I love it when unplanned baking works out for the best! As I'm sure regular readers will have gathered by now, I have a very bad habit of buying ingredients with no plans for them. They sit in the fridge, all the while I'm wondering what to make and the expiry date is advancing upon me. Finally I have to either use the item or shamefully dispose of it.
This bread is the result of one such occasion when my conscience got the better of me and a tub of buttermilk was the item in question. I recalled making buttermilk baps ages ago, to a Dan Lepard recipe published in the Guardian in August 2009 and although I didn't want rolls, I wanted a loaf I thought I'd use the same recipe as I recalled that it seemed to be a good one.
As I followed the recipe as given (albeit with slightly less kneading at slightly longer intervals!) I won't reproduce the recipe here. I was doing other things whilst making this bread and forgot to check on it while it was prooving. When I did remember it looked over-prooved, and was slumping onto the edges of the tin. I had mentally written it off as being a flat topped disaster, but thankfully the dough was very resilient and still had some life left in it, giving a pretty excellent oven spring that lifted the dough off the edges of the tin and into a proud dome. I was really pleased as I seem to time baking my loaves wrongly quite often and rarely get such good oven-spring! This was a truly enormous loaf, and I haven't really managed to capture that with my photos.
It has a beautifully even texture and has a moist and light crumb with a delicious chewy crust - just perfect for a few slices of hot buttered toast or a fabulous lunchtime sandwich. Just looking at the pictures now is making me hungry!
I'm sending this to Krithika for Breakfast Club - the theme this month, hosted by Krithi's Kitchen is Bread! Although this might look like quite a boring bread it tastes anything but boring, and given that half of the UK population will probably be eating cereal (yuk!) for breakfast, surely the other half will be eating toast (yum!) and this loaf is the ideal one for toasting.
5 comments:
That is one mammoth looking loaf. It looks lovely though, I can almost smell and taste it from here.
It looks like it has the most wonderful crust! Beautiful loaf!
Glad you posted this - I was curious after you commented on my buttermilk bread - your texture and your "oven spring" look amazing - I don't get enough oven spring to even need to know the term but I now have new heights to reach for in bread baking
Looks perfect nad texture is spongy nad aeriated.
What a gigantic loaf! Amazing crumb and rise, C! What a great way to see in the New Year, hope you have a glorious 2012! x
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