Bread Matters (22 page)

Smear some water over a clean area of worktop and lay your dough down on it, covering the whole thing with a clean upturned bowl whose inside rim has also been moistened with water. Wait an hour, during which time the gluten will relax and soften and the yeasts will begin to aerate the bubble structure inside the dough. Then, with wet hands and a couple of plastic scrapers, stretch and fold the dough. With one scraper in each hand, slip them under the middle of the dough, gently prising it from the table if it has stuck. Lifting the dough very slightly, stretch it away from you as far as it will go without forcing it and then fold it back on itself and let it rest on the main body of dough. Do this again, this time getting hold of the ‘front’ part of the dough piece and pulling it towards you before folding it back on top of the main body of dough. Repeat the action, stretching the dough to your right and then finally to your left. You should end up with a tighter, more vertical pile of dough. The object of this folding action is to thin the gluten membrane by stretching it, allowing a greater subsequent expansion of the dough, at the same time squeezing as little gas out of it as possible.

Have a bowl of wholemeal flour ready. Pick the dough up and dip it gently in the flour, turning it over to ensure that it gets completely covered. Then transfer it to a floured proving basket with the seam (or more ragged) side of the dough facing upwards. Cover the whole basket with a large polythene bag, inflated so that it cannot touch the dough, and put it in a warm place to prove for 3-5 hours.

When it looks as though it has expanded a fair amount, test the dough with gentle finger pressure. This dough is going to be subjected to some indignity when you turn it out of its basket on to a baking tray, so it is best not to let it prove until it is fully aerated and quivering like a jelly. It is ready to be baked when an indentation made by your finger disappears fairly slowly, indicating that the pressure of gas in the dough may be passing its peak.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Invert the basket with a fairly quick action but be careful not to clatter the dough on to the baking tray – or you may hear a reproachful sigh as gas escapes from the ruptured loaf. Make 2 or 3 cuts in the top of the loaf and then put it into an oven preheated to about 220°C. Reduce the heat to around 200°C after about 10 minutes. Bake for about 40 minutes to ensure a good, deeply coloured, firm crust.

Variations

• Instead of strong white flour, try using some plain flour (perhaps from English wheat) to change the quality of the gluten in the dough. If you can get hold of a French T65 or T110, or an Italian-style ciabatta flour, these may also provide the kind of very extensible but not very strong gluten that is ideal for French Country Bread. The effect of using weaker flour may be to make the crumb structure more random. The wetter the dough, the chewier the crumb will be.
  
• Try substituting 50g wholemeal rye flour for the same weight of white flour in the production leaven. Even a small amount of rye can assist the production of gluten-ripening substances and contribute to extra moistness in the crumb.
  

Hop Bread

‘The flowers make bread light and the lumpe to be sooner and easilier leavened, if the meale be tempered with liquor wherein they have been boiled.’

J
OHN GERARDE
,
The Herball or Generall Historie of Plants
(1597)

Brewing and baking are kindred crafts, united in their dependence on yeast fermentation. Bakers often used residues of brewer’s yeast to start their sponges. So it is not surprising that people have periodically tried to revive an ancient fellowship by enriching bread with some of the flavours of the brewery. Typically, they substitute beer for some or all of the dough water.

Coming across Gerarde’s observation about hops, I wondered whether it would be possible to put all the essential flavours of beer into bread without actually using the liquid itself. The recipe that follows is based on the basic wheat leaven given above. Incidentally, I take issue with Gerarde. In my experience, hops
slow down
the yeast fermentation. They contain strong essential oils and aromatic acids called humulones. These have a preservative (antifungal) effect in beer, which makes it likely that they would inhibit the action of yeast to some extent. But, apart from its delicious malty, hoppy flavour, this bread does keep mould-free for a remarkably long time.

You can buy hops from home-brewing shops. The amount of hops in the recipe is very small, but their flavour is pronounced and can easily be overdone. The malty flavour of beer is provided by malt extract.

Makes 1 small loaf

Ye hop water

1g Hops

120g Boiling water

121g Total

Add the hops to the boiling water in a saucepan. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Cool and strain off the hops; you should have about 115g liquid.

Ye hop bread dough

50g Stoneground wholemeal flour

130g Strong white flour

3g Sea salt

115g Hop water (from above)

30g Barley malt syrup

180g Production Leaven (page 183)

508g Total

Cracked wheat (or wholemeal flour or jumbo oats) for dipping

Make a dough with all the ingredients except the refreshed leaven. Knead until smooth and stretchy. Then add the leaven and work it into the dough until smooth. Mould into a round cob and dip in cracked wheat to cover the entire loaf. If you have made the dough too tight and dry and the cracked wheat does not stick, moisten the surface and try again.

This dough may take a good bit longer than ordinary French Country Bread to rise – up to 7 hours – so it is best to prove it in a basket.

When it is ready, turn it out of its basket (as described for French Country Bread above) and bake it in a fairly hot oven at around 200°C for 30-40 minutes, reducing the heat a little after 10 minutes. The malt content of the dough will make it take more colour than a plain loaf, so a really hot oven may burn it.

Broon Geordie

In the mid-1990s some bakers in northeast England made a bread called something like Broon Geordie, using Newcastle Brown Ale. They brought it over the Pennines each morning and put it on the lorry taking our bread to Waitrose. The problem with most beer breads is that an awful lot of liquor is needed to carry any flavour through the baking process and this gets pretty expensive. In my view, it’s also a waste of good ale to evaporate all the alcohol in a loaf of bread.

Fruit and Nut Leaven Bread

Based on the French Country Bread dough, this recipe makes a loaf that is a meal in itself and, with the help of the succulent fruits, keeps for ages. If you cannot get hold of all the fruits and nuts specified, use what you have to hand. It is always a good idea to soak dried fruit before using it in bread to prevent it ‘robbing’ moisture from the dough itself. I recommend soaking the nuts, too, which gives them an almost buttery eating quality.

Makes 1 large cob

The fruit and nut mix

50g Dried figs

35g Dates

35g Prunes

35g Hazelnuts

35g Brazil nuts

35g Walnuts or cashew nuts

50g Water (any temperature)

275g Total

Chop the figs, dates and prunes into halves or quarters. Mix all the fruits and nuts together and put them into a strong polythene bag. Add the water, seal the bag and swirl it around to get everything wet. Try to do this a couple of times at intervals. Leave the bag at ambient temperature overnight, or for at least 4 hours. If you are in a hurry, use hot water.

Fruit and nut leaven bread dough

70g Stoneground wholemeal flour

200g Strong white flour

5g Sea salt

190g Water

200g Production Leaven (page 183)

275g Fruit and Nut Mix (from above)

940g Total

Make a dough with the flours, salt and water. Knead until smooth and elastic. Add the refreshed leaven and knead a little more until you have a fairly soft, springy dough. Put this back in the bowl, cover it and leave for about an hour. This allows the gluten (and you) to relax and the yeast to begin inflating the dough. Not a great deal of effect will be visible in an hour, but it will be much easier to add the fruit and nut mix at this stage than it would have been immediately after kneading.

Strain off any free liquid from the fruit and nuts and then tip them into the dough bowl. Gently fold the dough over, trying to envelop the fruits and nuts rather than force them into the dough. Go for a reasonable dispersion rather than complete evenness of distribution, which tends to come at the cost of breaking the dough up into a sticky mess.

Using a little flour on your hands and perhaps a tiny bit on the worktop, mould the dough into a round cob, pulling it quite tight so that it sits upright. During proof it will inevitably flow out fairly flat, but a bolder shape can be retained if the initial moulding process succeeds in creating some tension around the circumference of the loaf which will, as it were, ‘hold in’ the bulging insides. In your moulding, try to finish up with not too many bits of fruit or nut sticking out of the top of the loaf because these will tend to get overbaked. You can pick out the worst offenders and push them into the bottom of the loaf before putting it on to a baking tray lined with baking parchment.

Prove for 3-5 hours and bake at about 200°C, reducing the heat a little after 10 minutes. The whole loaf is so streaked with fruits and nuts that it will take colour quicker than a plain dough. If the top shows signs of getting too dark, shield it with a couple of sheets of baking parchment for the last few minutes of baking. This is a fairly big loaf, so it will take about 40 minutes to bake.

Arkatena Bread

If you like bread with a hefty crust, chewy crumb and intense flavour, this one is for you. It is like French Country Bread gone rustic. It is amazing what a difference the addition of a small amount of chickpea flour can make to a bread.

On a working trip to Cyprus, I visited a village bakery near Limassol. The area is known for bread and rolls called
arkatena
and made with a natural fermentation of chickpeas. In the bakery I was so amazed at the enormous tub of heaving, billowing leaven that I completely forgot to ask how it was made. In any case, it isn’t really the done thing to waltz into a small bakery and ask for its trade secrets. I remembered reading in the Slow Food journal the memoir of a woman who described her Cypriot grandmother soaking chickpeas and somehow generating the yeast for a distinctive local bread. I suspect that this baking tradition is largely domestic, so I had to devise a recipe of my own.

Chickpea or gram flour seems to be teeming with yeasts because it ferments in no time at all. Within a day of mixing it with warm water it will be active. For the first day or two it smells, frankly, rather uninviting, but with the addition of some wheat flour on the third day it settles down to a pleasant acidity, with a hint of beany aroma from the chickpeas.

I am not sure if the addition of fennel seeds to the final dough is authentic – probably not. But they work well with the wonderfully chewy texture produced by this leaven. There is only about 5 per cent chickpea flour in the final dough, enough for a modest nutritional gain (chickpeas are a good source of folate and copper). This could be increased a little, but beyond a certain point a beany flavour begins to intrude.

Starting an arkatena leaven

The procedure is the same as for rye sourdough on page 160.

Day 1

30g Chickpea (gram) flour

40g Water

70g Total

Keep this mixture as near to a constant 28°C as you can manage.

Day 2

70g Starter from Day 1

30g Chickpea (gram) flour

40g Water

140g Total

Day 3

140g Starter from Day 2

80g Stoneground wholemeal flour

60g Water

280g Total

After a further few hours’ fermentation, you should have a lively arkatena starter. You will need only 160g of this to make the recipe that follows. Throw away the remainder, or freeze it, or use it in small amounts in other breads.

Making arkatena bread

Makes 1 large cob

Stage 1: the production leaven

160g Arkatena Starter (from above)

50g Stoneground wholemeal flour

50g Chickpea (gram) flour

150g Strong white flour

120g Water

530g Total

Mix everything together into a softish dough at about 27°C. Cover and leave in a warm place for 4 hours. In very warm weather, or if your leaven is very lively, this period of refreshment may need to be reduced to 3 hours or even less. The production leaven is ready when it has expanded appreciably but not collapsed on itself.

Stage 2: arkatena dough

100g Stoneground wholemeal flour

300g Strong white flour

7g Sea salt

300g Water

20g Fennel seeds

300g Production Leaven (from above)

1027g Total

Make a dough with all the ingredients except the fennel seeds and the production leaven. Keep it soft and work it until the gluten develops and feels elastic. Add the fennel seeds and the refreshed leaven and give the dough another few minutes’ kneading. It should be very soft.

Treat it from here in all respects like a French Country Bread (see pages 182-185). Final proof may be shorter than for French Country Bread because the arkatena leaven is a bit livelier.

After baking, let the bread cool completely before you cut it. You will struggle not to wolf several slices of this delicious bread one after another, so they should at least be cool.

Starting a spelt leaven