Reciplace

Wholewheat Flaxseed Sourdough from Andrew Whitley's rye leaven

I began making sourdough bread last year, after I started a white and a rye leaven from Dan Lepard in The Handmade Loaf.  It was tough work keeping two leavens alive.  I wasn't using the rye one very often, and was throwing away copious amounts of extra starter from the white one while desperately trying to keep it active.

I nutured them, and loved them.  After some time, I let the rye starter die of natural causes because I just wasn't using it.  This let me put my full attention into the white starter.  It was maturing and changing, and had it's own personality and a place in my heart.  I asked people to feed it for me while I was on holiday. 

Then, one day when I thought I'd popped it back into the fridge to go dormant for a few days, I accidentally left it on the kitchen counter, hidden behind the tea-bag container.  Content that my leaven was safely refridgerated, I didn't think about it for over a week.  Imagine my heartbreak when I found it, grey, separated and dead, hidden away on the counter.  

I tried and tried to revive the leaven, but it was a lost cause.  I lit a memorial candle and poured the remaining sludge down the sink.  Just think how you would feel if it had been one of those ancient Russian leavens, passed down from generation to generation! 

So - new leaven, new tactic.  I looked up the instructions for leaven management in Bread Matters: Why and How to Make Your Own, by Andrew Whitley.  He's a straight and narrow type, Andrew.  I knew his leaven wouldn't require any faffing about.  And I was right.

His book convinced me to only make a rye starter.  Apparently they're more versatile and more difficult to kill off.  And I no longer need to throw starter away to keep the leaven active!   I simply add less flour (50g) and water (75g) every time I feed it, and only feed it for a couple of days before I need it, to build it up.

The mixture has been really active (bubbling over in the night - I like that), and didn't require the addition of raisins in the beginning like Dan Lepard's did.  

After using it, instead of feeding straight away and replacing the lost starter, I just pop it in the fridge, nearly empty. I haven't thrown any starter away yet after two months!  Paul Merry gave me this suggestion when I was on one of his courses at Panary, but it was nice to have the instructions to follow. 

Here's a gorgeous 1kg loaf I knocked up using my rye leaven:

 

 

Wholewheat Flaxseed Sourdough

For the overnight ferment
500g wholewheat flour
600mL warm water
200g rye or wholewheat leaven

For the dough
600g wholewheat flour
25g salt
150g flaxseed (linseed)

The night before you want to bake, mix the ingredients of the overnight ferment together. It should be nice and sloppy and wet. Put a plastic bag and a tea towel over the bowl, and leave it in a nice warm place. Warning - you may want to put the ferment in an overly large bowl... if you have a nice active starter, the mixture will bubble up and over the top!

The next morning, mix the dough ingredients into the overnight ferment bowl. It should be a nicer consistency now. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead for ten minutes.

Place the dough back into the (cleaned) bowl, and replace the plastic bag and tea towel. Leave it to rise for an hour.

Since there is no yeast in this bread, there won't be a lot of rising during that first hour. Nonetheless, remove the dough from the bowl, form it into a tight round, and put it back for another hour of rising. Depending on how much time you have, you could repeat this hour of rising, then knocking back for one or two more hours.

Shape the dough into it's final shape. (I opted for a normal round today). Leave the shaped dough, covered, for one to four hours somewhere warm-ish. When the dough has doubled in size, it's ready to bake.

Turn the oven on to the highest setting of your oven. When it's fully heated, quickly slash the top of your loaf, put it in the oven, and pour a steamy hot kettle of water into a tray on the bottom shelf. This creates a nice crispy crust for your loaf.

Turn the heat down to 200C after ten minutes, then continue to bake for another 45-50 minutes. Take your loaf out, and let it cool on a cooling rack for an hour or two before eating.

Making your own hamburger buns

Once you've read a list of ingredients from in-store bakery and factory "bread" - which go so far as to include chicken feathers and human hair - (yes, human hair!) - wild crocodiles wouldn't drag you back to purchasing it again. 

If you go so far as to be a real bread lunatic like me, then you get pretty excited about the opportunity to bake bread that other people don't even think to make at home.  And if you're having people over for a barbecue, nothing seems to impress like hamburger buns that look like they came from the shop. But didn't.

 

Gosh, they look just like real hamburger buns!

I've been diggin' the retro bread books lately. One in particular, a groovy bread guide from 1976 housewife Ursel Norman titled Use your loaf, has me trying all kinds of classic, everyday recipes. 

Don't get me wrong - I'm a sucker for Dan Lepard's Cherry, fennel and rye loaf, and Richard Bertinet's Honey and lavender loaf... but there's something really simple and no-nonsense about this book, written by a German woman living in America.  The Husband found it for me in a used bookshop somewhere in Sussex while on a work day out, and he knew the funky illustrations and Euro-merican recipes would keep me busy baking for weeks. 

I whipped up the above hamburger buns while The Husband's back was turned.  Yes, they were that easy.  I've made burger buns before, but these ones have been the closest to looking like the ones from the supermarket.  (I think that's a good thing.)  Tasted darn good, too.

I love Ursel Norman.  I might collect her other books on soup and pasta.  The book is a little dated now - remember when you used to have to dissolve dried yeast in water with sugar for a few minutes? - but the recipes are timeless.  The back inside cover has this fabulous photo of her with ridiculously dark seventies aviator sunglasses, and sleek hair pulled back like Joan Baez.  Her bio reads, "She is one of today's liberated women who thoroughly enjoys her job as a housewife and mother to three small children."   Cosmic.

 

  

Harbor Deli is a Fat Maker

 

I love this sign we found on the entrance to an American style deli in Fukuoka, Japan.  In America, a sign like this would be a travesty.  But in Japan, it's hilarious - because no one's actually fat in Japan.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

 

Purple Sprouting Broccoli season is upon us!  I can't seem to stop eating this stuff at the moment.  I love the purple juice that stains the bamboo when you steam it.  Look how gorgeous it is!

Pineberry - the pineapple strawberry - real or hoax?

 

No one ever believes what they hear on April Fools Day, right?

So when Waitrose announced on the first of April that it was going to be selling "Pineberries" - a fruit that looks like a white strawberry, but tastes like a pineapple - I didn't believe it.   (Besides, don't all strawberries taste like sour pineapples when they're not in season anyway?)

But a week later, the story continues.  Waitrose never came out saying it was a joke, and websites continue to post stories about this season's "it-fruit". 

The real winner out of all of this is Search Engine Optimisation company, Pineberry - who may or may not have had anything to do with this stunt - but are surely reaping the flurry of extra google searches this news story has created.  (Nerd note:  I'm not just a food nerd, I'm also a web nerd.  So I put a no follow tag on my link to them, so it doesn't boost their own site's search engine ranking.  They'll know what that means. Ha!)

So is the pineberry for real or not?  I can't find it for sale on either Waitrose or Ocado's grocery sites.  If it is a joke, then it's very poor form not to follow it up with a public "gotcha" statement.   If it's not a joke, then it's a genius marketing plan that will cause debate for weeks to follow, and plenty of punters visiting the store to find out if it's for real or not!

Update:  No sign of pineberries in the Beckenham Waitrose.  But there was a tag under an empty shelf for "strasberries".  Strasberries?!?  What next?  Cantelorange?

Beetroot Houmous - a great way to use up stale bread

Because I'm obsessed with baking bread, we sometimes end up with more bread in the house than we can eat.   I say "sometimes", because most of the time that's not the case.  The Husband is almost as crack-pot about eating bread as I am about baking it, so often it disappears quicker than I can plan the next loaf.

But sometimes you need a way to use up stale bread - throwing homemade bread away is a sin in my books.  There's only so much room in the freezer for breadcrumbs and bread cubes, so you need to get a bit creative.

Beetroot houmous

This recipe is from Bread: River Cottage Handbook No. 3 by Daniel Stevens, and while it doesn't use up an extraordinary amount of leftover bread, it's always popular and pretty healthy.  The bread replaces the chickpeas - so it's not a true houmous - but it's thinner.  It's great as a dip with carrot sticks, or in a sandwich with shredded carrot (and some fresher bread).

Beetroot houmous in a sandwich with grated carrot

Beetroot Houmous
From Bread: River Cottage Handbook No. 3

1 tbsp cumin seeds
25g stale bread
200g cooked beetroot
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 tbsp tahini paste
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper

Toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat, shaking the pan almost constantly, until they start to darken and smell amazing (less than a minute).  While still hot, crush the seeds using a pestle and mortar, or a spice grinder.

Break the bread into chunks and whiz in a food-processor to crumbs.  Add the rest of the ingredients and blend to a thick paste.

Taste the houmous, and add more of any the ingredients you think is lacking.  Serve with flatbread or vegetables for dipping.

Delia's Waitrose Rhubarb and Ginger Brûlée - the verdict

Proof this week that the "Delia Effect" is as powerful as ever, when Waitrose ran out of British rhubarb and had to start sourcing it from Germany.  

I can't find any stats about it - but I'm wondering how much rhubarb sales were affected at the other supermarkets?   I shop at Ocado already, so when I decided to try Delia's Rhubarb and Ginger Brûlée, the ingredients were all from Waitrose.  But I did a quick browse after the Waitrose ad with Heston aired, and noticed that Tesco and Sainsbury's were both pushing rhubarb and jersey cream on their grocery sites.  Inevitably, there will be people who tried the recipes using ingredients from their normal supermarkets, and of course the other grocery giants would have been ready to take advantage of the increased sales.

Delia's Rhubarb and Ginger Brûlée

We put together the now famous brûlée for our Easter dessert last night - and what a treat!  I'm not a huge dessert fan, but this dish was outrageously decadent.   It's one of those rare desserts where you want to put your fork down between every mouthful so you can concentrate on the flavour and enjoy it fully.  It's basically cream and sugary rhubarb.  What's not to love?  

Two things I would pass on to anyone thinking of making it:  First, I made it in a dish that was too big, so the dessert was shallow, and therefore the sugar topping wasn't thick enough to crack it with a spoon like Delia does in the commercial.  Better to use a small, deep dish.  Second, be aware that although this is an easy dish to make, it does take time.  You need to leave the rhubarb to cool completely after it comes out of the oven, and you need to leave time to let the sugar topping cool after you've put the whole thing under the grill.  Instead of throwing this together on a weeknight, you're best off cooking it in advance and putting it in the fridge until you're ready to eat it.  

That being said, this really ticks all the Delia boxes.  It's simple to put together, totally indulgent, and impressive.  It's the kind of thing you could serve at a dinner party and fully expect everyone to request seconds (or thirds).  I dare not think about the calorie count in this dessert, but it's also the kind of thing you could easily whip up and just enjoy the whole thing to yourself while watching Bridget Jones..... mmmm.