Saturday, November 6, 2010

Breadmaking


I've been making this bread for a few months since seeing it on a few blogs, firstly at Tiny Happy (thank you so much for posting about this!) then at Angry Chicken. The master recipe is available here (the authors have two great looking books, one is for gluten free recipes!) and it makes a good amount - 3 or 4 small loaves and, here's the trick, it needs no kneading (love that phrase) and it keeps in the fridge for up to 2 weeks!
It rises once then it's ready to use. I generally make two small loaves then use the last of it up in a batch of fruit buns by rolling in some raw sugar and some currants, sultanas, raisins and peel.
I have found that it keeps rising in between uses though. I'd like to use a smaller container to keep it in the fridge to take less space, but it's burst out of ice-cream containers on several occasions with only half the dough remaining. I reduce the salt to one tablespoon too.
I've also tried keeping a little dough to incorporate into the next batch to give it more of a sourdough flavour - it got a little too sour, or bitter in fact, so have gone back to clean starts.
Using wholemeal flour has been ok. I started with that, then have gradually used more and more plain (high grade) flour as it makes a softer and more raised bread.

And sometimes I like to make traditional bread. Using Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef basic bread recipe (and look, there it is online) I made Foccacia the other day. I even used his strange topping suggestions - potato and rosemary, and fried onion. Both were exceptional. Here are two with the potato topping, one with kalamata olives added and parmesan. Better than pizza? Depends how hungry you are. Why did I not photograph the onion Foccacia? We were too busy eating...

1 comment:

  1. Oh my goodness...looks so good. I love home baked bread...my dads's specialty. Wonderful. xx

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