Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all and good wishes for a very healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year too. 

2010 has got off to a rather interesting start courtesy of Mother Nature.  For the first time in our baking lives we were unable to even get to the bakery to bake during the first week of the recent snow.  For two days we were effectively stuck at home because the roads proved impassable.  Courses had to be cancelled and no deliveries could be made, because, of course, there was no product to deliver and no way the vans could have got around had there been anything to deliver!  That was the first week of the snow.  The next Wednesday it snowed again, not as much, but enough to effectively bring traffic to a grinding halt.  We made it into the bakery without incident, before the snow began coming down, but it took Rachel 4 hours to make a delivery round which usually takes 90 minutes, and Andrew - who does the delivery round to points west of the bakery, and who owns a 4x4, which has been a God-send this Winter - made valiant attempts to get to Lewes, Brighton and Alfriston, but was rebuffed at each turn by road closures and police activity.

And then the rain came last weekend, the temperatures rose, and the snow melted away.  Despite the driving woes and the frustrations of not being able to do anything about it, the snow was beautiful and the countryside transformed into a winter wonderland.  And to my jaded city-slicker eyes, it stayed miraculously lovely and white for several days, rather than almost immediately turning to horrible grey slushy muck as has been my more recent experience of post-snowfall landscapes.

As I write today, the sun is shining and bulbs are starting to emerge in the garden, but I'm fully aware that Winter is still with us for at least a little while longer, and dire predictions of more snow to come in February are being proclaimed by arm-chair weather people ranging from students on courses to the guy who delivers our bakery supplies.  We shall just have to wait and see if those predictions come true.

P.S.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to write more regular blog posts.  Watch this space...

Carried Away with Caraway

Midsummer is the time when caraway, or "Persian Cumin" (Carum Carvi is the Latin name) comes to gruition.  This delicate, frondy biennial enjoys a warm, sunny location with well-drained soil.  It is one of the many herbs we planted in a long, wall-hugging herb-bed in the kitchen garden we dug out from rubble and compacted soil last year (before we settled in to the new bakery at Ockham).  Caraway looks like a carrot plant, with feathery leaves on stems a foot or so high.  Its flower stems grow even higher, with umbels of small white flowers, and the little brown crescent shaped "seeds" (technically these are the fruits of the plant) are richly aromatic.  These have been used for culinary and medicinal purposes for thousands of years; we know the Romans used the seeds as a digestive aid, and that chewing a pinch of seeds is a quick breath-freshener.  And caraway is not just attractive to people.  Chickens apparently love them too, and feeding it to them stops them from straying!

 

In late June and early July when the flowers have set fruits, the plant itself is finished, but not its usefulness.  Now is the time to harvest the seeds:  Gently cut off the flower-heads and let them dry out airily in open paper bags (see photo).  You can plant out the seeds for more plants in either autumn or spring, but if you want to use the seeds for cooking or baking, they will keep for months in an airtight container.  

 

Caraway's anise flavour enhances foods as diverse as sauerkraut and cheese.  It works well with pork and any vegetable of the brassica family.  When usinhg caraway in cooking, by the way, add it at the very end of the cooking period to avoid the risk of any bitterness that might occur when the seed is boiled.

 

In baking, caraway has a deep affinity with rye and rye bread sprinkled with caraway is a classic loaf.  For a slightly more intriguing bread, try this recipe for our Black Russian.  The list of ingridients may seem daunting, but the recipe is fairly straightforward.  The resultant loaf is dark and full of flavour and will complement boldly flavoured cheeses (someting soft and smelly like Stinking Bishop works particularly well) or smoked meats or fish.

 

Black Russian - Makes two large loaves

350g Strong Bread Flour

350g Light Rye Flour

100g Wholemeal Flour

15g Salt

30g Wheat Bran

15g Caraway Seed

3g Fennel Seed

30g Chopped Shallots

25g Dark Chocolate

40g Butter

22g Fresh yeast or 11g Active Dried Yeast or 8g instant yeast

45g Cider Vinegar

75g Molasses

35g Brewed Coffee

100g Liquid Rye Sourdough Starter (optional)

400g Water at room temperature

 

Melt together the chocolate and the butter and set aside to cool slightly.

 

By Hand   Combine all the dry ingredients, including the seeds, in a large bowl.  If using fresh yeast, crumble it in with your fingers.  If using dried yeast add it directly to the bowl.  Then add the liquids, as well as the slightly cooled chocolate/butter mixture and the chopped shallots, and mix with your hand until combined.  Then tip the dough out on to your work surface and knead for 10 minutes.

 

By Mixer  Combine all the ingreients in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer and mix on slow speed for 2 minutes.  Increase the speed to medium and mix for an additional 6 minutes.

 

Oil a clean,deep bowl and place the dough in it.  Cover with cling film and leave to rise for about an hour in a draught-free space.  The dough will rise nicely and be about doubled in size.

 

Pre-heat the oven to 220°C (400°F).  If you have an oven stone, pre-heat that now along with oven.

 

Once risen, tip the dough out onto your work surface and divide into two equal pieces.  Form the dough into two rounds or ovals.  If you have proving baskets, liberally dust these with flour and place the shaped loaves in the baskets seam-side up.  Alternatively, place the shaped loaves seam-side down on a baking tray.  Cover the loave with a tea-towel topped with a sheet of plastic to prevent the loaves from drying out and leave to prove until well-risen - about 30 minutes.

 

Check that the loaves are fully proved by gently pressing your finger into the dough.  If the impression left by your finger remains, the loaves are ready for the oven.  If not, and the dough springs back readily, they need a few more minutes of proving.

 

 If using  a baking tray, cut the loaves and place the tray directly into the oven.  If using proving baskets, generously dust a peel (or up-turned baking tray) with semolina or cornmeal and invert the baskets onto it.  Cut the loaves and transfer them to the oven stone. 

 

Bake for 25- 30 minutes or until the loaves sound hollow when rapped on their bottoms with your knuckles and you can feel a slight vibration run through the loaf as you tap.

Peppers Galore

Now here's a thing,   I was lucky enough to get a glut of jalapeño peppers in my organix vegetable plot at home.  What to do with them?  A sweet chilli sauce sprung to mind, as it is a house favourite, but my thoughts swiftly turned to uses at the bakery.

When we had the shop in London, Liz would occasionally make a recipe for a sweet red pepper bread - despite our slight reluctance to make bread with bits in - and it was a wonderful soft loaf, the dough streaked with red from the fresh peppers.  I can't help but wonder now whether a spicy take of this recipe would translate and be as successful.  After some experimentation with quantites, we have  come up with the following, which combines the two peppers and so is both sweet and spicy.  Kind of like a sweet chilli sauce of a bread.  At the shop we would make a chili-pepper ciabatta from time to time, and it packed a wallop.  This tempers the heat of the chillis with the sweetness of the red pepper.  Here's the recipe for you to try at home:

 

500g Strong White Flour

10g Salt

12g Fresh or 6g Active Dried or 5g Instant Yeast

10g Olive Oil

290g Water

1 red pepper - roasted, skinned and seeded.  Roughly chopped

2 small jalapeño peppers (or other chilli peppers) - roasted, skinned and seeded  (use rubber gloves).  Roughly chopped

 

By Hand:  Mix all the ingredients together except the peppers and knead for 10 minutes.  Add the chopped peppers and continue kneading for another 2 - 3 minutes.

 

By Mixer:  Combine all the ingredients except the peppers and mix for 2 minutes on slow and 6 minutes on fast.  Add the chopped peppers and mix for an additional 1 - 2 minutes

 

Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave to ferment for 1 hour.  Knock-back the dough by folding the sides into the centre, and leave to rise again for an additional 20 minutes.

 

Turn the dough out onto a lightlly floured surface and roll it up into a tight sausage.  Leave to rest, coevered, for 5 minutes.  After the dough has rested,  elongate the sausage to a rope approximately 45 cm (18 inches).in length.

 

You can now shape the dough into a horseshoe shape, or, for the more ambitious, a 1-strand plait.  To make the 1-strand plait, place the rope of dough vertically in front of you.  Make a "6" with the rope, with the "bowl" of the 6 at the bottom.   Place the bottom end of the rope (the bit that makes up the "bowl" ) over the vertical part of the rope leaving about 8 cm (3 inches) overlapping.  Now (if you're still with me), pull the top of the rope through the loop of the 6 at the bottom, and twist the loop so that the bottom is now the top.   Thread the tail of the rope through the loop.  That's it. 

 

Brush the loaf with egg-wash and leave the moulded loaf to prove, covered, for 30 - 45 minutes in a warm, draught-free place until well risen and puffy.

 

Bake @ 220°C (420°F) for 20 minutes

 

Hope you enjoy it!

Rachel

 

Autumn in the countryside

Autumn in the East Sussex countryside was truly a wonder.  October was glorious.  The leaves on the trees surrounding  the bakery have turned vivid yellow, golds and copper.  Beautiful.   And despite the fact that November was a bit of  a murky wash-out, there were still moments of joy:  One day, after a rain shower, I stepped outside to find a complete, end-to-end, pot-of-gold-out-there-somewhere rainbow - the full radiant arc of it - which I don't think I've ever seen before.  And at one end where it came to ground (right beside Bodiam Castle, I mean, how nice was that?) I could see through the rainbow to the hills beyond.  

 But the best bit of the Autumn  has been Colin, the barn owl.  Colin (my name for him - don't know what he answers to at home) hunts in the fields close to the bakery, and we see him almost every day.  At first I ony saw him in the early morning, just as the dawn was breaking, but now we see him at many different times of day.  I've recently learned that barn owls are the only species of owl who hunt by day.  On Tuesday, he flew only yards from us, his head moving from side to side searching the ground below, and unfazed by our presence.   Magic.