bread | with knife and fork

Hot Dawg Buns

I like experimenting with bread recipes and I’ve got to a pretty perfect burger bun that is also great for breakfast bacon baps.

Recently we spotted some REAL hot dogs sausages from Unearthed and decided to give them a go. And so began a quest to find a good hot dog bun recipe.

Asking about on twitter led me to some recipes from Dan Lepard, Hawksmoor and also some tips from twitter friend Josordoni. I was aiming for soft but quite densely chewy and no sweetness.

After reading around and peering in the fridge to see wht was to hand this is what I came up with:

For the avoidance of doubt here’s what its says (with added extra comments):

200g of creme fraiche and full fat milk combined (roughly a 50:50 mix)
plus more milk as needed to make a soft slightly sticky dough
70g of potato flour
200g strong white flour
3/4 tsp of Doves dried yeast
1 tsp fine sea salt

Mix the flours, salt and yeast together in a large bowl
Mix the milk and creme fraiche and beat lightly to get it thoroughly mixed
Add the liquid to the flour and mix to a soft slightly sticky dough, use more milk if you need to
Cover and leave for 10-20 minutes then knead gently (i.e. ten turns or folds, see here for method) on lightly oiled surface
Cover and leave for 30 minutes and knead again gently
Cover and leave for an hour until doubled in size
Knead lightly then shape into four long, bridge, submarine type rolls
Put ona baking try close together but not quite touching
Leave to rise until double in size (this took about 30 minutes)
Pre heat oven to highest setting
Bake at this temperature for 15 minutes then drop temperature to R4/180C and bake for a further 5 to 10 mins
Leave to cool

Slice in half but leaving a slight hinge down the long side, fill with frankfurters and condiments of your choice.

Bacon Butty

I love bacon butties. So much so that I have one nearly every weekend.

So when the people at Denhay Farms said could they send me some of their bacon to try, I was hardly going to argue.

In fact they sent me everything I needed to make a bacon butty bar the bread. Fortunately I’d just baked a loaf.

Sorted.

I know there will be howls of protest from some of you that its on brown bread. Tough. I like it on brown, or white.

And the bacon, very tasty though sliced a little on the thin side for me, so I just shoved an extra rasher in ;o

Pump Street Bakery, Orford, Suffolk

Just after New Year I finally got to go along to Pump Street Bakery in Orford to try out what, after only a few weeks, seemed to be fast becoming Suffolk’s most talked of bakery and coffee shop.

I went along to meet up with @Farctum and also @donna_de a couple of my Twitter chums.

And as well as great conversation I was delighted that Pump Street lived up to its advance billing.

In all respects. the building has been restored carefully and considerartely and the selection of goodies on offer is spot on.

The coffee beans are from Monmouth Coffee in London, and its fair to say I probably sampled too many cups!

I also had an Eccles cake with Kirkhams Lancashire, so good I took some Eccles cakes away with me.

And I bought a lovely loaf of light rye….great crusty lovely texture and taste.

I can’t wait for my next visit.

2011 bread experiments #1

So what was loaf one then and how did I select it? I used a random number generator which lead me to Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf p161, which has a picture on…so i flipped forward to the first recipe after that to find on p163

WHITE LOAF WITH GRATED CHESTNUTS

Sounded yum. It uses the usual Dan Lepard low knead technique that I’m a big fan of and have written about here.

It was pretty easy to make and came out with a lovely soft crumb. It made fantastic cheese sandwiches and wonderful toast.

Definitely one to repeat.

I haven’t found the recipe online anywhere so just some pictures this time.

2011 bread experiments ‘the rules’

In my last post I talked about some of the bread I made in 2010 and said I was going to challenge myself to make a different loaf each week in 2011. To make its a bit more fun I decided to select two of my bread baking books and I’m going to bake my way through them both but in a RANDOM manner.

Here’s the rules I’ve set myself:

I must select the bread to be baked randomly, using either a random number generator or by asking for numbers from people on Twitter.
If the selected page doesn’t have a recipe on it then I moved forward in the book to the next nearest recipe.
If the recipe is a sweet bread or bun I can skip in and do another random generated page number. WHY? because we eat so little sweet stuff I know it will get wasted.
If the selection is something I’ve already made I do the next nearest recipe in the book moving forward page number wise.
I blog each loaf at least with a picture and whether I think its a great recipe.

The two books are River Cottage Bread Handbook and The Handmade Loaf. I’ve used both a bit last year so I know they are good.

So what loaf is going to be first….

Many loaves

I’ve been making my own bread since I went on a Dan Lepard course in 2009 and I’m a real convert to his low knead method of making bread. This year I found out about his quick loaf recipe and blogged about it here. I started making it and varying it: 100% white, 50:50 white/wholemeal, 100% wholemeal, 30:70 rye/white.

And so on, and on, and on.

Here’s just some of the ‘quick’ loaves I’ve made this year.

And for 2011 I’ve decided I’m going to carry on experimenting and make a different loaf each week. Proper bread is so much better.

Use yer loaf….

At the weekend I saw Dan of @FoodUrchin was disputing the kneading technique that I favour and that I learnt from @dan_lepard (yes two Dan’s already).

He didn’t belive that you could get a great loaf with such minimal kneading (3 lots of 10 seconds).

Those in the know on Twitter told him to try it and see.

He later came back with impressive results.

And it reminded me I hadn’t baked in a while so yesterday I decided to make the same recipe.

Well sort of.

I adapted it a bit with guidance from @dan_lepard to 50:50 wholewheat and white flour.

Brilliant stuff.

For a 50:50 loaf you only need 3/4 tsp fast action yeast and rising takes less time, just let it increase by 50% rather than doubling.

And really tasty.