Arkatena loaf (with chickpea flour starter)

Another "Bread Matters" recipe, this one begins with a chickpea (gram) flour starter - which smells HORRIBLE!!! Again, only some of the active starter (on Day 4) is used in the production leaven (which includes some chickpea flour and is much doughy-er than a sponge). I left this production leaven in the fridge overnight. Next day that was brought to room temperature. After a few hours I kneaded flour (just white and wholemeal), water and salt together, before kneading in the production leaven. This is then treated like the other Bread Matters sourdoughs, and left under an upturned bowl for an hour before being stretched and folded.

This is where it all went wrong!!! My oven broke (electrical fault).. just wouldn't switch on at all! Disaster! What to do.....???? Well, I put the folded dough in a plastic box and put it in the freezer! I have frozen pizza dough, and naan bread dough in the past with no ill-effects, so figured it was worth a try! 2 days later, when the oven was fixed, I took the dough out and left it to come to defrost overnight. Then it was shaped and left to prove supported in a bowl lined with a flour-dusted tea towel for 4 hours.

Once baked, this was the result....

A delicious loaf! Really chewy, a hint of the sourdough starter (but tasting NOTHING like the hideous chickpea flour starter had smelt!!), good crust (as I used my conventional non-fan oven function and lots of sprayed water).... One of my favourite loaves ever.

Lots of loaves!

My contribution to this summer's family holiday...

Clockwise from l-r:

So, in turn...

Malted seeded loaf - one of my favourites from the River Cottage book.

White sourdough - used the River Cottage recipe, but this time I used proving containers. Made quite a soft loaf. Nice and open but not as chewy a crumb as the last one, so not as nice. No idea why. Not as thick a crust either, but that's due to me being forced to use the fan oven rather than the conventional setting (which is still broken :-( ).

Wheatgrem - LOVE this loaf, especially toasted. The Dan Lepard one which required minimal kneading. Gorgeous texture and taste.

Brioche - YUM! Cakey texture, rich with the egg and milk. The River Cottage recipe uses (to me) surprisingly little butter. Really lovely fresh and warm, but still nice toasted (with homemade chocolate spread) when it was a couple of days old!

On holiday I also managed to bake Dan Lepard's garlic bread, a ciabatta-style loaf (made with easy bake yeast) which is spread with whole cloves of garic (cooked in a balsamic vinegar reduction). Sweet, salty, garlicky and chewy. Really lovely... Not strictly a loaf (as I sliced the rolled dough and cooked them as rolls) but so tasty I had to include it here :-)

Spelt and rye sourdough

Really enjoyed last weeks loaf - so much so, that I thought I'd try a slight variation this week. Interested to see what the addition of rye would add to the loaf - I'm guessing that it will make it a heavier, darker loaf, but I'm hoping that it will add the flavour of rye without weighing it down too much.

So, this weeks loaf went something like this -

Production leaven - spelt starter, spelt flour, and water. Made to a soft dough. This time I placed it in the fridge overnight as the weather's been fairly warm.
'Mush' - no raisins, so I used sultanas. Soaked in boiling water overnight.
Flour/water mix - in the morning, I mixed half spelt, half rye, with the water for the dough, and left to relax for 30 minutes.

Kneaded the flour/water mix and the 'mush' until they'd formed a cohesive dough. Then I kneaded in the production leaven. Left for 1hr on a moistened worktop, under an upturned bowl. The dough was then stretched and folded, as with the other "Bread Matters" sourdoughs.

For the first time, I decided to support the loaf in a floured, tea-towel lined, bowl (in lieu of a proving basket). So the prepared dough went in seam-side up. This offered the final proof much more support and meant that the dough didn't spread out at all. Much better! Will definitely be doing this again.

Final proof took only a two hours - the combination of the wholemeal spelt and rye meant that I knew it wouldn't rise much. Used the small oven too, so minimal warming-up time. The obvious bonus being that this oven actualy works!

Great oven-spring! Tasty, slightly sweet (due to the sultana mush), with a nice texture. One minor thing - could have done with an extra 10 minutes in the oven - ever-so-slightly underdone. No matter, still a gorgeous loaf!

Spelt & Rye sourdough

Spelt sourdough (with "raisin mush")

Another "Bread Matters" recipe, this one uses a spelt starter (made up following the instructions in Andrew Whitley's book but including a tbsp of my original "Boris" - who's still chilling in the fridge!), and with the addition (to the flour, not the leaven) of 50g of raisins soaked in 50g of boiling water, which had been blended up to make a "mush".

The recipe itself was simple - make a production leaven (which I left overnight in a cool place), then knead together the flour, water, salt and raisin mush, before adding the production leaven and kneading again. Actually I added in another step by mixing the spelt flour and water and leaving for 30mins, as I love the way it makes the initial dough so much easier to handle.... So far so good. Once all the ingredients were combined and kneaded together, I followed the method used for the other sourdough loaves in Bread Matters, leaving for 1 hour (covered with a bowl on the worktop) and then stretching and folding, before leaving for the final prove. Decided to use the big oven as I wanted a good thick crust, and that's just not possible with a fan in the smaller oven (which can't be switched off)....... That was where my frustration began! NOTHING to do with my loaf but everything to do with my oven thermostat which has completely broken now... Won't heat up, or does heat up and then goes "nuclear"... This time it was all going well until the temperature dropped suddenly and irreconcilably... So it took a good 4 hours before I could bake my loaf... By which point I fear it had over-proved :-(

Actually it was fine!! Perhaps a touch over-proved, and a little "well fired" BUT it had a lovely crust and the taste was loads nicer than my previous spelt sourdough (the RC version with hemp seeds). A success! Delicious with homemade hummous and salad.. one I'll definitely be making again :-)

Fruit and nut leaven loaf

Loved the sound of this one. A 'Bread Matters' recipe - I've bought the book I liked it so much! Soaking the dried fruits and nuts and making a 'production leaven', both left overnight, meant that I could get the loaf started at 7.30am on getting up for the day.

One slight hitch was the the batteries on my scales died just before making this... So my measurements were based on guess-timates rather than accurate figures!

So it's basically a white sourdough but not very sour at all - I wonder if that's down to the production leaven stage?? - but with added prunes, figs and dates, and brazil nuts, cashew nuts and hazelnuts.YUM!!!

Fruit and nut leaven loaf



Probably not one I would want to eat every day, or even every week but gorgeous with cheese, or just toasted with butter. A favourite already!

Looked impressive when sliced!

Yummmm!!

Golspie loaf

A Dan Lepard (Handmade Loaf) recipe, using rye starter, some fresh yeast, and wholemeal flour, this was quick and easy to do - only 20 seconds of kneading!!

After an initial rise of 1hr the loaf is shaped and rolled out to be placed in a 20cm round tin (oiled and dusted with oatmeal - or in my case oat bran, as that was all I had!). Once doubled in size, or near enough, it was baked for 45mins.

This is the result....

Golspie loaf

Really like this loaf! I can taste the rye, it's not overly tangy, and the oat bran crust gives it a lovely texture.

River Cottage spelt sourdough

This weekends loaf was another River Cottage offering.... this time a spelt sourdough, made with my wheat starter, and with the addition of hemp seeds. As other R.C. sourdoughs, this one uses the sponge method - v active by morning!!

A nice loaf: fairly open texture, nutty taste, good tangy flavour. Not my favourite though - I definitely preferred the Cromarty cob or the mill loaf, rye/white/wholemeal mix.... maybe I'm just getting fussy!!! Will be interesting to try "Bread Matters" version of this loaf, which uses a spelt starter too.