The case of the disappearing mother in law

This week at Bread of Heron, the Heron Corn Mill's community bread group, we had a bit of a party. The occasion was my relaunch as a senior citizen - the beginning of my seventh decade in fact. Thanks to everyone who came along to the barn to help me celebrate, and made it rather a special day for me.

Guinness world record attempt

We possibly set a new record for the amount of cassoulet eaten in a single sitting. There were approximately 1.75 kg of dry beans in this little lot, and only a breakfast bowlful left at the end of the day.

Bend and stretch

After a big lunch I like to run through the Jane Fonda workout routine outside my front door. It inspires the neighbours so. The cat from across the road likes to join in and copy all my movements -

Wet wet wet

We did a variety of bakes bakes this week. The main choices were both very sticky, so there was not a great deal of proper kneading going on.

First up was a focaccia, which requires two risings. We got this under way as soon as possible, so we could get on with the second bake - a wholemeal loaf with caraway seeds, affectionately known as the mother in law loaf.

The caraway loaf is almost impossibly wet - over 80% hydration - so all you can really do is beat it with your fingers, making your hand into a sort of claw shape. The good thing is that it is so wet that it will naturally settle down in the tin, and sort itself into a nice tidy loaf shape.

It's definitely worth lining the Heron tins as this mixture would be bound to stick.

It was sticky whatever you mixed it in.

One baker kindly donated a ciabatta to the lunch time fare. Unluckily he opened the wrong mix, and finished up making both ciabatta and rolls in addition to the caraway bread, so there was more pressure on than expected, to make sure everything was ready to go in the oven when needed. 

It all came right in the end, thank goodness.

The brown bread called for an awful lot of yeast, and some of us took the recipe at face value, on the grounds that the recipe was potentially compensating for the heaviness of the dough. Others reduced the yeast, so we had bread that rose at different rates for different people. I'm not quite sure why some of the loaves cracked. Maybe this was to do with the amount of kneading / mixing the dough got, or maybe it was because we had quite a full oven, and possibly didn't get ideal circulation of hot air this time. We need to experiment with shelf placement a little, I think, to make sure we aren't too near the top of the oven when using 3 shelves.

The loaf on the left looks like one of the ones which used maximum yeast: it was starting to flow over the side of the tin.

While the brown bread was cooking, we flattened and stretched our focaccia onto baking trays. It's very springy dough and tends to shrink back when stretched, so getting a tidy rectangle is not as easy as it sounds.

We had looked at various recipes and decided that we should be aimimg at a nice thin and crispy focaccia. But unfortunately I had not thought to scale down the quantities in the chosen recipe, with the result that we each had enough dough to make 2 trays of thin focaccia - or 1 tray of Jamie Oliver style rather fat focaccia. Doh! Still, it tasted good. And this time we made sure we didn't take it out of the oven too soon, which was my mistake last time.

One baker opted for a wholemeal focaccia with sun dried tomatoes - it's at the top of the picture above. As I am now officially an old fogey, I freely expressed my outrage at this dangerously original idea. "Bah humbug" I puffed. "What would my Italian friends make of it?"

However, events dear boy have a habit of proving me wrong, and yet again I have to eat humble pie - or focaccia as the case may be. And I eat it happily on this occasion. The tomato focaccia was no less delicious for being wholemeal! 

Drizzling is one area where I do encourage boldness. There's nothing nicer than a generous slab of fresh, oily focaccia still warm from the oven. I have to admit the oil can seem a bit excessive if there is any left the next day. Still, tomorrow can take care of itself: focaccia is a bread best eaten in the moment, while the smell of rosemary is still in the air. 

The Shining

One baker, embracing our reputation as experimentalists ('mentalists for short), left off the rosemary, but kept the salt - and then applied a sugar and ginger wash on top. Shall we say there were raised eyebrows? Yes, we shall! But the doubting Thomases and Thomasinas (myself included) were proved wrong, and the sweet and salty ginger focaccia was the star of the show. Amazing but true.

Fresh from the garden

With all the bread done and dusted (and sugared and gingered) our attention turned to lunch in the barn, and this baker pulled out the most beautiful garden salad from under her pinny, and dressed it for the table. As well as a surprise vegetable, there were mixed leaves and nasturtiums which really made for a great presentation.

There was also a grain-based salad, which complemented the bean based main course very well but unfortunately escaped the camera. You can just see it on the plates here -

After what seemed like a league and a half of beans, miraculously we all found room for pudd. There was a choice of cheesecakes, and a very striking pistachio cake, which was really delicious. The prep sounded pretty complicated though, so this was definitely a cake for a special occasion.

More use than a chocolate teapot

I got some nice things for my birthday, including very nice damson gin and jelly, and this chocolate dinosaur -

How have I managed without one all these years?

Trim your hips and flatten your tummy

The theme of largeness and fatness was continued by my family who gave me cards depicting a seal and a pig -

Is someone trying to tell me something?

So what's this about disappearing mothers in law?

We were a little unsure about the wholemeal flour we were using this week. It was certainly Heron Corn Mill flour, but it wasn't clear from the flour box whether it was wheat or spelt. I certainly didn't dare rely on my taste buds in a blind taste test. The bread behaved well, and the loaves we tasted at the mill had the characteristic caraway tang.

But when I took my brown loaf home, it got a definite thumbs down from her indoors. "Are you sure you brought the right loaf home? There are no caraway seeds, and the flour is not the same as in the original" (i.e. it was not wheat). I quietly noted the point about the flour: I wasn't going to argue about that. But the caraway seeds issue was a real surprise. I had a slice to check. Hmm. Definitely no caraway seeds. Quite possibly spelt flour. Undeniably not a mother in law loaf.

Oh well, I'll just have to start all over again.

Back to work

Seconds away, round two

Bread of Heron, the Heron Corn Mill's community bread group is back up and running in the shepherd's hut, and this season we have some new bakers. Several people who have been sitting patiently on the waiting list have now formed a new Thursday group - ladies only at the moment, as it happens. The veterans from the first season's Friday group are still meeting as before, with slightly reduced numbers, but undimmed enthusiasm. I'm hoping the people who couldn't come back after the summer break will still be reading about our doings on the blog, and hearing about us on the grapevine. If you're out there, you are very welcome to "lurk", and please feel free to comment on the blog, or stay in touch any way you like.

The new Thursday group is baking with Nell, and one baker has moved from Friday to Thursday as it's more convenient. It's quite possible that there may be a bit of movement between the two groups as everyone has commitments which make some days impossible. One thing you quickly realise when making bread is that you have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances! In my case this has meant getting used to the idea of leading a group on my own without Nell's organisational skills to keep things running smoothly. I'm not very strong on smooth, but at least there's always something new to go wrong each week! If we're not melting plastic bags on the cooker we're forgetting to turn the oven on! Still, it's all part of life's rich patisserie as they say.

Heron country bread

I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I forgot to take my camera with me to the first bake at the shepherd's hut, so the only evidence I have of what we baked is this picture which I took at home just before setting about devouring a large part of my morning's work.

I can however share the recipe with you.

Heron country bread with white sourdough sponge

We’re aiming at a moderately wet bake ­ somewhere approaching 70% hydration. That is ­

● 700 g of water per 1000 g of flour

● 350 g of water. per 500 g of flour

The night before baking:

Prepare a quarter sponge, using white flour and sourdough starter

● 80 g sourdough starter

● 125 g strong white flour (a quarter of the flour)

● 175 g water (half the water)

● No salt

When the sponge is well mixed up, take out 80 g to keep as next week’s starter.

On baking day:

Add the remaining ingredients to the sponge

● 375 g Heron wholemeal wheat

● 5­7 g salt

● 5­7 g yeast

● any seeds etc that you fancy

● 175 g lukewarm water

Knead the dough like fury or as gently as you please Put the dough in an oiled bowl Allow to rise for an hour or so

Generously dust a proving basket Turn the dough out onto a lightly dusted surface Gently shape the dough and carefully put it in the proving basket Leave to rise in the basket for an hour or so

Dust a baking tray with semolina or polenta Turn the bread onto the tray, slash it and put it into the oven at 220 Turn the oven down to 200 after about 10­12 minutes Check after 40 minutes and turn over to crisp the bottom if necessary

The key thing here is the sponge.By starting the loaf off as if it is destined to be a thoroughbred sourdough, you give it a great head start in the flavour department. Adding yeast at baking time makes life easy, and ensures a robust and trouble free rising and a practical over all timescale. The mixture of some white flour with the wholemeal also makes for a lighter loaf, so all in all it's a very practical approach. A French country loaf would probably be all white, but then why wouldn't you go the whole hog and have a princely sourdough? I think of this as a much better way of making a wholemeal loaf more approachable than steam baking an 85% batch loaf.

I got the impression that some people in the group thought this was an unsatisfactory half-way house between a yeasted loaf and a sourdough. If you do a sourdough, you are making a statement. There is no room for compromise, and there is no comparing a sourdough with anything else. The country loaf is a compromise, yes, but all its constituent parts are good and wholesome.

We did a second bread recipe as well as the country loaf, but we chose our own, and it was pretty much a free for all. We produced various different offerings, including a simple tin loaf from yours truly.

Meanwhile the new Thursday group got straight down to work at the crack of dawn by the looks of things.

And in at the deep end with the dreaded pitta breads.

No wonder there are smiles all round - look how the pittas have risen!

Oh dear you Friday people - look how tidy they are on Thursdays!

Ah but you've let the draught in and your pittas are subsiding again. I tell you, they aren't worth the hard work! The loaves look good though, and no mistake.

Crowning glories

Last time the Friday group baked, we revisited the highly popular couronne recipe, which everybody seems to agree takes some beating in the tasting department, and is undeniably impressive to look at.

It's too ambitious for me, so I opted for a lightly fruited bread that just happened to be raised in a couronne basket. Everybody else sweated and slaved over intricate enriched doughs, with lots of rolling out and twisting into shape. There was sugar and fruit all over the shop, and eggs (including one still warm from the chicken's bottom). And somehow, yet again, it all came beautifully together in the end.

 First there was all the usual weighing and pouring -

Then there was a bit of rolling, shaping and spreading -

Some went for Heinz sandwich spread -

Others for lemon curd -

But then came a bit of sleight of hand -

And a flick of the wrist, faster than the eye can see -

The couronne is not unlike a super-sized Chelsea bun, so this baker's idea of making a ring of interconnected Chelsea buns as a sort of deconstructed couronne was an inspired choice -

It was undoubtedly the most sumptuous looking thing to come out of the oven this week. The marzipan was lovely and crisp around the edges, and the flakes nuts were beautifully golden on top.

These sourdoughs came out quite nicely in the end -

The one on the right was suffering a little from wind.

 The other one tried to make a break for freedom off both ends of the stone simultaneously..

We road tested one at the shepherd's hut while it was still really crunchy.

Batards

The other main loaf was a white and spelt loaf, which we mostly baked in tins. But first of all we had a go at shaping it into a classic batard with pointy ends. Great fun, but it needs a bit of practice.

This baker had a 50% bonus and made a tiddler as well as a big 'un.

And this was mostly rye, and baked off the stone, in full batard regalia.

Move along the bus please.

This one started life as a simple raisin bread, but I finally cracked under peer pressure, and added an egg, butter and brown sugar. The result was actually rather nice, and I will be experimenting with similar enriched doughs again, for sure. It's good in the afternoon with a cuppa. 

So all in all, we had quite a regal set of crowns by lunchtime, and hopefully everyone has had fun eating them as well as making them. 

I'll leave you this week with an item spotted on the breakfast menu at a Whitby B&B -

"Toast with preservatives"