Category Archives: baking

Brilliant Bread Making Videos

Yesterday I posted my sourdough method, with the way I make a sourdough loaf at home. I was lucky enough to get a comment from Sourdough The Angry Baker, who pointed me towards these great videos. Produced by King Arthur, a flour milling company in the USA, they are by Jeffrey Hamelman, a brilliant baker, and are quite indispensable if you’re interested in baking you own. I promise if you have any interest in baking your own bread you need to watch these videos.

The original videos can be found here, at the King Arthur site.

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My Sourdough Method

Sourdough is, in my opinion, the very best type of bread, I’ve written about it before with hints and tips and small parts of my technique. This however is my full method, its taken me a bit of time to get here, quite a few failures along the way but I’m currently in the situation were I get consistent results. I’m no expert, my technique has evolved mainly from the approach Chad Robertson uses in his excellent book Tartine Bread, I’ve also got Andrew Whitley’s book Bread Matters that has been very helpful along the way.

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Musings on Sourdough

If you read this blog, you’d know that I’m a bread fanatic, both baking and consumption, it’s something I love doing and I’m always working on how to get the best results. The last few month have seen me dabble with sourdough in an attempt to nail down a certain process and dough. The dough in question is from Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, great bread but also a slightly tricky method, its taken me seven attempts to get results I’m happy with.

Today’s loaf has been the best yet, I feel my method is getting more accurate and I’m hoping to be more consistent in the future. The key to this is two important steps for me, firstly I use my starter to make a young leaven and secondly I rise the bread in the fridge over night.

Today's Loaf

A young leaven is made using the starter I described previously, which should have a strong acidic almost unpleasant smell, and at times if you use too much can be overpowering. A young leaven uses 2 tablespoons of this along with 200g of flour (whichever flour you want to use for you bread) and 200g water, mix them together the night before you need the leaven and leave at room temperature. This produces an active bubbly leaven with a light fruity smell, rather than something that will overpower you loaf. I then use 150g of this leaven per 500g flour in the dough recipe.

Close up of the crust

The long rise in the fridge has two effects, firstly producing a better flavour, but more importantly making the dough more manageable. Due to using a very wet dough, 75% hydration, getting the loaf from the proving basket to baking tray and slashing was proving (excuse the pun)  difficult. I had several times when the dough stuck to the basket or collapsed and spread too far, with the cooled dough, the final loaf easily came out of the basket without any collapsing or misshaping. The slashing of the dough was also easy with no drag of the blade on sticky dough.

The crumb

This isn’t a full recipe, if you want one please see an earlier post of mine, or preferably  buy the book Tartine Bread, its excellent. If you are having trouble with your sourdough, as I was, or if you want to try it yourself these tips should really help you.

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Perfect Chewy Cookies

There is something wonderful about a cookie, not a biscuit mind you, a big chewy soft American style cookie, it’s indulgent and, at times, so much  more satisfying than crunching on a firm biscuit. My real passion for cookies started when I worked in America, milk and cookies were a regular evening snack and one I relished, chocolate chip cookies were good but the favourite were Reese’s pieces cookies. These little smartie like sweets are not filled with chocolate but a smooth sweetened peanut butter, the perfect combination with the soft cookie. Reese’s pieces aren’t very common in the UK, but a good local deli or international food shop may stock them, I’ve seen Reese’s produces in Delifonseca and Matta’s in Liverpool.  Continue reading →

Lorraine Pascale Bakes Terrible Bread

Last week I was unlucky enough to witness Lorrain Pascal bake bread, during Home Cooking Made Easy, she made bread with a recipe that had me reeling with disgust. I often bake my own bread, for reasons of flavour and texture, quickly made supermarket bread lacks both of these and generally I find it an unpleasant food. The whole reason for baking my own, is to take time and produce something far superior to the rushed and flavourless pap that adorns supermarket shelves. So what did Loraine do that so troubled me? She made a bread with only 30-45 minutes rising time, I can guarantee this bread had almost no flavour and poor texture.

Good bread takes time, this is a fact, to make good bread you can’t rush, there are no corners to be cut that will improve your final loaf. I’m currently working with a recipe that takes at least 12 hours for the final loaf, or more if you want it to. It’s this time and slow fermentation of the dough that produces flavour. Now, I’m not suggesting you should all make a dough over the course of 24 hours, I know that practicalities determine something shorter. However, if you are going to bake your own, take a little bit of time to produce something different than the mass produces rubbish that is so readily available. I really wonder if Lorraine knows what she is doing.

So here is my recipe of Pain D’epi, its simple with an hour for the first rise and 30 minutes for the final prove, the minimum required. However, to stretch this out, say a first rise of 2 hours, would only help the final bread. If you did have the time, make the dough the night before you need it with only 2 grams of yeast, the leave to rise in a cool room or fridge over night. With more time the results will only get better.

  • 500g Strong white bread flour
  • 7g Active yeast
  • 10g Salt
  • 340g Water
  • Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
  • Add water to the dry ingredient and mix to form a dough.
  • Knead the dough for 10 minutes until smooth.
  • Place dough back in bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for at least 1 hour.
  • After one hour take dough and divide into two equal pieces.
  • take one piece and form into flat rectangle.
  • roll rectangle into long sausage shape.
  • Do the same with other piece of dough.
  • Allow dough to rest for 30 mins, meanwhile put the oven onto gas mark 9 or 250°C
  • After 30 minutes the dough should have significantly increased in size.
  • Cut loaf to form correct shape, as shown in this video.

  • Bake in the oven for 20-30 mins until the tips of the cuts are very dark.
  • Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Cut dough, ready to bake.

Finished loaf

Tart Tatin

A true classic of french cookery, this caramelised apple tart has so many variations, and bastardisations, that a truly authentic recipe is probably known, and eaten, by few people. Made famous by the Tatin sisters in the early 20th century, the recipe being an ancient speciality of Sologne. It’s something I’ve never made before, and this combined with an abundance of apples from my mum’s garden, really left me with few options but to make my own. Continue reading →

Tartine Bread

Over the past few days I’ve been working on a method of bread making from my new book, Tartine Bread, its process revolves around using a natural leaven or sourdough. The book is very interesting and has a somewhat different approach to other bread  books I’ve read. Needless to say the bread looks fantastic and I’ve been hard at work trying to replicate Chad Robertson’s creations. It is perhaps not the easiest method for home bread makeing, but it is the most interesting I’ve found, my first result has been quite good but it’s something that will take a bit of work over the next few days. I’ll keep the blog updated with results.

Further Sourdough – The Best Loaf I’ve Ever Baked

Last week I posted a simple sourdough recipe, which got really positive reviews. I’ve already seen some photos of bread made by Aiden Byrne of the Church Green using this recipe, and I should get a few more from others in next week or two. I would love to post a small gallery of pics, so if you are giving sourdough a go please e-mail me the pics to put up here. Continue reading →

Chorizo Sausage Rolls

Gregg’s the bakers, are pedlars of lowest common denominator food, the cheapest sausage rolls, pasties and pies that you can get on our high streets. Yet, I bet everyone who  reads this has had one or more of their baked goods at some point. I know I have, I love a sausage roll or a pork pie, the convenience of fat soaked salt ridden delights is a combination few can resist. However if you find yourself in town and want a real savoury baked goodie then a Lunya chorizo sausage roll is the pinnacle in Liverpool. Alas these famed sausage rolls are not a regular occurrence at the Spanish deli, a close eye needs to be kept on twitter, for an announcement of their impending availability. I had missed out on two previous occasions, of the chance to lay my hands on the aforementioned snack, thus came quickly to the conclusion that I’d have to bake my own. Continue reading →

Simple Sourdough

Food fashion, to me, is a very real concept, and one that can highlight really great food or quite poor food, the current cupcake obsession is one that really grates. Sourdough is another of these concepts, that seems to be getting really rather popular, but what is it? Can you make sourdough bread at home? Can you buy good sourdough bread in Liverpool? Continue reading →