A little late perhaps (my apologies for that, as Spring is almost coming), but here are some shots of their first day opening as a garden centre, using the workshop ground floor as a shop front.

I have been lucky enough to have access to this image, from when the new owners took possession, through to a future date, when the building and decorating work is completed.  These photographs shown below are from the early days of the build, when features were still in their un-touched state, as the project develops, I will post more images of their new work and how this building is being transformed into a home and garden centre business, with space for classes and a cafe.  The old building won’t know what hit it.

I gave it a go, and found that it makes a great crusty sandwich loaf, with a sourdough texture and good taste.

I prepared my sourdough, as normal, from a frozen pebble kept in the freezer, however wasn’t certain that it had the strength of life in it complete this bread in my allocated time, especially at this cold time of year.  Therefore I decided that I would use the sourdough starter as a base, to provide flavour and texture, but add a small amount of fresh yeast (also kept in the freezer, in nice 5g and 10g cubes) to ensure it was ready before I had to head on out.

I decided to prepare this loaf in the Dan Lepard style, using regular short kneads over a period of time, rather than one long knead to develop the gluten and let it rest.  Either method works fine, and it up to you, and how long you want to work hands on with the loaf during your morning.

Here are the ingredients, ratio to flour for making multiple loaves, and the method:

Crusty Potato Sourdough Bread

White bread flour 400g

Wholemeal bread flour 100g (Total flour 500g)

300g Warm water (warm to the touch, but not hot)

250g Sourdough starter, fed the day before and ready to go

25g Honey

10g Sea salt

75g Grated potato (cleaned and scrubbed beforehand, or course)

Method:

Combine the water, starter, honey and grated potato in a bowl and mix together thoroughly.

Add the salt to the flours and add to the wet mixture, combining until all is mixed together and leave covered for 10 minutes to allow the flour time to absorb the fluid.

Following the Dan Lepard method, as mentioned above, we now need to oil a bench lightly and knead the dough for 10-15 seconds, then return to an oiled bowl, repeating at specific intervals over the next few hours.  The timings between kneads I used were: 10 min rest (as per the step above), 10 mins, 10, mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, 1 hour, 1 hour.  Just a little knead at each of these intervals helps to feed the yeast, develop a nicely strong gluten, and lots of lovely little holes of air, which give the sourdough texture.  As mentioned above, you can simply let the dough rest as above, and then knead for 10-15 minutes, until the gluten is nicely formed and then leave to rest for 4 hours to arrive at the same point in the process.

Now it is time to divide the dough into two pieces and form a baton shape.

How to shape a baton loaf

Pat the dough out into a somewhat rectangular shape, take the two corners furthest from you and fold them towards the centre, turn the whole dough around 180 degrees, and do the same, so that all four corners are folded towards the middle.  Now, fold the dough over in half (furthest side from you, over the dough, towards your belly) and using your fingers pointing out  away from you, and using a flat hand, press down and roll on the front of the dough, sealing the dough, and forcing the back to roll and stretch.  Do this along the front until all seals are made, and then roll the dough sausage back and forth on the bench to ensure a nice even shape.

This isn’t a simple technique to learn, but once you get a feel for it, and see the tightening of the surface from your rolling motion, you will understand why it is used, and it will become second nature.

So, we have our two shaped batons.  These now need to be placed, seam-side up on either a floured tea towel, or a linen-lined basket, covered, to prove for around 4 hours, somewhere warm, until almost doubled in size.  This timing will vary for so many reasons, temperature, starter strength, and in my case, adding fresh yeast.  Don’t worry if it takes longer to prove, as this is only a good thing, as more flavour will develop in that time.

When we are ready to consider baking, preheat the oven to 220 degrees C, and dust a baking tray with semolina.  Turn for first loaf out onto the tray, seam down, and dust with a little flour and make your cut(s) in the top.  Bake each loaf for around 50 minutes.

Had I used just my sourdough stater, the air holes in the loaf would have been more pronounced and the texture more open and moist.  Sometimes you just have to work with what you have.  It tastes great all the same.

This year I grew Costoluto Fiorentino and Gardener’s Delight, both vine tomatoes, with greatly different outputs.  The gardener’s delight is a classic cherry tomato variety, famed for being reliable and tasty, and that it was.  It always works a treat and provides hundreds of tomatoes.  Some of the seed had crossed with a larger Ukranian variety a few years ago, and therefore some of the produce was larger than a normal cherry.  My other variety was the ribbed Costoluto Fiorentino, which is a larger, tougher skinned tomato that takes a lot longer to grown and ripen, and really does seem to like a hot summer (or greenhouse) to finish ripening, before it begins to rot.

I get all of my vegetable seed from Real Seeds, who specialise is heirloom seed for use in allotments and home gardens.  They specialise in bringing back into circulation forgotten varieties, and do thorough testing to ensure that the seed they sell, grows reliably and successfully.

With my substantial tomato crop I decided to make a green tomato chutney, for later consumption or as Christmas presents.

I used some red tomatoes, along with the orange and green to give a good balance to the sweetness. The red tomatoes need less cooking time.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

900g Tomatoes, halved

350g Onion, roughly chopped

90g Raisins

250g Light muscovado sugar

1 Chilli

1 tsp Salt

2 tsp Yellow mustard seeds

300ml White wine vinegar

Method:

Place all ingredients except the red tomatoes in a large pan and bring to a boil.  Turn the heat down and leave to summer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add the red tomatoes and simmer for a further 30 minutes.

Prepare the jars by washing thoroughly, and pouring boiling water in to ensure they are spotless and bacteria free.  Allow them to dry and then spoon the hot tomato chutney in, and seal the jars immediately.

This is a traditional Tuscan harvest bread, to celebrate the grape harvest, and the bread includes both leftover grapes from this recent harvest and the previous year, in the form or raisins and Vin Santo, which is wine made from raisins, belonging to a further harvests in the past.

Perhaps I should explain the pronunciation, as this Italian name took me a coupe of attempts to remember.  It is pronounced “ski-a-charter”, with grapes, and means “flattened” in Italian.

The recipe I am using, is for a slightly sweet version of the bread and comes from the book Bread Matters, by Andrew Whitley.

The raisin bath:

30g Vin Santo, sherry or port

200g Raisins

Soak the raisins overnight, and then drain the liquid, which you can drink later on.

Make the pre-ferment:

20g Sugar

5g Fresh Yeast

100g Water (quite warm, say 35 °)

75g Plain flour/Type 0 flour

Mix the water, yeast and sugar, and add slowly to the flour. This will be quite wet, so a whisk will help bring the ingredients together.

Leave aside, covered, for 40-60 minutes until it has risen and fallen back.

Making the dough:

100g Wholemeal flour

75g White bread flour or Type 0 flour

2g Sea salt, ground

10g Raw cane sugar

30g Olive oil

50g Water (warm)

Mix the pre-ferment with the above ingredients, and knead until soft and supple, cover and leave in a warm place to double in size (1 hour or so)

Divide the dough into equal portions, and roll out into circles, say 15cm in diameter.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and dust with some wholemeal flour, to make shaping easier.

Place one of the dough circles on the baking paper and spread all of the raisins onto it, almost to the edge, yep all of them, they will have grown from their bath.

Lay the second dough circle on top, and seal the edges well.  Try using some moisture from the raisins to bind the two circles together, and crimp them all around.  Imagine a Cornish pasty, so that nothing can escape.

Press the centre down if it is domed, and using a skewer, pierce the top a couple of times to allow any trapped air to escape.

The Grape Topping:

150g Black Grapes

20g Raw cane sugar

Take the washed and dried grapes, and press them down into the top of the dough, pressing hard enough, so that they break the surface and will stay in the dough during baking.

Sprinkle the sugar over the top and let it prove for an hour before baking at 180°, for 30 minutes.

Serve warm, perhaps with whipped cream, creme fraiche and a good espresso.

Some observations:

It smells amazing when baking, more like a cake than a bread.

It was a cold English day, and the proving took literally forever, however as always it did get there, so a good reminder to have patience and let each stage complete before moving on.

• Firstly, I must say that it was an enjoyable process, I really enjoy the mixing, kneading and seeing the dough come together from separate ingredients.  Some of the doughs I made were so slick and smooth, with strong gluten that made them a joy to shape.

• Timings-wise, the plan came together, my focaccia was a little late, due to using fresh yeast, rather than quick yeast, and perhaps could have used more prove time, however it worked and was hot out of the oven while our guests were here.

• We did wonder if we would have enough bread for the tasting day (70 people were expected), and decided to add another item to the list.  I prepared some Salt Crackers, from the recipe in Dan Lepard’s Handmade Loaf.  These went down very well, and were the guests’ favourite on the day.  The dough was very smooth and delicate, with a breadcrumb filling, and were very simple to make and bake.

It was great, and unexpected to receive the award.  I had two images showing on the night, and this is my second Merit won at these awards of the last few years.  My successful image will be printed in this next edition of Image magazine.

It was nice to finish my final year of the Assistant Awards on a high, before I compete in the full AOP Awards next year.

Here are my two images in this year’s exhibition.  The successful image first:

Well, perhaps I have taken on a little more than I can manage, we shall certainly see, but there will be both a dinner party and an estate tasting day this weekend, and I plan to cook for both.  Luckily, my dear wife has taken a few courses to cook, so I have the following left to develop and schedule:

Sourdough bread

Rosemary focaccia

Sundried tomato and tamari-roasted sunflower seed bread

Basque gateaux

While I’m not going to go into the details of each recipe, I will comment on a few decisions that had to be made to ensure that all are baked for their required day, and without over -proving, or hogging the oven, preventing my wife from cooking.

The prevent the sourdough taking up all of the day, and (if ready to bake) coming out of the oven just as the guests arrive, I have decided to refresh the leaven the preceding day, and pop it in the fridge for over 12 hours, to cut down preparation time on the day to just 5 hours.

The dough of the basque gateaux needs to be made the day before baking, which just leaves the filling to be made, and baked the following morning.

The tomato and sunflower seed filling for the savoury bread can, and should be prepared ahead of time to allow a build up of acid which can act as a foil to the tomato filling.

I did ponder using a Biga to make the foccaccia, and spread this out overnight too, however after watching The Great British Bake Off on BBC this year, I have decided to use their recipe and do it all in the one day.

With a little maths on the back of an envelope, I have come up with a system of starts and potential finishes for each item that gives me a little free time to clean up and read the paper, and hopefully remove the stress of making several products from start to finish on the same day.

I will let you know how I get on and if it worked, with me luck & stay tuned…

This doesn’t really help for those who make bread at home, and hold a full time job;  weekends become the key bread making time, and that will often compete with other activities.  For the person who works from home however, baking bread fits just nicely into the work day, midweek, and gives ample opportunities to leave the computer, rest the eyes and mind, and return refreshed to continue working, perhaps more efficiently?  who knows?

Today for example I am making a white loaf, using a sponge method today (part of the flour, water and yeast left overnight to develop enzymes for taste and soften the gluten to help with the rise).  Last night I mixed together my sponge which took 10 minutes to do and left it covered overnight to rise, fall and develop flavour.

Then, today I began the loaf at 10am, after a period of emails, blogs and planning for the day ahead.

Here is a summary of how much attention I need to give to the dough and how that fits into the day:

Mix ingredients and knead 10.15 (30 minutes)

(leave to prove for 90 minutes)

Knock back:  12.15pm (5 minutes)

Distribute dough and rest: 12.45 (2 minutes)

Shape: 13.00 (5 minutes)

(final rise of dough, for 45 min – 1 hour)

Slash dough, place dough in oven and bake 14.00 (1 minute)

(bake for 35-40 mins)

Rest loaves on rack 14.40

So there you have it, two loaves made whilst working, using my breaks from work to complete each step.  Some styles of bread will take a shorter time (using quick yeast) and some much longer, like sourdough, which takes around 8 hours from start to finish, however the attention needed to the dough is much the same as these loaves, just a much longer prove and rise time.

Here are the results of today’s bake.

Giving a hand to Brockwell Bake this week, on one of their bio-dynamic farms in Sussex, I had my first experience with heritage wheat.  In this case, it was a German wheat called Magister, which has been selected as a good cereal crop for organic farming.  I did also see the very beautiful, and slightly blue toned, Blue Cone Rivet, which is in a small quantity, and being bred to supply future flour plans.

A team of volunteers headed to the farm to reap the wheat by hand, which we set about building into sheaves to be threshed by hand at The Mayor’s Thames Festival, on Saturday September 10th.

Reaping by hand (by scythe) provides a very rewarding experience, perhaps akin to collecting home grown vegetables, but on a much larger, and far more tiring scale.  We did a good job, reaping more than enough for the Feast, however looking at our work, I imagine we were quite wasteful and inefficient compared to those back ye olde days, who did this for a living.  The combine harvester would have devoured this lot in a matter of moments, however the principle for the Feast, is Plot to Plate to Plot, with everything done by hand where possible.