Sunday, May 13, 2012

Real Bread Maker Week

Well we have just come to the end of the 2012 Real Bread Maker Week which is being championed by the Real Bread Campaign so I was delighted that the #ShortandTweet challenge for this week focused on bread.

I have had a go at two of the challenge recipes, the two-day loaf, pictured above, and the wholemeal loaf, although the wholemeal recipe I actually baked as rolls. In celebration of good bread I also made some Bath Buns but not as part of the #ShortandTweet challenge.

The wholemeal loaf recipe made a very good batch of rolls with a nice thin crust and  a fairly moist crumb, not damp and not that awful sawdust texture you often meet in wholemeal bread. I prefer my bread to have a little more spring to it so I would add a fair portion of strong white flour to the dough if I made it again, but I would say this was a success and well worth playing around with to add in other flavours from seeds, malted grains etc.



It seemed very apt for a week celebrating real bread to make a two-day loaf as the slow pace of this loaf really does develop good flavour but I did not get the texture quite right. This may well be partly because my loaf was not left to rise quite long enough once shaped. I was using a stoneground flour from Gilchesters  in Northumberland which does have a good creamy colour and fresh flavour but I don't think I did it justice in terms of the finished loaf. If you are keen to try a 'real bread' style recipe and do not have Dan's book Short and Sweet then the recipe for this two-day loaf is also available online via Dan Lepard's Guardian series on  How to Bake

I finished the week on a sweet note as I baked Bath Buns from a book by Bernard Clayton . I have always had a great fondness for sweet buns and these are nicely spiced with a hint of mace. They were rather good and had to be put in the freezer quickly before I ate too many.




I have been in search of the sugar nibs that are usually found on bath buns for a while and finally found something similar at both  the German Deli and also this  pearl sugar from the Scandi Kitchen.

Finally I would like to show off my two new members of the recycle team who at 4 weeks old are not actually fully on board yet, but who did have a little nibble of a crumbled wholemeal roll.  I have only named the chick at the front so far, as her friend may be a boy and not allowed to stay very long, but the sweet one at the front is Cilla and they are Buff Orpingtons.


No comments:

Post a Comment