Yearly Archives: 2010

80% Rye Bread with a Rye Flour Soaker Part 1

Last of the ryes for me this month!

This Jeffrey Hamelman rye bread was made with Bacheldre organic stone ground rye, a much coarser sort of rye than the usual Shipton Mill one I use. This bread is made with a rye flour soaker and a rye sourdough.

A rye flour soaker? A soaker is when you pre-soak one of the ingredients of your bread; could be linseeds, could be whole grains, could be an old crust of a nice loaf. In this bread the soaker is a quantity of rye flour, covered in boiling water and mixed up and left overnight. The boiling water gelatinizes the flour and it has a remarkable effect on the final bread. It’s no more trouble than making the sourdough the night before and it changes the character of the bread noticeably giving a smooth, sweeter quality to the crumb. I think they must do this a lot in German rye breads as that is what this sort of rye reminds me of.

In Part 2: The crumb shot and my mother’s recipe for Gravad Lax

Lime and Labneh Cheesecake

Christine @ Slowlivingessentials recently made a wonderful cheesecake. Here is her post about it. She used home made labneh and as I have been experimenting once again with making yoghurts this inspired me to make one too!

So here we go: my first home made cheesecake for over ten years…..

Just one slice for me please!

This is how I made mine:

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Dan Lepard’s Semolina Barbecue Buns

Hot from the oven

Made these wonderful rectangular semolina buns and a batch of Dan Lepard’s legendary soft white baps today for our back lane BBQ! (Click on the links for the recipes)

Was a bit flummoxed about getting the softish dough onto the tray, but realised that the best thing was to roll the dough out on to the paper to start with, then pick the paper up together with the dough and plop it on the tray. I also made a bit of a mess of marking and scoring the bread but it mattered not a bit. Every last one was eaten and enjoyed by all accounts!

Soft white baps and semolina buns on the way to the party..

We had some very fine Italian spicy sausages full of fennel seeds and chile with ours.

If you don’t know it, Dan Lepard writes a great baking column each week in the Guardian newspaper, usually with ingredients that are easily available and fairly straightforward techniques for the home baker to follow.

Edit:

Celia has made these and partnered them with some fabulous burgers in chilly Sydney. Have a look here! And here are Di’s, which look very professional indeed. And Ulrike’s very smart buns. And C has made a loaf of it here, which I think is a smart move which would give you that lovely bread without all the hassle of shaping it into buns! I think Dan has created another winner here!

They seem really popular with kids, here are Christine’s, look at that scoring! and here are Heidiannie‘s too being enjoyed by her family and every time I see them I feel hungry all over again and think about making another batch…. oh look I did… Click here!