Overnight wholemeal sourdough, quick and easy

A colleague was kind enough to share his rye sourdough starter with me recently. I accepted gratefully (and with some embarrassment that I couldn't get my own going - he had no trouble whatsoever!) and started thinking of all the different kinds of sourdough I could make.

It is the most active sourdough starter I've ever seen - tonnes of bubbles and probably takes about six hours to double in volume. It smells pretty good too - when it's just been refreshed I reckon it smells more like apples, but when it's due for feeding and refreshment again there's a much stronger smell of acetone. Not so nice!

My colleague used the instructions in Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters book and it reminded me that I haven't really opened this book for ages. It's the first bread book I bought, a number of years ago now (in fact, I think I had it around the time I left home!). The only bread I remember making from it was the sundried tomato, which I was a little disappointed with for all the faff it took. However this is an old memory, and perhaps with the bread and yeast experience I have gained over the intervening years I would find it less hassle. (But if you're looking for a fine tomato bread I can thoroughly recommend this one). Time to revisit this book.

As we were talking at work I decided to have a quick search on the internet (in a break I hasten to add!) and see if there were any Andrew Whitley recipes out there before getting home and looking in my book. I struck lucky and came across this recipe in Country Life. Elisabeth Luard has apparently chosen it as one of her greatest recipes ever. It's certainly one of the simplest bread recipes I have ever come across. There is not much kneading to speak of (well, not in my world anyway, because I don't tend to knead very much, and this dough was pretty soft and didn't seem to want me to knead it much) then a quick shape and into the tin, to be left alone overnight to rise..

I used a 1lb loaf tin, and fully lined it with baking parchment, without using any fat to make the parchment stick - I didn't want to risk my loaf sticking, and I didn't want to grease the tin so that the crust became oily. I covered with clingfilm and left it overnight (about nine hours) expecting to have to leave it a little longer in the morning. The next morning it was fully risen, sticking to the clingfilm (which I hadn't expected - next time it will be going into a plastic bag, puffed up to keep the dough moist but away from plastic) and asking to be baked. I quickly preheated the oven, and then gingerly peeled off the clingfilm, expecting collapse. I certainly didn't expect (or get!) any oven spring, but since I thought it had already been left too long I didn't hold out much hope.

Thankfully I was wrong. It rose a little, didn't brown too much, didn't stick to the tin, and although I didn't slash it (too soft) it hasn't torn either. And what's more, it's delicious. Only a little loaf, but that suits me perfectly and I think it would lend itself to some experimentation with different flours and perhaps added flavours. I made a couple of other things and in comparison to rye, this wheat based sourdough seems sweeter. I'm happy - I have sourdough, and am very grateful to my colleague who can manage a sourdough starter when I can't!

Sherry, raisin and apricot cheesecake

I'm not very keen on traditional Christmas pudding, and my very kind family gave me free rein to create this year's Christmas dessert. I honestly have no idea how I decided to make this particular thing, because I don't like sherry either!

J mentioned to me that she really likes baked cheesecakes, and had previously mentioned that she likes the kind of cheesecake with dried fruit baked in it, so I went with that as an idea.

I searched a few sites for a cheesecake recipe, and eventually decided to adapt this recipe on the BBC Good Food website. It seems to have pretty much universally positive reviews and as a relative cheesecake novice, especially with baked ones, I wanted a pretty foolproof recipe. My adaptations were to add the flavours I wanted and to change the tin size - there weren't going to be many of us, and an 8" cake would have been too big. I wanted to halve the recipe and bake in a 6" round, but although being convinced I had one somewhere, couldn't find it and ended up with a 7" springform tin. Calculations told me that I should do 3/4 of the recipe, but I actually ended up with nearer 2/3 of the recipe, which gave a deep enough cheesecake for us.

I made this on Christmas Eve, to allow it to sit overnight in the fridge for Christmas day. I was travelling to family during the day, and so put the raisins and apricots to soak in the morning, making the cheesecake in the early evening.

Sherry raisin and apricot cheesecake
Ingredients
For pre-soaking
100g raisins
70g dried apricots, chopped to be about the same size as the raisins

approx 100ml Amontillado Sherry (I have unsophisticated tastes in alcohol, feel free to substitute something you like!)

For the cheesecake
100g ginger biscuits
50g butter
400g cream cheese (I used 250g full fat and 150g half fat cream cheese from Tesco)
10g plain flour
120g vanilla caster sugar
small splash vanilla extract
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
100ml soured cream

Method

- In the morning, put the raisins and chopped apricots in a small tub and cover with the sherry. Leave to soak. The liquid will not all be soaked up.

When ready to make the cheesecake

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

- Melt the butter over a gentle heat and crush the ginger biscuits.

- Combine the two and press onto the base of a 7" (18cm) springform tin.

- Bake for 5 minutes.

- In the meantime put the cream cheese, flour, soured cream, sugar, vanilla extract, egg and egg yolk in a large bowl. Beat well until combined. Mine did not go fluffy as the website recipe suggests. I just mixed until it was smooth.

- Tip the soaked fruit into the creamy mixture and mix to combine, but don't tip in the remaining liquid sherry - this is cook's perk - drink it if you want!

- Pour over the ginger biscuit base, trying to ensure the fruit is fairly evenly spread.

- Wrap the tin in foil to contain any leaks, unless you're very sure of your baking tins. I'm glad I wrapped mine because it leaked just a little.

- Bake for 40-50 minutes - see notes below. I think I probably left mine in for about an hour.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.

- Refrigerate overnight before serving.

Notes

- I completely forgot to grease the tin, but it didn't seem to matter too much. I ran a knife around the edge to release the cheesecake.

- I overbaked my cheesecake - it cracked fairly deeply, but I'm never sure how much 'wobble' to leave and I would rather over than underbake it. None of us minded the texture (and in fact, I'm not sure how the texture should have been!)

Well, I'm not sure it would pass muster with cheesecake experts but I thoroughly enjoyed this dessert! Which is saying something really, because I really am not keen on sherry or alcohol much in general. Both T and J enjoyed this too, and there were leftovers for a couple of days too, which were very welcome. I will definitely have to experiment further with baked cheesecakes, I had forgotten just how much I love the taste and texture and this was utterly gorgeous. Yum, yum, yum!

Buttermilk Oaten Bread

Is it a house brick, or maybe solid porridge? Was it all just a big mistake, or is it actually a loaf of bread? Well, it's defnitely bread, but it also comes under the heading of a big mistake too. Let me elaborate.... the recipe/inspiration for this bread comes from The National Trust Teatime Baking Book, yes, that one again (apparently my new favourite book). However, I had a bit of a mix-up with this one and have 'adapted' (i.e. made a hash of) it so much that I feel I can post the recipe as my own!

This bread is a non-yeasted soda-type bread, with the slightly unusual step of soaking the oatmeal of the title overnight in the buttermilk of the title. I didn't have the required fine oatmeal, but made do with medium oatmeal, and also didn't have buttermilk, instead substituting a mixture of fat-free Greek style yogurt and milk to make the mixture slacker.

Unfortunately the time between mixing the oatmeal and dairy to soak overnight and finishing the bread the following day was sufficient for me to forget that I'd halved the recipe. So I just stuck in the whole amount of flour as specified in the recipe for two loaves, rather than the one I planned on making. Well, I did wonder why the mixture was so dry - no way could I knead a bowl of crumbs! So I added more milk and eventually it came together. So try it if you want, but heed my warning about recipes with two stages separated by a period of sleep. This is why I don't try any of the more adventurous challenges out there in the blog world, I can't manage simple bread recipes, let alone anything actually complicated!!!

Buttermilk Oaten Bread aka Solid Porridge
Ingredients (as I made it)
100g medium oatmeal
130g fat free greek yogurt
80ml semi-skimmed (2% fat) milk
125g plain white flour (soft, not bread)
125g plain wholemeal flour (soft, not bread)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Method

- Mix the yogurt, milk and oatmeal together. Refrigerate overnight. In the morning, the mixture will be pretty stiff.

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line a baking tray.

- Add the flours, baking powder and salt to the soaked oatmeal, plus extra milk to combine (I didn't measure this, but at a very rough guess 50ml?)

- Knead until smooth.

- Pat out until about 1 1/2 - 2" thick. Place on the baking tray and dust with flour, or sprinkle with oats. To be honest, I mean to sprinkle with oats, but forgot that too. I'd also suggest cutting some slashes in the bread but forgot that. Can you see a theme developing here?

- Bake for 40-50 minutes (I think, the recipe says 35-40 but I definitely left mine longer than that!) until it is golden and sounds hollow when tapped.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool, or serve warm with butter melting onto it... mmmm, butter!

You can see from the picture that this is a really dense bread. I'm sure that a lot of people really wouldn't like it! I, on the other hand, am quite enjoying it! It has a distinctive (pleasant!!!) oaty taste and because it's so dense it really does remind me of solid porridge. I quite like porridge, so this is no bad thing in my books. And because it's bread you can spread it with butter, it's difficult to spread porridge with butter (and no, I haven't tried that!) I think it would make really good toast, or croutons for a salad. It hasn't really turned out the way I expected, but I quite like the finished result as it is, although I may try repeating the recipe more as it was intended at some point!

EDIT: 15th May

This is the bread made as it was supposed to be - with 125g flour in total rather than 250g. I still felt it needed a little extra milk to bring it together. The texture was pretty much identical to the first time I made it, so I didn't go too far wrong there. Nice bread though - to have made it twice so quickly!

New bread for a new year - Hamelman's Corn Bread

I wanted to try a new bread recipe - it seems ages since I've had something new (bearing in mind that the soured cream loaf I posted recently was made in October or something ridiculous like that!) and after reading about the Mellow Baker's group on Joanna's lovely blog, Zeb Bakes, I decided that as a new year treat (I can justify anything if I try hard enough) I would order Jeffrey Hamelman's book, 'Bread'. I'm not sure yet if I'll bake along with the Mellow Bakers, or just pick and choose what I fancy from the book, but it clearly has some interesting and different recipes in it.

I asked Joanna which recipes she'd found particularly good from the book and she gave me a little list of yeasted breads that she had found very successful. I decided to make the Corn Bread. I've previously made Dan Lepard's Semolina BBQ buns and wondered if this would be similar in any way. I followed Joanna's instructions here, using fine semolina as this is what I had available. I think I probably left my bread for longer than 45 mins x 2, but I don't think it suffered too much. I think it might be overproofed a little, as there wasn't an awful lot of oven spring. The slashes have opened quite nicely, but they're quite deep and I was probably expecting more rise, however, I did leave the loaf to proove for about 90 mins which is possibly why!

The bread is nothing at all like Dan's Semolina BBQ buns, but is just as delicious. The overnight poolish definitely adds a good tang and flavour. The crust is nice and thin and well flavoured with a close grained crumb making it really excellent for sandwiches. A really good loaf to start with (and I haven't even received the book yet!) so thank you to Joanna for recommending it and I'll look forward to looking at all the other breads the Mellow Bakers have made and deciding what to go for next!