The bread making book that will change your life!

[Milims]

Cheezy - we bought one of those thin, bendy, plastic chopping boards and cut severa scrapers from it and they work really well - all for the cost of about £1!
I just thought - perhaps you could experiment with cutting on out of a plastic milk container.

[Camile]

Hello again,

would you post the recipe of your bread cheezyy ? I'm tempted ...

also, have you tried the "pain viennois" ? we love it and never last for long ...

and I got of those plastic scraper for christmas, but they were bought in France ... and wouldn't know the price ..


and I also got the "boulanger" pair of pants, that I proudly wear will baking !

camile

[ina]

Round here there are no decent bakeries at all, and the only nice baguette I can buy is from a mini market!

True - back then, after I'd returned to Germany I thought the croissants are better at our bakers than the ones in France, in the village...

[Cheezy]

Hello again,

would you post the recipe of your bread cheezyy ? I'm tempted ...

also, have you tried the "pain viennois" ? we love it and never last for long ...

camile

Will do (I'll have to check out the quantities at home), as I say I've made some amendments to the original recipe. It does take quite a bit of time but the taste and longevity of the bread makes it worth while. And I do a batch every two weeks, so it's not so bad.

I've not tried the pain vienois, I'll check it out later.

At the weekend I tried his olive oil pizza base. I was disappointed in the "breadiness" of the final product (he does say it is more bready), but the dough was a dream to work with very soft and elastic. If I make it again I will definitely do it the night before (as it's meant to improve the flavour and crispiness of the base.) and I will roll it out first to extra thin, rather than pull it into shape. I will include some coarse semolina which I find does give an extra bite.

[Camile]

Hello again,

I did try the pizza dough and was disapointed too ...

and I did try the semolina and it made it more "country" style ..

I've tried another one but it still wasn't great ...although what I like n it was the fact that you would cream the fresh yeast with honey first .. and let it activate for twenty minutes ...

it does fluff up the bread even more, giving it a lovely honey flavor ...

I'll have to try experimenting now ... I want to include some seeds in the baguettes ..

Camile

[Cheezy]

Heh we should rename this thread the Cheezy-Camile bread swap.

OK, so Richards pain de campagne is a good recipe. I have altered it as MOH gets IBS if she eats pure white bread. I heard about spelt,
(see here:
http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/organic/info-spelt.htm) and that although an ancient form of wheat, it's glutin is slightly different.

All you need to know is that I've been making this bread for over a month , and she's not suffered once. Plus (and it's a big one) it tastes great, and matures for a couple of days. Day 3 is when you have to start toasting it. But it toasts brillliently.
Pain de Campagne (page 132) white or Spelt/Rye mix makes 2 loaves
So This is "nearly" a sour dough bread. I'm not going to copy the recipe as you should get the book! I now use fresh yeast from the health food shop.
The ferment (first time you make it) as on page 117 you half the quantities,replace the strong white flour with spelt.I use whole meal, but white is probably just as good. Make the ferment the night before and leave in the fridge. I don't over work the dough as it's going to get that next morning.Bring back to room temp the following day.
Now what I do next is to replace the white flour with spelt again, after mixing as per Richards technique this recipe does tend to be a bit more sticky than others I think it's the rye/spelt mix but once the dough has "life" as he say's it's ready.
This is where I now take 200g of dough and put in to a bowl covered with cling film and leave in the fridge. I'll come to that below (see*). The rest of the dough I follow his recipe, I have tried short cuts, missed out time but it does make a difference. I use glass mixing bowls with floured tea towels in them to do the final proving. The cutting of the top is a skilled job, you need to try and cut an even depth all the way round, as all sorts of misshapes occur otherwise (still taste nice though!)
I bake as he does, the first loaf I take out at 20 to 25 mins leave to go cold, this one is my freezer one. The second loaf I usually cook to 30 mins.
My freezwer loaf I find are best defrosted before recooking (place in a cold oven, set to 200'C take out when the temp is reached about 15 mins)

(*)
The cling filmed dough is now my ferment for next time no need to prepare the night before!, the longer it's left the better it will taste BUT it's based on me not making bread the following week (use the second loaf from the freezer), so I need to feed it with 200g spelt/white flour and 100g of water the following week(add, mix"kneed" back into the fridge for a week). You now have 500g ferment, The original pre-night ferment weighed 445g, so you can just add this instead to the main ingredients. When you mix it up, repeat the 200g removal in to the fridge.etc, and you have a continous 2 week process. If you eat more bread than we do and will use 2 loaves a week, just increase the original ferment recipe to allow you to take off 450g to keep aside. (use 2/3 of the basic rye recipe instead of 1/2)
Or double everything and make 4 loaves, freezing two, what ever suites

It's confusing I'm not half as good at this explaining thing as he is, especially if you don't have the book!, but It's not worth me giving the recipe as so much depends on the technique of "kneeding", which is brilliently explained and demonsrated on the DVD.