Tag Archives: sourdough

Dan Lepard’s Sourcream Sandwich Loaf with homemade Creme Fraiche

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!

 

Bristol Sourdough

I made this one for my sister, who likes her sourdough good and sour.  Just as well as it had a long, long final prove. It’s an organic white sourdough with small amounts of rye and wholegrain flours and a little olive oil made with the original white starter I made when I began baking bread two years ago.

Bristol Sourdough with mixed flours

225g mature white leaven
180g water
210g strong white bread flour
75g wholegrain flour of choice
40g rye flour or other wholegrain flour
6g salt
11g ev olive oil

Total dough weight approx 750 g

Mix flours in bowl together.
Mix starter with water in a separate bowl.
Add the mixed flours to the starter and water mixture and mix till the flour is all incorporated.
Leave for 30 minutes.
Then add the salt in to the rough dough and knead for a minute or two, follow this with the olive oil.
Wash your mixing bowl with hot water and oil it lightly.
Return the dough to the bowl, pop a cover over it, I use disposable shower caps or clingfilm and leave until well aerated and has risen by 50 – 75 percent,  giving the dough two or three light turns during this period. Time approx 4 – 6 hours in a room at 20 ° C.

Shape the dough into a boule. Allow to rest on the bench for 20 minutes. Then reshape and place in a floured and lined banneton. At this point you can retard the dough overnight or leave for a final prove until the dough has almost doubled in height, another 3 – 6 hours. This particular loaf was mixed at 8 am and baked at about 7 pm, 11 hours later.

Preheat oven to 220° C or 240° C if you want a very dark crusty loaf and bake with steam for 20 minutes, dropping the temperature by 20 degrees for another 30 minutes after that.

Cool on a wire rack completely before cutting. This bread keeps for several days.

Some other breads from the same day, can’t put the oven on just for one loaf!