MESSY BAKER

Happy St Patrick’s Day troops! This year I started preparing for it early : green top bought – check, a massive collection of whiskeys at home – check, make a beer bread – check!  In reality, I was just looking for new flavours to add to my bread, and found a bottle of pale ale left over from a Viking party last summer – that a story for another day.  I like my beers, but I am more of a larger girl, I’d drink Guinness too, but only in Ireland – it just doesn’t taste the same anywhere else. Ale is not a drink I would ever choose, so using it in bread made perfect sense!  Pale Ale Sourdough  220 ml pale ale  100 ml water  160g white sourdough starter (100% hydration)  1 Tbsp barley malt extract  400g white bread flour  100g wholemeal four  1.5 tsp salt  I used pale ale, but you can use any beer you may have in the house, as long as its not dark beer.  Pour beer and water in a mixer bowl, measure out starter. I am...

It has taken me a while to write this post up, partly due to time commitments, and partly due to the type of the bread I’ve chosen to make. February project is Pain de Campagne – a traditional French sourdough loaf. I have first seen a recipe for Pain de Campagne about I guess 10 years ago, and as a beginner baker I found it really interesting. Its French – I love all things French, its sourdough – which sounded difficult and I love all things difficult and it requires basket/banneton proving – I didn’t even know what a banneton was at the time, so that’s sounded intriguing enough – and yes, I do love a bit of intrigue … I am afraid to tell you this, but now 10 years on, looking at a recipe as an experienced baker, I find this recipe slightly boring. I won’t blame you if you give up reading about now, but if you a bread nerd like moi (see, French! :), then read on. First of all, I must say that I was surprised at the number of different variations on the basic recipe – for a recip...

I’ve decided to stop experimenting with fancy enriched breads and make a standard, good plain old loaf of bread. I keep meaning to try different shaping and slashing techniques, but normally forget about it by the time the shaping time comes. And its so much easier to quickly shape a loaf on a counter and pop it into a banneton. I have a large oval one (for 1 kg loaf), one large round one (for 1 kg loaf) and one oval medium (for 750 g loaf) banneton – Mr Ranty told me that he got them all from Manufactum not from BakeryBits as I thought. I very rarely use the medium sized one, only when I am trying to make a small loaf for someone as a gift or have too many loaves on the go. What I would really like, is a mah-ussive banneton, so I can make giant loaves of bread, you know the ones you see when you go to markets somewhere like France. A massive loaf of bread, that you probably wouldn’t even buy as a whole – they sell them by weight – how cool is that? Can I have a chunk on bread, ohhh, a...

This is not summer, I am telling you. Today is supposed to be the longest day of the year, and you would expect a little bit of sunshine, but its grey and cold and it looks like its gonna rain any second. Have tickets to go and see a play at the Globe tonight, but I am so knackered that I’ve decided to stay at home instead. End of the week and my head feels like its going to explode, not the best of moods to be sitting out in the cold, trying to take in the greatest of all bards. But … it is good time to try out a new recipe – shall we? I am craving sunshine and I’ve decided to add a bit of sunshine in my evening by making a corn loaf. Not a corn bread, not that sunny, buttery, crumbly American cornbread (although it does sound good just as I type it), but a white loaf, lavoured with corn meal and chillies. I am making this recipe up as I go along, lets hope its gonna turn out okay. Corn and Chilli Loaf 250 g start (100% hydration) 200 g water 100 g milk 370 g white flour 130 g fine co...