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!

Bread - less successful

Maize bread

One of the points of keeping this blog is to record the things I make and bake - wonderful, and not so wonderful. Periodically I have a complete fail and occasionally just can't bring myself to blog about it, but mostly you get the good, the bad and the indifferent (in my opinion - you might try these and love them). Blogging the indifferent reminds me that I've made it, why I wasn't that keen and reminds me not to bother trying again! Not everything can be fantastic and, in my opinion, the two breads that follow fall in the indifferent, not really worth trying again category.

Both are from Dan Lepard's book The Handmade Loaf. I feel bad saying that I didn't like these, but it's true. There are lots of recipes in there and it's down to personal taste that I don't like these rather than bad recipes so don't let this put you off the book.

Lemon Barley Loaf

Up first: Lemon Barley Cob. This is a hybrid sourdough/yeasted loaf and for some reason the flavour combination just didn't do it for me. I don't know whether I let the bread overproof (I seem to remember that I did) but the texture was quite odd too - sort of crumbly, so I'm not quite sure where/if I went wrong here. In any event I wasn't all that keen on the lemon. Dan says this is a savoury bread, and I would totally agree that it wasn't sweet at all, but I couldn't find a good partner for it, so I'm unlikely to make it again with lemon. I might try the base recipe with the barley flour and sourdough/yeast hybrid again at some point, but I might not.

Lemon Barley loaf

Secondly: Maize Bread. This is a straight yeasted dough using white bread flour and maize flour plus buttermilk as part of the wet ingredients, and has cooked polenta broken up into it. The recipe worked fine, I didn't allow it to overproof and it was straightforward to make. My antipathy towards this one is based mostly on texture - again it seems slightly crumbly to me, which I'm putting down to lack of gluten in the maize flour (which is 30% of the flour in the recipe) and my taste buds can't really detect any specific flavour in there, it seems insipid which I wasn't expecting. I wonder if I forgot the salt? Anyway, I probably won't make this one again. The day I made it, J dropped in on her way home from holiday. I was planning to give her half of this so she probably feels glad that it wasn't made in time!!! I'm eating it, I'm just not over the moon about it.

Maize bread

So there you go, two that I just didn't enjoy that much. Live and learn!

In my kitchen - August 2011

In my kitchen (inspired by Celia).... some goodies from Bakery Bits - pure lemon oil, I can't wait to use this. It smells sweeter than lemons, lemony but without the acidic backnote of either zest or juice. I'm sure this will enhance anything lemon I make. And because I'm a chocoholic, chocolate essence. I just couldn't resist. Smells pretty good, but not as bitter as my preferred dark chocolate. I shall just have to wait and see. They have lots more too, here.

Obscure Objects of Desire. Thank you Joanna. My shiny new danish dough whisk, already used for mixing up bread doughs. It seems like the perfect object to mix the sticky sourdough starter into the water before proceeding with the rest of the flour. And easy to clean too, only one tiny bit where dough gets a little stuck. Fab, looking forward to using it more....

To make more bread like this. Once I'd succeeded with the rye and barley sourdough from Dan Lepard, I decided to make it with wholemeal flour rather than rye and barley. So not totally wholemeal (there is white flour in the recipe too, and my starter is white flour based) but I think that actually I prefer the flavour of this one to the rye and barley incarnation.

And a couple of pictures for Celia - I haven't opened either of these yet, wondering how to showcase them to best effect. I bought the mezzi rigatoni because they reminded me of a shape Nigella had used in a recipe containing squid rings. I don't like squid though....

And finally, I adore cut flowers and gladioli in particular, so when I saw these deep, velvety red gladioli I just couldn't resist!

What's in your kitchen this August? Head over to Celia's blog to see her round up of what's in everyone elses kitchens now!

Sourdough success - barley and rye bread

Woo-hoo! Sourdough success! Thanks are again due to the amazing Mr Lepard (plus my sourdough starter, more on that later) and his book The Handmade Loaf. Every time I look at this book I find breads that I really, really want to make. There are some breads requiring only commercial yeast (fresh/dried), some requiring only sourdough and a few hybrids too. There are even some that don't need yeast at all, but they ones that always seem to catch my eye are the sourdough breads.

I have to admit that this is only based on Dan's recipe. I don't currently have a rye sourdough on the go and didn't want to convert my white sourdough so I just made a straight substitution of white sourdough for the rye specified in the recipe. I kept everything else the same though and halved the recipe.

My sourdough had spent a while sleeping in the fridge and when I came to wake it up again it seemed rather sluggish. After a couple of refreshes it wasn't quite smelling how I expected and I wondered how I could boost it. A couple of tsp of natural yogurt came to mind - the acidity and the bacteria help balance the culture. I didn't have any yogurt. Well, only rhubarb flavour, I didn't think my yeast would appreciate that. So I had a think about what else was acidic and hit on the idea of adding a little vinegar. No bacteria to help out, but acidity in abundance. I probably only added 1/2tsp or a tiny bit more, but the next day my starter was frothing away, more active than it's ever been! Has anyone else out there ever fed their starter a little vinegar to help the acidity? All knowledge gratefully accepted!

The second prooving step did take quite a long time to get to the puffed up stage you see in the prooving basket below, but I was occupied with other tasks so the wait didn't seem onerous. There was a moment of tension as I upended the banneton and hoped that the loaf wouldn't stick.... some of it was reluctant to leave it's wicker home, but going gently with it and a little coaxing released the loaf intact. I think perhaps I over-proofed it slightly as there wasn't very much oven spring, a little, but not much. The slashes have opened out but the loaf is a slightly slumped shape. I'm not complaining though because the crumb is excellent.

I think next time I'll have the oven as hot as possible to get the oven spring I'm looking for, but then turn it down straightaway, to prevent the loaf becoming overbrowned. This is just the right side of burnt, but only just!

I'm really pleased with the crumb texture - it was even throughout the loaf rather than some of my past efforts that have been full of massive holes in some places yet quite dense in others. This is definitely the best yet but I'm not complacent - this is just the beginning of the sourdough adventure.

Wholemeal loaf with sourdough

When I was making the Mill Loaf the shape you see above was the shape of loaf I was actually aiming for! A good pert, perky loaf, standing to attention, rather than slouching all over the place. Apparently I still need yeast to help me achieve this.

I have blogged about this bread before here and used exactly the same technique as described there. This time I used wholemeal flour rather than wholemeal spelt, but the main difference was the inclusion of a little sourdough ferment. When I made my Mill Loaf, I had a little sourdough culture left over and wondered how much difference it would make to a standard loaf if I were to include it for flavour rather than any raising ability it might have.

I have found that using this type of cooked flour technique (in brief - the loaf is made by pouring 210g boiling water over 75g strong wholemeal flour, leaving to cool to room temp or thereabouts, adding 75g strong wholemeal flour, 150g strong white flour, scant tsp each instant yeast and fine salt, kneading briefly, leaving, kneading and shaping, leave to proof, bake) seems to make the finished loaf somehow sweeter than one made without this step. I'm not sure why this should be, but I wondered how the flavour would change with the sourdough. I had about 80g left from the Mill Loaf and added it to this one.

As I imagined, the loaf behaved very much as it would normally, but the finished product was less sweet and had a slightly more complex flavour. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to add leftover sourdough to a yeasted loaf in the future, and this was certainly a worthwhile experiment. The finished bread was soft and moist with a lovely crumb and crust. Delicious!

The Mill Loaf - attempt #1 - a miche

The adventures in sourdough continue. And I appear to have made a flying saucer. I will not be defeated though, I'm sure that all practice is worthwhile and that success in achieving my perfect loaf is just around the corner....

This recipe is Dan Lepard's Mill Loaf, taken from The Handmade Loaf, a book that I love looking through, if only to imagine that I could make bread that looks even halfway as good as the amazing pictures in the book.

I halved the recipe because I don't need such a big loaf, and have given half of it to J anyway. I think the only other things I did differently to the recipe were to keep the loaf in a very warm place rather than at room temperature. Perhaps next time I should just keep it at room temp and not worry if there appears to have been no growth whatsoever. (And for those who are looking for a warm place, I can vouch that my sourdough is pretty active if I put the bowl containing the dough on top of a warm hot-water bottle, incubated inside a 13.5 tog duvet..... mmm, toasty warm!)

I tried to shape the dough as a baton style loaf, as pictured in THML but after about 30 minutes I had a ciabatta slipper shape about an inch high, if that even, that clearly wasn't going to hold it's shape. I then decided to form the dough into a ball, and tried hard to create tension over the surface of the dough to form a tight ball, before placing this upside down (i.e. seam side upwards) in a 2 litre pyrex bowl, lined with a rye-floured tea towel. Sadly I didn't manage to get enough rye flour into the tea towel and when it came to turning out for baking some of the dough had stuck, as you can see in the picture above - the wrinkles are where I had to prise the dough away from the teatowel very gently. Sadly, I clearly hadn't got enough tension into the surface of the ball, it quickly slumped to a saucer. On baking there was a bit of spring, but not enough to rectify my mistakes in handling!

Fortunately this was a rather delicious disaster of a bread. So not really a disaster then! The taste is really lovely - tangy and sour and complex due to the mixture of flours - white, wholemeal and rye, used in the dough. I am perfectly happy to eat my way through this one in the quest for a perfect looking loaf. The texture is what I am coming to expect from my homemade sourdough - chewy and reasonably close, with an excellent crunchy, chewy crust. I guess that sourdough should have bigger holes, but next time, next time.....

Edited to add: I'm reliably informed (by Joanna) that this shape of bread is called a 'miche'. So I've managed to create a sought after shape without even trying ;-) And as I've been eating this loaf, it has really grown on me. The crust is absolutely lovely, and the crumb is lovely and dense and chewy - in a good way! and the flavour is really quite sour and complex. I'll be really sorry when it is all finished. Definitely worth another go.

A beginner's sourdough ....sourd'oh?

Joanna and Celia are my sourdough gurus. I can only aspire to produce the kind of loaves they seem to turn out effortlessly. However, I'm sure that there must have been bumps along the road, and I can't expect to achieve the perfection I'm seeking first time round. Yep, that's me making excuses for what is to follow!

I only really started baking my own bread a couple of years ago and I'm now quite proud of the yeasted loaves that I can make. There are certainly more successes than failures now. Progress is necessarily slow - there is only me eating the bread I make, and even though I have it for morning and lunch that only equates to about 1 1/2 loaves a week - so it takes a while to eat my mistakes. Unless of course I decide to start feeding the local bird life with the less successful attempts. I haven't resorted to this yet, but I might still.... when the freezer bursts!

Before feeding

I started a sourdough culture a while ago and have been carefully nurturing it (actually, that's not entirely true - of late I've been rather less careful with it, only feeding every couple of days rather than every day religiously) with some lovely flour and bottled water. In fact, my starter might dine (in relative terms) better than I on occasion.

After feeding

I've made a couple of loaves with this starter, more in upcoming posts, but this is one that is perhaps the least visually attractive. After reading Celia's post on the basic proportions that she uses for her sourdough I decided that I would give it a try. As a sourdough novice I decided that although large holes in my bread are desirable, being able to handle the dough is rather more desirable at this stage. After all, if I can't handle it, I can't get it into the oven either can I!

So following Celia's proportions for a 60% hydration loaf I used the following:

150g starter (75g water, 75g strong white flour, 25g mature starter left overnight to do it's thing)
500g strong white flour
215g bottled water (plus I added a bit extra as the dough seemed too dry - perhaps I should have stuck with it... see later)
20g olive oil
12g salt (should have been a little less but my hand slipped!)



I mixed the water into the starter until there were no obvious lumps left, and then added the flour, olive oil and salt and mixed well (in my KitchenAid stand mixer) to form a dough. It seemed a little too dry so I added more water and continued to mix for a bit. I then transfered it to a pyrex bowl and left it for probably most of the day. Six hours perhaps. My house isn't all that hot, so in order to cosset the dough, I made up a warm hot water bottle and wrapped it in a (spare, unused!) duvet to keep warm. I'm glad I did because I don't think it would have done anything at all otherwise! Growth seemed to be minimal, but I started thinking that I would run out of time, so pressed on. The dough seemed soft and I didn't think it'd be able to hold it's own weight after shaping, so I dumped it rather unceremoniously after minimal kneading into a 2lb/900g loaf tin. It rose, slowly. It never reached the top of the tin, so after a little muttering about unresponsive yeast I decided to cut my losses and bake it.

Gas 7 for about ten minutes, with steam, then reduced to gas 6 for about another 35-45 minutes (I didn't make a note of this, I wasn't holding out much hope for this loaf) until the base sounded hollow. Cooled on a wire rack.

As I say, I wasn't really expecting much from this loaf, in fact, I thought it would be a suitable candidate for helping to build a house. Just goes to show how little I know! The texture is fairly tight and firm, with small, but fairly evenly distributed bubbles. (Limited) success! From what Celia said about this formula, small bubbles are to be expected, so I think my starter succeeded! Because the loaf never rose above the edge of the tin, I didn't think to flour it or slash it before baking, and to me, it looks like my loaf is sticking it's tongue out at me in return for the lack of care and attention!



The scent of the bread is rather more acidic than the taste, but the loaf is noticeably more acidic than the yeasted breads I make. I don't recall ever buying a sourdough loaf (I wasn't really interested in sourdough bread before I started making my own bread) or even eating sourdough bread when out and about, so I don't really have a frame of reference here. Should the crumb be very firm? This isn't anything like yeasted bread crumb (which tends to be relatively soft) but is almost hard (not in an unpleasant way, just by comparison). Do you tend to find that the aroma of a sourdough is more acidic than the taste?


Anyway, thank you Celia, I'm enjoying this loaf for my sandwiches, and small holes are perfect for that purpose - I don't want all my filling dropping into my lap as I eat! Who knows where my next sourdough adventure will take me!

Golden raisin bread - Mellow Bakers

I have the lovely Joanna over at Zeb Bakes to thank for this bread (via gentle encouragement and support!), and hopefully many more in the coming months. I've admired her baking for many months now, and have followed her Mellow Bakers posts with great interest - they all look so good, and it's really interesting to see how many different kinds of bread you can make and which ones appeal to different people. You can see all of Joanna's Mellow baking here - inspiring stuff, and the Mellow Bakers forums are here.

Anyway, just after Christmas I decided to take the plunge and order the book - Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread, so that I could join in the action. After far too long a wait (I'm impatient when it comes to receiving things through the post) the book arrived and I jumped straight in with one of the January Mellow Bakers recipes.

The book itself is quite thick and I confess to not having read any of the preamble - it feels almost like I'm a small child with a new toy - I want to just play straightaway and not read the instruction book first! However, I'm really looking forward to reading all the technical detail behind the bread making process soon. This bread must have been pretty forgiving because it still turned out well!

It's a sourdough/yeast hybrid (and yes, whisper it quietly - that means I've got my sourdough starter going again....) and I think that the yeast probably did most of the work in this bread. I could detect a faint sourdough tang, but it was very much in the background. I suppose this was a good thing really, given that I've been eating this buttered for breakfast - I wouldn't have wanted it to be too assertively sour! I halved the quantities given for home bakers and converted them to metric too, for the next time I decide I want to make this. Next time I work with a bread that requires additions, I'll mix them in by hand - my mixer didn't really distribute the raisins all that well - as you can see in the top photo, though further through the loaf the distribution was better - see photo below.

I really enjoyed this bread as a first foray into the book and am looking forward to baking more from it - there are so many different breads I want to try. It's a good job that the group is mellow - there are more breads for this month that I'm not going to get round to making (though this is partly because I didn't receive my copy of the book until pretty late in the month - excuses, excuses!) so it's great that there's no pressure to make them all.