It starts innocently enough, a Dan Lepard Guardian newspaper supplement, a childhood memory of Polish rye bread, one disgusting chilled sandwich too many at a motorway service station, a visit from a beloved Aunt who has always baked her own bread, a day baking with Simon Michaels, another day with Dan Lepard and before I knew it – I was one of them – a full-blown obsessive breadbaker. Continue reading
A ninety minute bread, that's not quick exactly, but quicker than most.....
Here is a pic of the last slices of the cheese and bacon bread I made at the weekend to go with a pan of leek and potato soup with home made chicken stock. Proper bread making will have to wait till later in the week as I am away for a bit.
Is this a bread? Or is it a cake? Well because I slipped some of that creme fraiche in to the mix, it became incredibly soft and almost cake like, except of course there was no sugar in it, just milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, grated cheese, crispy pancetta lardons, olive oil and mustard and a little salt.
I am not sure it counts as bread, but for some reason we were down to the last two inches for toast this morning when I thought to take a picture – so someone liked it.
Crumbly corners didn't stop us polishing this off
It took an hour to bake roughly and forty minutes to cool down enough to eat it; scones would have been quicker but this has a lovely crust and it made a nice change – I did like the crust a lot! I find soda breads quite dry sometimes but this one was rich and moist with all the enriching ingredients. No shaping, no waiting, has a lot to be said for it! The original recipe is in Rachel Allen’s book Bake. I’ve made several things from this book which my sister gave me and they have all worked well. Every time you bake something from a book which works it increases the likelihood you will bake something else, doesn’t it? Some books I just look at the pictures and never cook from. This is a clear and well written book, good layout, clear instructions. A friendly sort of book. I like it and would recommend it.
I used :
320g self raising flour (what I had)
1 extra tsp of baking powder for luck
a little salt and some black pepper
100g of grated Cheddar cheese
140g of pancetta lardons, more than the original recipe – you can use crisped up bacon and that would be just as good!
140 ml skimmed milk plus 60 grams of full fat creme fraiche – you could use all milk
2 large eggs
1 tbsp of mustard
60ml olive oil
I used a 2 lb loaf tin lined with baking parchment.
I baked this in a fan oven at 160 C (The book says bake at 180 C in a regular oven) for 40 minutes, and took the bread out of the tin and back in the oven for about another 15 minutes till it tapped hollow and looked cooked.
Sift the dry ingredients together. Mix in the grated cheese and the cooked crispy bacon bits without nibbling, or letting the dog fool you into giving him any. Whisk the wet ingredients together and then combine with the dry ingredients until well mixed. Put into tin and bake as above. Allow to cool if you can bear it before eating.
Autumn light is kind to bread
What a treat! An opportunity to load my bread with delicious thick slightly soured cream and create a pillow-soft loaf of bread which toasts like a dream. If only all white bread was like this, then I for one would be quite content.
Reminds me of Mickey Mouse a bit – cut while still warm so it looks a bit squashed, whoops!
So good I made it twice, the first time as it was written, hence the huge high top of the loaf, the recipe makes 925 grams of dough, squeezed into a square cornered 2lb tin, as recommended by Dan, this guarantees giving you a Wallace and Gromit height bread like the ones in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death.’ If you missed this have a look for the trailer on You Tube.
To make your own Yoghurt Cream (creme fraiche, sourcream?)
You need
a carton of double (heavy) cream
two teaspoons of fresh plain live yoghurt
a yoghurt maker or widenecked thermos flask or somewhere which is consistently warm to leave the yoghurt to culture.
Heat the cream till it is almost boiling and let it cool to below 50 C. In the meantime, pour boiling water over/into all untensils, containers etc, if you haven’t just put them through the dishwasher.
Put the yoghurt and the cream into your chosen container, put the lid on and wait for 8 – 10 hours for the yoghurt to culture the cream. If you have a cool home, try and find a warm spot, the cream should culture eventually but it might take more like 24 hours. I use a little electric yoghurt maker from Lakeland but there are many ways to do this and it’s worth finding a method that suits you and your budget.
For this loaf
Edit November 2011: I followed Dan Lepard’s recipe and method which was published originally in The Guardian here.
I used Shipton Mills Bakers White No. 1 flour and Allinsons Easy Bake Yeast and my home made yoghurt cream as above.
To celebrate the loveliness of this loaf I toasted a slice and covered it in beans and a magnificent sausage from Sunday’s Slow Food Market.
Toast holds up to the beans and fennel sausage!
Zeb Bakes 