip it away from you; repeat for several minutes) for around 5-10 mins, then added enough flour to make a maneagable ball (an extra 150g ish), then did a few more short kneads and a few turns.

We went out for about two hours, then I formed two balls and left them in bowls lined with tea towels rubbed with flour. I left them for around 3 hours till doubled in size, then baked them at 220C on my baking stone, for around 45-50 mins each.

The result was a lovely moist loaf, with reasonable air-holes and a slight flavour coming through from the other flours and nuts I added. Perfect for this week’s sarnies (cheddar, alfalfa sprout, coarse mustard and mayo)!