A choice of bread this morning, soft white bread made with creme fraiche for the toothly challenged one with a series of dental appointments to come and a hybrid sourdough/yeast with a good proportion of Swiss Dark Flour for me. Why the hybrid? It’s what I do when there is a big bowl of perfect starter waiting and it’s late and I don’t want to be baking retarded loaves in the morning. I just add a pinch of yeast, put the little oven on to its lowest temperature of 30 C and move the bread on a bit quicker and that way I can bake it before I go to bed and have a quiet morning.
I know it’s not considered to be ‘real’ sourdough, but it sure is real bread as far as I’m concerned. Commercial yeast is very useful and if it helps you get to where you want to be then use it if you want. I do this, particularly in these circumstances. Is it better to chuck the starter out, knowing it won’t be any good in the morning or better to use it and some yeast to fit in with your needs? It is important that one doesn’t pretend that a hybrid loaf is a pure sourdough though and I wish that our labelling laws were stricter on that. I am happy to buy hybrid bread if it’s good quality but I want it labelled as such. In fact a little information about the process on the label would be beneficial to all consumers. What do you think?
Our baking styles are all so personal and I get tired of the hardliners who want to say this is real bread, or that isn’t real bread. We all know what bad bread is, good bread is more open to definition in my view.
I am replete with delicious toast, dry cured bacon and some home grown tomatoes fried in the bacon fat. My Sunday is off to a good start.
What do you have for breakfast on your days off?
If anyone wants to know more about these two breads here is some info:
To make Dan Lepard’s sour cream sandwich loaf the recipe is here. I doubled the quantities and then divided the resulting dough by three to give me three good sized loaves that I baked in 2lb high sided loaf tins as i didn’t want the huge top I got the last time I made this loaf, stunning though it is, the slices didn’t fit in the toaster!
To make the Swiss Dark Loaf as above
- 250 g mature white sourdough starter
- 210 g lukewarm water
- 2 tsp of spraymalt light (optional)
- 300 g strong white flour
- 200 g Swiss Dark Flour (a light brown flour from Shipton Mill with very little bran visible in it)
- 10 g seasalt
- 1 tsp of quick action yeast
- Mix all together well.
- Leave the mix to hydrate for 15 minutes.
- Do three light kneads over half an hour, or two, whatever you feel like.
- Leave for another 90 minutes or till almost doubled.
- Shape into two small loaves and pop into well floured baskets.
- Heat oven after about 45 minutes to 210 C. I put a baking sheet in the oven this time and baked on that. I was too tired to get the baking stone out.
- Bake once the loaves look well risen, I had mine in a warm space at 30 C so they were ready to go after an hour.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Put a little metal tray in the oven and fill with boiling water once the dough goes in.
- Leave to cool on rack overnight and breakfast is waiting in the morning.
Zeb Bakes 
good morning to you Joanna.
I can picture myself sitting at your table enjoying your truly home prepared breakfast right now.
Beautiful breads.
I don’t make yeasty beasties at home, only because I never have yeast in, but I certainly enjoy them when I do eat them.
They offer a change to the usual sourdough approach.
And as they say, there’s more than one way to skin a squirrel (just as there’s more than one way to make excellent breads)
Good Afternoon Gill! How lovely to hear from you :D I’m not saying anything I haven’t said before I know – just being honest about what is going in the bread in the pictures today. I’ve never skinned a squirrel, the dogs never quite manage to catch them, though I hear they are tasty….
what ever they are looks yum yum
Thanks sweetheart :D
As a novice sourdough baker I would be lost without my bakers yeast – it makes homemade bread possible for the disorganised and those without the necessary organisation skills to be able to work five days a week and bake with sourdough at the same time (I’m sure it’s more than possible, but I haven’t bothered to work out how yet!).
I regard all the bread I make at home as real bread, whether with sourdough, bakers yeast or no yeast at all (currently on a soda bread kick!) and I don’t hold yeasted bread in lower regard than sourdough, they both have their place and it’s down to personal preference, desired keeping/storage qualities etc and what you’re eating the bread with as to what flavour you want from your bread.
I do agree that labelling should be clearer. In my mind a loaf sold as sourdough should never have seen commercial yeast, I would call anything with both sourdough and yeast a hybrid, just as you have done. And for myself at the moment, hybrids are useful when I don’t want the worry of how a true sourdough will turn out – the flavour is more complex but for me, bakers yeast makes the result more predictable. I’m sure that as I get more experienced with sourdough this’ll change!
Oh, and pass on good luck for the impending dental appointments. That sourcream loaf is delicious and I can imagine it being very welcome after dental treatment!!!
Thanks for your thoughtful comment C. I certainly think all your beautiful baking is real, in fact I think you’re fantastic! I will tell the dentally challenged one that you send your best too :)
Hi. The white loaf looks so softly delicious ! Hope B liked it !
I have to go abroad this week and have no time to bake bread so I’ll feed the starter and use it to make 2 chocolate cakes ! starter is too precious to be thrown away!
I agree that labelling should be clearer and honest : supermarket giants don’t have to mention all the added enzymes on their breads as these are considered processing aids rather than additives !
On the other hand, my local baker who has a very tradtional clientele will not even tell them that he has recently started to use a small amount of starter in his yeasted bread in fear of losing his customers !
Hoping to come back next week and try the home-made crême fraîche for the white loaf ! thanks
Anne
He is very happy Anne and even happier as I have made some very rich brioche this evening as well. Starter in chocolate cakes sounds excellent, I would love to hear more when you are back and I feel for your local baker, it’s a mixed up world isn’t it?
What a lovely Sunday breakfast you had. I would head right over there, but your morning has come and gone. I will have to settle for great photos and mouth watering bread. I laugh as I sit here because I started a loaf of no-knead bread on Wednesday night. Thursday mid-morning I prepared it for rising and then was called to head to the hospital to help a friend. After spending time with him and his wife over Thursday and Friday in the hospital I never got to baking my bread. So here I sit Sunday am and only now, after reading your post, did I realize that I still have bread to make. I will pull it back out and knead it a bit and see if it will rise again. It will be a good experiment, but I won’t have any toast with breakfast this morning unless I wait 2+ hours, and I am hungry now. Thank you for reminding me I have bread to make – HA.
Emily I hope your friends are all right. My breadly obsession is not very important in the great scheme of things, wish I could have made breakfast for you with all these worries. Best wishes, Joanna
I’m all about truth in labeling.
And I truly love sourdough bread.
But I’m a hybrid bread maker for the most part.
I don’t like waiting out sourdough- and I like the smell and taste of yeasted breads.
Yours looks very good. And we all know that any loaf made with love and time is real bread whether yeasted or sourdough or both!
Good post.
Mornings off, my husband prefers eggs and bacon and toast.
I like yogurt and granola.
Or pancakes. :)
I am addicted to toast, I try and be good and eat yoghurt and fruit or porridge sometimes, but toast is my true love :D
Actually i am tempted by that delicious white loaf.. I shall go back and have a look at that recipe for my wednesday bake.. thank you joanna.. lovely post.. your pages always feel so warm, and cosy! .. c
That’s really sweet of you to say that. I hope you have a go at the white loaf, it is really very good :)
Joanna, I do that little bit of added yeast quite often, when I’m faced with timing constraints – I notice a small change in the texture when I do that, hard to describe with words. The crumb seems less “creamy” than that with wild yeast alone. But, I’ve never made two loaves side by side to make sure that’s the case.
at any rate, your breads are wonderful, always – you know your way around them very very well! And I’d love to have breakfast with you anytime!
I notice a change in the texture, but I would say that the sourdough texture is more distinct and less blurred than the one with the spike of yeast. But it’s so hard to construct a perfect test that I’ve never tried. How can one vary only one thing and keep everything else identical? For one thing the timing will always be different… I like breakfast as a meal, usually far less complicated than dinner, I come to your blog to read about dinner! :D
The hardliners do get exhausting, don’t they? The only hybrid bread we bake (I actually have been misusing the “hybrid” term to refer to mixed flour loaves) is Dan’s focaccia/olive oil flatbread – and we love it. I think everybody should be allowed to make bread in whatever way they choose – home made bread is special in any permutation! :)
It’s just the way certain words get hijacked like ‘real’ that bothers me. You know I’m sure you can use hybrid to describe mixed flour loaves, I am not sure that it is a technical bread term.
Some people describe a bread made this way as ‘spiked with yeast’ – kind of reminds me of a ‘spiked’ drink, something naughty and underhand about it.
And you are right home made bread is special, made with love and care however it is made :D
They both look like tasty loaves to me. When I first started baking sourdough breads, I used the extra yeast a time or two. Not above using it now either, if I want bread today instead of tomorrow. Keep up the wonderful baking, smells like sweet bread from here.
God Bless You
paul
Thank you Paul – always good to hear from another home baker :D
ooo..i didn’t know there were bread police out there..how scary..after rediscovering sourdough i thought i wouldn’t need commercial yeast again but i bought some recently for the very purpose of having more control over a bake..
both of your loaves sound and look great and i’m looking forward to trying both..i need to set up a bread eating pact with myself though..walk a km a slice..i’m in danger of expanding in the direction of your first sour cream loaf.. :)
Bread police – hee hee – yes there are definitely bread police out there. I made some brioche yesterday along with some Twitter friends and used yeast, where the other week I made it with sourdough just to see the difference and you can definitely taste the difference, I liked both! Bread eating pact is a good idea. The cream loaf is only made for a treat and nearly all yesterday’s brioche has been given away :D
Now that IS a lovely way to start a Sunday morning. Mr Chocolate would be the happiest man on the planet if we sat down to breakfast like that. I love my sourdough for breakfast, teamed up with the tartiest marmalade I can make and I’m a happy woman.
I’m happy if anyone makes bread at home whether it’s yeasted or sourdough it doesn’t matter. The more people that are bitten by the home baking bug the better I say :-) In shops, different story though, someone saying they have sourdough for sale when it’s clearly a yeasted one with a wave of starter somewhere wafting over it makes me frown.
I’m sure Mr Chocolate gets fabulous breakfasts when there is time. Have you ever made chocolate bread? I never have, bread with chocolate bits in it, but not a chocolate dough. One day maybe though I suspect cake is better. I was given a gorgeous chocolate and guiness cake the other day, that would have been perfect for Mr C’s breakfast. :D
Chocolate and guiness eh? I can see that working.
The only chocolate bread I’ve made was the Chocolate and peanut butter one. Definitely didn’t work, that was a chocolatey dough rather than bits though.
I’m hooked on making carrot bread at the moment. I did the first one last week, second on the weekend and plans again next weekend when I get the carrots. I’m loving it!
Carrots in season everywhere right now I guess. Never made bread with them, only cake, look forward to hearing more soon :)
We make the Green & Black chocolate Guinness cake and absolutely adore it! I wrote it up here.
Jo : Click on the link to read Celia’s post.
Good bread is what makes you say, “this is good bread” and homemade bread is good bread surely, especially when it’s like your sour cream loaf and made for the loveliest of reasons. As for correctly labelling food and knowing what one is buying – I do agree with that. Thanks for letting me know that Doc was hanging up his blogging cap – I’ve just slipped a note under the door. I shall miss him and my journeys into his world. I hope the ‘toothly challenged’ one is at least left with a toothy grin.
Bread labelling is very strange in this country, if it’s packaged they have to label it with ingredients but if it is not they don’t have to tell you what is in it at all. They call bread with 5 % spelt, spelt bread… I ask you!
Lets hope Doc finds his blogging joie de vie again one day. Don’t worry about the toothly challenged one- he is dining on brioche at the moment, poor dear ;) Pic in the Flickr set in the sidebar.
Sitting here in lovely hotel in the middle of the Black Forest, and all I can think of is I can’t wait to try my new dough whisk and bake bread! See? I am hooked; on hols and I can’t stop thinking about bread. ;) Lovely post, Jo! xx
Guten Abend Misk! All I can think of is chocolate cake, cherries, kirsch and whipped cream and those little chocolate shaving bits when I see the words Black Forest. They are eternally linked together with a memory of Walter’s Patisserie in Thames Ditton. I can’t believe you found a dough whisk in Germany! I thought they came from Poland and were called Danish in America, something like Danish pastries, which as you know aren’t called that in Denmark… I hope you are sampling the brotchen and conducting forensics on the rye breads for us. And eating some of that very fine ham they have there too xx
Hi Joanna, lovely pics and lovely bread! I too use a pinch of yeast to get my loaves done in a day, no guilt!
and I too love toast – on weekdays I make my sourdough toast (whatever is on the go) and have it with marmite, cut into fingers, and I eat it from a nice bowl as I drive to work! I used to have a banana chopped up in the same bowl, and a small fork, but I have decided that is as dangerous as using a mobile phone, so now banana waits until I get to work!
I only add yeast to my sourdoughs when I either want to bake sooner or when I want a faster prove to have a specifically milder taste and a softer texture to the bread, the two seem to go hand in hand. I have yet to make a soft mild tasting sourdough bread that doesn’t have enriching ingredients in like butter or eggs.
I am glad you leave your banana till you get to work, slippery thing to lose in a car :D
Wonderful bread as always Jo. There are a lot of sourdough bakers that like to preach an exclusively sourdough path. In my baking commercial yeast always has it’s place. Baguettes for example I have made for many year using both sourdough and commercial yeast, while each has it’s own endearing character I conclude the commercial wins (all be it via a pre-ferment) for me. I often add 200g of my leaven to a dough ‘spiked’ with commercial yeast and while this may not yield the unique charm of a slowly yeasted bread it is more flavoursome than without and can be made swiftly when needed.
Thanks for dropping by Toby :) I really enjoyed following along and baking brioche with you yesterday on Twitter!
I think most people who comment here are fairly relaxed about what they use to leaven their bread with. It’s all about time after all.
I agree with you about baguettes, best results I have had so far have been using a bakers yeast poolish type preferment.
I know exactly what I want for my next Sunday breafast now. Delicious toast, dry cured bacon and some home grown tomatoes fried in the bacon fat, and a coddled egg.
Thanks for reading timethief, you’re right there should be an egg on the plate too, we were trying to be restrained as there was so much toast :)
I’m just playing catch-up. both of these breads looks awesome – especially the darker one. And I agree, a little more info on labels should be the norm. Happy weekend baking!
Happy weekend baking to you to Ruth! Thanks for popping by :D