Two Loaves Of Bread

My friend Ben has just taken delivery of a new mixer after being bitten by the bread bug. I was going to send him the two bread recipes that I do the most and thought it might be better to put them both up here on the blog for everyone. The first is one I do pretty much every other day. It's a slightly bastardised version of a loaf from the Ottolenghi Cookbook using Campaillou flour. The second is the classic Cranks wholemeal recipe.

Campaillou Loaf

Biga Starter
1lb 5.25oz Campillou Flour
10oz Water
1 desert spoon dried yeast

Loaf
1.5oz Campillou Flour
4 teaspoons coarse polenta
3 teaspoons soft brown sugar
7 oz water
2 teaspoons salt

The night before, make the Biga Starter. Mix the yeast in the water. There's no need to wait for it to froth up at all, just make sure that the grains have dissolved. Next, put all the Biga ingredients into the mixer and set it to knead until they're well combined. I've let it knead for too long before and the dough becomes extremely stiff. As a result I've managed to break four kenwood chefs in as many years, one of them literally tore apart. So, watch it and as soon as it's come together and looks a bit like a head of cauliflower, turn the mixer off and push the dough together by hand. Cover the bowl tightly with clingfilm and leave it until the morning.

The next day take the dough out and roughly chop it up with a knife into 1 inch or so pieces and put it back in the bowl with the added loaf ingredients. Cover the mixer with a tea towel because initially it'll be super sloppy and splash all over the place (if it's really bad you might want to combine the ingredients a bit with a spoon or something - depends on the maths of the mixer I suppose but with my kenwood chef it makes a bit of a mess) and turn it on low for a couple of minutes. When you take the towel off it'll look like a porridgy mess that will seemingly never come together as a dough. Be patient, it will. When it's reasonably well combined turn the mixer up high and watch it. It'll take about five minutes but in time the mess will transform into a super silky stretchy dough that when you turn the mixer off will seemingly have a mind of it's own as it oozes back into the bowl. Keep mixing until it is pulling itself off the now clean bowl, give it another thirty seconds or so and then turn it off.

I put it in a new bowl, but it's still so liquid that I use and oiled spatula to do so and make sure the bowl it's going into is well oiled also. Then I can clean the mixer and put it away as it's job is done.

Once in the new oiled bowl turn the dough over so it's covered in a film of oil, then cover the bowl and leave it until it's risen to about double its size or just under. And put the oven on, as high as it will go.

After it's risen (should take forty minutes or so if it's warm) you want to knead it, but follow this method which I'm going to copy pretty much word for word from the Ottolenghi Cookbook...

Wet your hands with a little olive oil. Whilst it is still in the bowl, pick the dough up from one edge and stretch it. Fold the stretched edge on top. Repeat this, stretching and folding the dough from all sides of the bowl. In the end you will get a few 'flaps' gathered together on top of the dough. Now, turn the dough over in the bowl so the flaps are underneath.

Leave it again for another ten minutes or so, and if you're backing one loaf, very carefully place it into a
well floured proving basket until it's double the size it was when you started (before it rose at all, it'll be bigger now as the gentle kneading won't have knocked all the air out). What I'm doing these days though is making it into two smaller loaves. You just seem to get a more open crumb - lovely impressive big holes inside that make people say 'wow' or 'did you make that?'. So what I do is turn the dough into a really floury table. Fold it a couple of times like before when it was in the bowl. Cut it in half with a dough scraper, seal the cut edges by pinching them together, flour again and turn the two loaves so the cut sides are underneath. It really looks better if they're not too neat I think. I then let them rise of a piece of bakers linen with a folded 'wall' of linen between then and a piece of floured clingfilm just resting on the top, for another twenty minutes or so.

I then pour a cup of so of water from the kettle onto the tray at the bottom of the oven and put the loaves in with the peel dusted with polenta to stop it sticking, (and after a couple of slashes are made on top), next to each other, and shut the door for twelve minutes (at 250 degrees), then I rotate them and drop the temperature to about 210 degrees for another 18-20 minutes.

The photo below is of one I made that I didn't cut into two.

The wholemeal loaf I make is very different, much more cakey as in the original recipe there's no knocking back and barely any kneading. Sometimes I make it with a proving and knocking back and it's a bit more stretchy, but I rather like the worthy cakeyness of the original. Here's the recipe from the Cracks Recipe Book published in 1982.


Cranks Wholemeal Bread

1lb 100% Stoneground Wholemeal Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried yeast
1 teaspoon brown sugar
400 ml warm water

I mix the water yeast and sugar together until the dry things have dissolved and then add that to the flour and salt. The mixture is kneaded enough to combine it, no more, and then shaped and placed in a loaf buttered or oiled loaf tin and left to rise until it's double it's size. It's then either floured again, or in the case of the two loaves in the photograph, glazed with milk, covered in something (pumpkin seeds on one, poppy seeds on the other) and glazed again before baking at 200 degrees for about 35-40 minutes.

As I said, sometimes I give it a good kneading and knock it back after rising before shaping. If it's done like this it won't 'pancake' and so won't necessarily need a tin, and it'll be more bready and stretchy.