Malted grain, multiseeded sourdough loaf - for friends

There, you see, I haven't forgotten all about bread, although I'm eating less of it in my attempt to fit into my clothes better. That's as may be, but on Saturday night we have people coming for dinner. I told you I was going to get some mileage out of this!

I love having people round for meals, although we don't do it that often. It's the opportunity to think a bit more carefully than usual about what we might eat, and an excuse to fiddle around in the kitchen even more than normal.

I'm doing some dippy, mezze type things for a starter - going to give some Pistachio Dukka a go, and may be re-run the Cambodian Wedding Day dip that was such a massive hit a few months ago. There may also be some hummus involved - lemony, ordinary, and beetroot and walnut. These will all be courtesy of Hugh F-W and the wonderful Veg Everyday which I'm still finding hugely inspirational.

To go with of course, I need bread. I could do flatbreads on the day, but however impressive, the thought of flinging dough and flour around at the last minute to make them fresh (which is when they are best) when I could be hustling the kids into bed, hoovering the dog and trying to find some matching cutlery serenely sipping a G&T as I apply the final touches to my make up (does anyone do that? Please let me know if you do!) is not appealing to me at the moment so I am breaking out my sourdough starter to make some proper sourdough bread for the occasion.

This is as opposed to the yeasted loaves I've been making, which I wrote about a couple of months back. This method uses no dried yeast, and just uses the starter as the raising agent. I'm following the method that I learned on my fantastic River Cottage Christmas baking course taught by Aiden Chapman, when we made a delicious cranberry and orange loaf using this method. It is as easy as can be - barely any kneading, more loving stirring, then some folding, over the course of a few hours. The dough can then be proved in the fridge for up to 3 days - and indeed Aiden recommends this to allow the dough to develop more flavour. On the Bread course, we didn't have the opportunity to test this out but the bread was still mighty fine.

A word of warning now, though - If you've got people coming for dinner on Saturday and don't have a sourdough starter going, you're not going to be able to join in I'm afraid, but for easy instructions on making a starter, the post I wrote is here. May be next time. And while we're talking about time, you will need to be able to tend to your dough once an hour over a 5 hour period. The dough can then sit in the fridge for 3 days (as I said above) ready to be baked as you want it.

As my starter had been languishing in in the fridge for a few days, I got it out on Tuesday, got it up to room temperature, chucked half of it away. added some more flour (I used rye) and water to get it going, gave it a good stir and left it to do its thing till Wednesday morning.

For 500g flour, you will need 10 g salt, 125g of your starter and 325g water. You can add in any extras you want.

Malted grain, multiseeded sourdough loaf

1kg malted grain flour (I had some Doves Farm in the cupboard)
20g salt
100g mixed pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds
250g sourdough starter
650g water

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together. Combine the starter and water, and then carefully mix into the dry ingredients.

Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave. Yes, that's right, no kneading required!

An hour or so later (actually, I ended up leaving mine for closer to 2 because I had to take the kids to school and walk the dog), literally all you need to do is remove the tea towel, and fold the dough over on itself, then press gently back into the bowl.

Cover and leave for another hour, when you fold the dough again and leave for another hour. Each time you do this you will see that the dough is getting smoother and more coherent as the gluten develops

After the last fold. leave the dough for 2 hours, then tip the dough out on a floured surface and shape it into a round. Leave for 20 minutes.

If you have a suitable proving basket, use that. As I wanted to make one big loaf and my proving basket isn't big enough, I lined a bowl with a tea towel and chucked some flour around liberally.

 

 then shape the dough into a tight ball and pop it in your basket/bowl.

 
At this point you need to leave your bread to prove for at least 4 hours but you can put it in the fridge for up to 3 days to develop the flavour.

When you are ready to bake, if the dough has been in the fridge, get it out and bring the dough up to room temperature.



After 2 days in the fridge

Pre-heat the oven to 220C, and put a baking sheet in to heat up. As with the yeasted loaf, have some semolina to hand to dust the hot baking sheet and also a sprayer bottle with some water in (or a bowl of water to splash round with your hand). You'll need a sharp knife nearby too.

When the oven is at temperature, bring out the baking sheet, dust with semolina and carefully tip the dough on to it. Slash the top of the dough with your sharp knife and get it all back in the oven. The quicker you can do this without sustaining third degree burns, the better... Bake the bread for 20 minutes, then turn it in the oven and bake for another 15 minutes before doing the tap on the bottom thing. if it's sounding hollow, your bread is baked.

Leave to cool on a rack for as long as you can bear before slicing and eating.

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Forever Nigella 22 - Food to Cherish Your Loved Ones - the Round Up

Well, I knew hosting a Forever Nigella would be a great way to start 2013 for me, and I wasn't wrong. I've been introduced to some lovely blogs that hadn't read before, and some of my old favourites have also contributed.

First up, Caroline Makes... included this delicious Tiramisu from Nigelissima as part of a special New Year's Eve meal for her boyfriend. Like Caroline, I also received Nigelissima for Christmas but I'm yet to make anything from it. It won't be long...

Next, the lovely Annie from one of my favourite food blogs Scrummy Suppers and Quirky Cakes entered the Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from Nigella.com. Annie has made this cake on a number of occasions and it's never let her down - her cakes look pretty amazing, so I can see why she goes back to the recipe when she needs a cake to make someone feel special.

The great Miss Flash at Food Glorious Food  went down the bread route, taking inspiration from my favourite Nigella tome, How to be a Domestic Goddess. Based on a maple syrup and pecan loaf, Miss Flash made maple Syrup and pistachio loaf and mighty good it looks too.

Louise at Crumbs and Corkscrews, a blog I hadn't come across before cooked the most amazing looking flourless brownies from Nigella Express. She substituted white chocolate chunks and cherries for the nuts, and used Baileys in the chocolate sauce instead of camp coffee. Sounded like pretty good substitutions to me, and just the thing to cheer someone up after, say, completing the dreaded tax return....

Another droolsome chocolate cake next: Devils Food Cake from Nigella.com from another blog new to me: Garden, Tea, Cakes and Me. Doesn't it look wondeful? I know my family and friends would feel cherished if I served up something like that.

Another cherry & white chocolate combo (which happens to be a favourite of mine), this time in the shape of lovely Banana, Cherry and White Choc Chip Muffins made by Katharine who writes the beautiful Leeks & Limoni blog. Her muffins look totally scrummy, and I  embrace her philosophy for January which is "A little bit of what you fancy", rather than total denial, to get through the post-Christmas blues.

Choclette who writes the fantastic Chocolate Log Blog entered Parmesan Shortbreads which she made for a Christmas lunch which took place on 19th January as the result of a quirky family tradition.

Another savoury recipe, this time a gorgeous looking chicken tagine made by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes. She made this delicious looking dinner for her boyfriend. Lucky boyfriend, is what I say.

I couldn't host this event and not enter these myself. back to How to be a Domestic Goddess then, for the Norwegian Cinammon Buns. These are what I bake for the Husband, kids and any other family members or friends that need cherishing...

Stacy at Food Lust People Love made another Nigelissima soon to be classic - the Meatzza . I certainly remember Nigella making this in the TV series and thinking I would have to try it myself. Well if Stacy's version is anything to go by, this is going into my meal plan sooner rather than later.

Another Nigelissima recipe - this time a delicious looking chocolate mousse entered by the founder of Forever Nigella, Sarah over at Maison Cupcake. It looks totally rich and decadent - just the sort of thing to make a loved one feel cherished.

Finally, Sam at The Yorkshire Bakery entered some delicious chocolate cherry cupcakes from How to be a Domestic Goddess.

So there we have them - I think you'll agree all fantastic offerings to cherish your loved ones with - but then, that's one of the things Nigella does best, in my view...

The next Forever Nigella will be Nigella Nostalgia to be hosted by Urvashi at  The Botanical Baker

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Forever Nigella 22 - Norwegian Cinammon Buns

Well, I couldn't host Forever Nigella, and not enter myself, could I? 

The subject of challenge (which I chose) is food to cherish your loved ones with and really, the reason I chose this was for these cinammon buns.

Warm, fragrant, oozing cinammony sweet butter. What better way to cherish your loved ones (foodwise, that is) than to knock up a batch of these beauties for that most important of meals, breakfast. I'm not saying I make this sort of thing every morning, but every now and again, well, I think you know what I'm saying.

I have a Swedish friend who I don't see nearly enough. She and I 'raspberry leaf tea'd and long brisk walked' our way through the final weeks of our first pregnancies. We were due 10 days  apart and ended up giving birth to our sons within 12 hours of each other, albeit in different hospitals. She coped with it all much better than I, birth, breastfeeding, the whole babyness of babies, and within weeks she was my Scandi saviour, bringing down to earth common sense to my hormonal, slightly post-natal slump, and Swedish cinammon buns.

It was she who was our saviour a couple of years' later, the chaotic day, 3 months in to Blue's treatment for leukaemia, that Pink arrived and Blue was very poorly following some chemo. When, later on in Blue's illness I turned to How to be a Domestic Goddess in an attempt to cook my way out of the frustration and anger that had built up inside me, I saw this recipe and immediately thought of her. This was one of the first things I made from that tome, and it has stayed firmly in my repertoire ever since. 

I do not know anyone who would not happily eat 2 or 3 (or, ahem, more, she said, red-faced) of these beauties. They have become the birthday breakfast of choice here and they are well worth it. The first few times I made them, I got terribly het up about the wetness of the dough, and also with the timings - because I never quite read the recipe through properly and they ended up taking me longer than anticipated. However, with my new found bread-making confidence, when I served them up this morning I was feeling calm and serene - very Domestic Goddess (although without the knowing pout or the slinky dressing gown).

When I made the dough up, I was careful with the addition of the liquid, and I stopped short of using it all, reserving what was left (a milky buttery eggy mixture) to glaze the buns on the final prove. I also made the dough up the night before and gave it the first rise in the fridge, so that in the morning, I just had to get it out of the fridge and let it come to temperature before forming the buns, giving it a second prove, and baking.

Norwegian Cinammon Buns

(makes 10-12)

Dough:

300g strong white flour
50g sugar
pinch of salt
11/2 sachets (about 10g) dried yeast
50g unsalted butter
200ml milk
1 large egg

Filling:

75g soft unsalted butter
75g soft brown sugar
1 tsp cinammon

(possibly an extra egg to glaze) 

You will need a lined baking/roasting tin - the one I use is 20 x 25cm.

Make the dough. Melt the butter and set aside to cool a little. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl, then whisk together the melted butter, milk and the egg.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients gradually, stirring to combine. You want a reasonably wet dough, but not so wet that it becomes unreasonable to manage, so if you don't use all the liquid don't worry - I had around 30ml left over. When you have a rough dough, turn out and knead to a smooth, springy ball of dough. You can do this in a mixer with a dough hook just as well as by hand - it won't take as long. If you don't use all the liquid, reserve the left over for glazing

At this stage put the dough back in the bowl and cover with clingfilm. You can leave the dough to rise for 25 minutes or so on the work top, or overnight in the fridge (which is what I did - if you do this, just get it out and let it come to room temperature before continuing with the next stage).

Preheat the oven to 230C. Make the filling by mashing and mixing together the butter, sugar and cinammon.

Take 1/3 of the dough and on a lightly floured surface, roll and stretch it out to fit the bottom of the tin. You then need to roll out the rest of the dough to make a rectangle. I completely failed to measure how big, but probably about 30-40 cm long by 15-20 wide. Certainly longer and wider than your tin, Not very helpful is it? Nigella herself makes a double quantity and rolls her dough to 50x25 cm.

Spread the filling all over the rectangle of dough 

and then roll up along the long side. When you have a big old roll of dough in front of you. slice it up into 2 cm slices, placing the little rounds into the tin swirl side up. They won't fit together snugly at this stage, but wait till they have puffed up and risen during the second rise and in the oven...

Glaze the buns with either the left over liquid from the dough, or with a beaten egg, and leave to prove under a tea towel for 15-20 minutes, then bung in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning half way through.

It's going to be hard but try and wait for them to cool down a little before tearing apart and devouring with a cup of coffee and the satisfied sighs of delight from your loved ones. "Mummy, this is such a TREAT!". May be I'll make them more often...

Forever Nigella is the monthly blogging event organised by Sarah at Maison Cupcake, I'm hosting it this month and the announcement post where you will find all the rules and the linky is here.

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Sourdough - baking a yeasted loaf

When I started this series of posts, I mentioned that you can use sourdough starter in a yeasted loaf for structure and flavour, or on its own as the only raising agent in your loaf. The latter is more like you might imagine a sourdough loaf to be - quite dense, flavourful and about as far removed from your average pappy white sliced loaf as you can get. We made a fantastic cranberry, yoghurt and orange sourdough loaf on the River Cottage Bread Course:

I made that, I did!

The straight sourdough is something I'll probably use more for eating with cheese or a starter (pate, potted shrimps or something) for a dinner party, although who knows? I'm going to try and recreate these soon, but for day to day eating, the RJ family prefer a yeasted loaf, and that's what I've been baking since the course. 

So a yeasted loaf. You use dried yeast, and the sourdough starter is used for flavour and structure. What I have found works really well is to follow the 'sponge' method - this regardless of whether you are using the sourdough starter in your dough or not. Basically, you mix a third of your ingredients (flour, dried yeast, salt and liquid) together the night before you want to bake - or it will work if you do it in the morning then leave it over the day to bubble up. This is your sponge. When you come to bake your loaf, you add this to the remaining two thirds of your loaf ingredients.

I'm working on the basis of a kilo of flour because that's what I always do. The bread freezes brilliantly so even if you're not going to eat 2 loaves, it's always worth making at least this amount and freezing the second loaf. You can scale the recipe up or down as necessary.

While we're on the subject of ingredients and quantity, I noticed while we were on the River Cottage course that Aidan, the baker who was teaching us, didn't really bother with scales. As he said - he just knows what the right proportions are, basically by eye. He encouraged us to do the same. Well, I'm no where near knowing how much flour I can fit in my hand, so I'm still weighing the dry ingredients out but I am getting better at adding the liquid by eye. You see, apparently, flour is different - even from bag to bag of the same type and brand, so if you can be a bit relaxed about it, and go with what the dough is looking like and feeling like, so much the better.

So have I wurbled enough? Shall we get on with it?

Yeasted White Bread - makes 2 loaves

1kg organic strong white flour plus extra for dusting/flouring worktops and proving baskets
10g dried yeast
20g salt
approx 200ml sourdough starter

fine semolina (for dusting baking sheets)

You will also need a large mixing bowl, tea towels, bread proving baskets, or 2 bowls, each lined with a tea towel, 2 baking sheets, a sharp knife, a water sprayer bottle

So first, make your sponge. Take about a third of your ingredients - you don't need to be exact, but say 300g flour, 3g (about half a sachet) yeast, a good teaspoon of salt - and mix it with about 200ml water. Cover loosely - a tea towel etc - and leave out overnight. Or mix up in the morning and leave for the day.

The next step is where it gets interesting. In a bowl, put the remaining flour, and then separately, the rest of the yeast and salt - apparently, you don't want to put the salt and yeast in to the bowl on top of each other because the salt can damage the dried yeast.

Then, using your fingers like a mixing fork, mix up the dry ingredients -

So now, once it's all mixed together, put about 300ml water in a jug.

Tip the sponge into the flour, and then the 200ml or so of starter, then add around 200ml of the water slowly, but see how the dough is looking and if it can take more (and you can cope with it) add some more. If you aren't using starter, just use more liquid.

flour and sponge - unfortunately forgot to take a pic once the starter was added too

You are aiming for a wet dough, but not too unmanageably wet. It's a bit of a trial and error thing this, but the wetter the dough, the better.

 
Empty out the dough onto a floured worktop. Then you need to knead. Now you can imagine that it was a bit tricky to take these photos, what with my hands covered with dough, so I enlisted the Husband to help. As I kneaded, he snapped away. Please ignore the bowl of mouldy cucumber slices and old pasta destined for the chickens there in the background.

 Back to the kneading. You're kind of tearing and pulling the dough apart. If it sticks to the work top, scrape it back with your dough scraper or whatever you are using as a dough scraper substitute.

keep going...

...even if it's really sticky - just go with it

...and as you go on, the dough will start to come together,

and eventually you'll end up with a nice ball of dough. You really will, although it might take 10-15 minutes. This is about the most time any of these stages takes.

Once you've got your kneaded dough, put it back in the bowl you started in, and cover with a tea towel. I am also experimenting with using a plastic bag at this stage - 2 carrier bags over the bowl.

You don't need to put the dough anywhere especially warm to rise. I can assure you that our kitchen is definitely cold, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. You can also put your bowl in the fridge at this stage and leave your dough to rise overnight - just remember to bring it back up to room temperature before continuing.

Once your dough has risen, you need to tip it out onto the work surface again, and divide it into 2 to shape your loaves for the second rise

Risen!

So, you need to shape your 2 pieces of dough. This is where I failed to take any pics (or to get the Husband to take any pics) but you need to shape each piece into a round (if you're making a round loaf) by kind of cupping the piece of dough and turning it round in your hands and tucking it underneath. There's a pretty good film here on Loaf Online which is a very interesting website.

The key is to work quite gently, and quickly if you can. When you're done, put the dough, smooth side down, into your bread basket (or tea towel lined bowl) which you have well floured:

 

Leave your bread to rise again. You can, if necessary, put the dough in the fridge again at this stage (I did it the other night when I forgot that it was going to be too late - just let it come back to room temperature before continuing with the bake) - it will feel springy and have increased in size again. This shouldn't take as long as the first rise, so you can probably put your oven on - heated as high as it will go - or up to 230C.

You need to get yourself organised at this point. Get your baking sheets ready, along with oven gloves, tea towels, a water sprayer bottle (or bowl of water), and make sure you have a sharp knife and your semolina to hand. 

Once your loaves are looking risen and ready to bake, put your baking sheets into the oven for 5-10 minutes to heat up, and while that's going on, gently loosen the dough from the basket by pulling it gently from the side of the basket - in a moment you're going to be tipping it out onto a really hot baking sheet, and you don't want it getting stuck!

 

 Working quickly, whip your baking sheets out of the oven, dust with semolina and tip out the dough,

Slash the top a few times with a sharp knife

and whack back into the oven. Grab your water sprayer and generously spray all round the oven, or flick water from the bowl round the oven. As an update on my post about bits and pieces you might need, when baking bread, you can get water sprayer bottles in Robert Dyas for 99p. That's 99p well spent, I have to say. No more water sploshed all over the floor by the oven for me.

But I'm digressing.

So your bread is in the oven and it's baking. I've tried baking bread following lots of different temperatures and times. My current preferred method is the one that Aidan Chapman explained on the bread course, which is very straightforward - hot oven, 20-25 minutes, turn the bread round half way through baking. I haven't fiddled much with this in my post-course baking, although I have taken to turning my oven down a smidge once the bread is in - the dial says it gets up to 240 C (fan) and I turn it down to between 220-230 once I've put my bread in, but it's still a work in progress.

When the bread comes out of the oven you need to check that it's cooked - turn it over and give it a tap. It will sound hollow. If it doesn't, take the loaves off the baking tray and put them back into the oven directly onto the oven shelf for 5 minutes or so.

Hopefully you will have loaves that look like this:

Although yours will probably be round!

Or this (although forgive the lighting issues I had with this photo):

















So there we have it. I hope this is easy to follow. As I said when I started this, I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I'm giving it a go and making pretty nice bread (if I may say so), so if I can help by answering any questions, just leave a comment or tweet me!

And to recap - making a starter is here; bits and pieces you might or might not need to make bread is here, and a post about looking after your starter is here.

Happy Baking!

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