Came home yesterday from Spinning Group with fresh yeast and a plan. We had been discussing group purchasing flour in bulk. Time, I thought, to use up some elderly stock.
My first delivery from Bakery Bits had arrived and in it, among other things, were a couple of proving baskets and some malted wheat flakes. I could not wait to play with the banetton and brotform.
In the cupboard I found half a bag of Allinson’s wholewheat flour. I tipped this into my bowl and made it up to a kilo with some plain white bread flour sourced here on the island (the local shopkeeper buys bleached bread flour in bulk and bags it up for sale in poly bags.) To the flours I added a little salt, a cup of malted wheat flakes and half a cup of linseed and poppy seed mix.
I dissolved about 25g of yeast in some warm water and added a drizzle of honey to get things moving. Ten minutes later, I got the Kenwood working, adding the yeast mixture to the flour with a little olive oil and more water as required.
It was a good rise again – rather too fast, so I knocked the dough back after half an hour and gave it a second rise.
After the rise, I divided the dough into one and two thirds – the larger portion went into the 1Kg wood-pulp Brotform to prove. The smaller portion proved in the 500g cane Banetton.
I cooked the larger loaf on my pizza stone, the smaller loaf went on the shelf below, onto a preheated heavy baking tray. In the base of the oven went a roasting tin and a handful of ice cubes.
I tidied up, spotting when I threw the brown flour bag out that it wasn’t bread flour at all…
The resulting bread is rather dense but pretty tasty. The crust is terrific. We demolished half a loaf with a nice ripe wedge of Brie, some vine tomatoes and a large bottle of Leffe Blonde.
I ask you, does life get any better than that?
The bread is still good today – I had a wodge with butter and spiced ginger preserve with my morning coffee. I still feel well-fuelled.
Ice cubes?
what about them?