What is a bolillo?  Simply put, it's a white bun.  What is a torta?  Simply put, it is a sandwich on a white bun.

But WHAT a white bun...and WHAT a sandwich.....Just like the little girl, when they are good they are very very good and when they are bad they are horrid.  The problem is that there is no single way to make a bolillo and, of course, inside a torta, like inside a sandwich, you can have anything you want.

The tortas above, sold in a tiendita (tiny little shop) on Francisco Sosa next to the Plaza Santa Catarina in Coyoacan, come in two varieties.  One: ham, cheese, jalapeno peppers, mayonnaise, avocado, sour cream, and lettuce.  Two:  sausage, jalapeno peppers, mayonnaise, avocado, sour cream, and lettuce.  Just two kinds of tortas, and that's enough.  They sell out every day.  In fact sometimes the shop keepers, who buy the bolillos from their local bakery on the east side of the city and transport them to the shop in the south part of the city, are forced to go to the local super market to buy more bolillos to make more tortas, so popular are they with their local crowd.  Hint:  get there early because the bolillos from their baker are FANTASTIC and the ones from the supermarket are mediocre, but more on that later...

You can find tortas with virtually anything in them but, unlike most of the rest of the world where shops may be famous for the range of sandwiches they serve, in Mexico, shops may be famous for the single kind of torta they serve.  Two of my favourites include Tortas aogadas (drowned tortas) - a speciality of Jalisco - which are tortas served in a deep plate or bowl either partially or fully submerged in a spicy sauce or a soup made with chile de arbol; and tortas de pierna which have shredded meat from a roast leg of pork in them.

Pork leg sandwiches from Puerta Vallarta

As with all sandwiches, the quality of the ingredients (including the bread) make or break the torta.  And as with all bread, there is no single recipe for tortas.  Some recipes call for sugar or honey, some are glazed with salt water or a corn starch wash, some are spayed three times in the first ten minutes in the oven and some are sprayed once before they go in.  Some have lard and some have butter, some have vegetable oil and some have margarine, some even have cinnamon in them!  Some are made with old dough and some are not.  All are agreed, however that the dough for tortas is made with plain (reasonably low gluten) white wheat flour.  They are all shaped like a sausage with pointy ends.  They are all about 5 -6 inches (10 cm?) in length.  They all have a split down the top.  They all have a glaze of some description.

The point is the texture - a good bolillo is really crispy on the outside  - so that the crumbs go all over the place - and really soft and squishy on the inside - but not so soft and squishy that the dough sticks to the roof of your mouth.  They should not have the feel of nasty white sliced bread (although plenty do), they just feel soft and lovely - a treat so good that it is worth doing your homework.  If you can, visit Mexico and eat tortas to find the best one and then tell us where you ate it.  Or, experiment to find the best bolillo recipe for you and your oven.  Here is one possible recipe. Do give it a try, then if you want to vary it or do some research to find other recipes please do.  Let us know how it goes and send us your recipes and photos.  We love mail!

One recipe for bolillos

Ingredients and method

For the starter - do this 8-24 hours in advance to improve the flavour of the bolillo

150 g plain white wheat flour
75 g warm water
little pinch of the yeast of your choice - really a little pinch will do

Mix this together roughly so that all the ingredients are incorporated into a ragged mass.  Cover with clingfilm and leave out of the fridge for 8-24 hours.

For the dough

Starter from above
900 g plain white wheat flour
9 g dry active yeast (or 18 g fresh yeast or 4.5 g instant yeast)
500 ml water
18 g salt

If you are using dry active yeast you must proof it first.  To do this, measure the flour into a big bowl.  Make a well with your hands and sprinkle in the yeast.  Cover it with the water and let it sit for 15-20 minutes until a beige sludge has formed on the top.  Then add the salt, the starter and begin to knead.  If you are using fresh or instant yeast, simply put all the ingredients into a big bowl and begin to knead.

Knead well for a good 10-15 minutes and then pop the dough back into the bowl, cover it with cling film or a tea towel and let it rest for 1-2 hours until it has doubled in size.

Pull it out and push all the air out of it.  Give it a good knead and the put it back into the bowl to let it rise again for 1-2 hours until it has doubled in size again.

Pull it out again and this time form it gently into one long sausage shape.  Cut this into 24 pieces and roll each one into a tight ball.  Let them rest, under a tea towel for 15 minutes and then form them into individual sausages with pointy ends. The easiest way to form the pointy ends is to simply form a sausage and press down with the edges of your hands about 1 cm from the edges of the sausages to form an indentation at either end of the sausage.  These look a bit like ears at this point, but they will form pointy ends while they rise! Place them on cookie sheets that you have lined with baking parchment.  Give them plenty of space so they don't glom together as they rise or bake.  Cover these with a tea towel and let them rise for about one hour.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and, before you pop the dough in the oven, make a deep cut from end to end in each bun.  Spray them with water from a plant sprayer or paint them a glaze you have made by boiling about 150 ml of water together with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch until it becomes clear.  Pop them in the oven and bake them for 15-20 minutes.  The crust should be golden and the bolillos should sound hollow when you tap their bottoms.  Let cool completely and fill with some gorgeous filling to make yummy tortas.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

Bath buns, chelsea buns, rock cakes, hot cross buns, currant buns, cinnamon buns, sticky buns, iced buns...the UK's true contribution to the bread world is the bun.  We cannot boast the baguette, ciabatta, pita, or naan but we can boast about the BUN!  To celebrate the Real Bread Campaign's Real Bread Maker week (celebrating people who make real bread, not just machines that make real bread) Virtuous Bread invites you to make BATH BUNS! Easy and delicious, don't get intimidated or scared, click here for the recipe and see the photo below.  Here is what is difficult about a bath bun:  What's the best thing?  Eating the bun, or licking the sugar off the top?

Bath Buns (among other things)

Below there are photos of other fabulous buns, from England and beyond, but you will have to wait until All You Knead is Bread is published in September for their recipes!  However, as a tempting morsel, have a slobber over the photos of buns below.

Hot Cross Bun

Cream Bun

Chelsea Buns

Cardomom buns

Cinnamon Bun

If you think we should include bun classes on our syllabus, why not contact us and let us know?

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

I was interested to read an interview with Michael Hanson from The Brook Bakery School  in the most recent edition of True Loaf, Issue 11 (April-June 2012) pp 13, the newsletter of the Real Bread Campaign.  In the interview he states:

"Though it is pleasing to see so many people wanting to help others to bake real bread, I'm concerned that "time served" is apparently anathema to some of today's so-called artisans, whatever trade they practice.  It seems that some people may have lost sight of the difference between the apprentice and the artisan, and that some novice bakers now even put themselves forward as teachers, writers or consultants quicker than no-time dough becomes a factory loaf.  If real bread cannot be rushed, can real bakers and real bread teachers be created overnight?"

There are interesting points in this quotation, some of which need to be explored and debated in order to nurture the tiny and growing commitment to real bread in the UK.  Anything else would allow people to continue to feel intimidated by the superior positions taken by some well-known and/or large bakers, some of whom simply do not make great bread.  The primary aim for anyone who is interested in real bread in the UK is to make real bread accessible to all and to make a dent in the dominant position held by industrially baked bread. The secondary aim is to engage people in the experience of making and consuming real bread - informing them about its systemic benefits and building a community around it.  The aim cannot be to disparage those who are working to build their lives and communities by making real bread available where it is currently not - and that is almost everywhere in the UK.

There are plenty of people who are classically trained, over many years (who have, therefore, served their apprenticeships) who cannot make a decent loaf of bread, mend a shoe or fix a tap.  On the other hand, there are plenty of other people who are not classically trained who can make an excellent loaf, mend a shoe or fix a tap.  Completing an apprenticeship is no guarantee of talent nor, even more importantly, does it indicate passion, dedication, commitment or love, all of which are critical components in the creation of a truly great product, and none of which are necessarily outcomes of apprenticeships.

Now that there seems to be a strict definition of “real bread” with which nobody really disagrees, perhaps we need a strict definition of “artisan bread” or “artisanal baker”.  An artisan is, according to audioenglish.net is “A skilled worker who practices some trade or handcraft”.  This indicates clearly that some aspect of hand craft is required to make an artisanal product.  The same source defines “skilled worker” as “a worker who has acquired special skills”.  To that end, technically speaking, anyone who has acquired special skills and is using those skills to produce a product at least partially by hand, is an artisan.  Nowhere in the definition does it indicate that an apprenticeship is required to be an artisan nor, clearly does it indicate that the end product produced by the skilled worker will be any good.

Artisanal is a term that is used loosely and sometimes, possibly fraudulently.  As ever, however, it is the buyer who must beware of the product he or she is buying.  The label “artisanal” is not a guarantee of quality and may indeed be attached to a product that actually mass-produced.  In the end, a too broad application of the term “artisanal” will indeed sully the market for truly artisinal goods. However, the truly great artisan will always have a large and loyal market whether or not he or she uses that term, assuming he or she creates a purchase and usage experience that is compelling and not easily copied.

Products are purchased for many reasons and it is the complete experience of the customer that matters.  This experience must deliver a compelling package of benefits including emotional and self expressive ones as well as functional ones.  If the package of benefits that are expected by the consumer is met, the product has a market in the short, medium, or long-term.  There is no other way to explain the longevity of the industrial bread market in which convenience, price and “stay fresh longer” are at least as important to the consumer as taste, nutritional content, and digestibility.  Thus, it is clear that how and where the product is purchased, its price, brand values and how it make the consumer feel are, arguably, even more important to the consumer than the actual functional benefits.

What is a real baker?  What is a real bread teacher?  Does a real baker bake real bread? If so, there is not an industrial baker alive who is a real baker, although he or she may have served an apprenticeship.  Does a real bread teacher only teach people how to bake real bread?  If so, few of the highly qualified trainers who are teaching in colleges up and down the land, preparing people for valuable jobs in the more industrial end of the catering industry is a real teacher.  “Can real bakers and real bread teachers be created overnight?"  The answer is a definitive yes.  Maybe not overnight, of course, but certainly anyone with natural talent for baking can learn to bake excellent bread which they may choose to sell.  If the experience of purchasing and consuming the bread is compelling enough, customers will repeat and recommend it, and a sustainable business will have been created.  In this way, the baker will have acquired a set of valuable skills that he or she may wish to pass on.  Once again, if that person has a natural talent for teaching and can create a learning environment that is compelling, people will consume, repeat and recommend the experience and once again, a sustainable business will have been created.  Surely "real", in this context, means successful, talented, committed, and passionate.  Not simply “time in position”.

For generations, people learned how to bake at home.  From an early age, they baked what we now like to call real bread, turning out loaf after loaf for most of their lives to feed their families, and they taught their children along the way.   In most of the developing world people still bake this way.  Sometimes they knead the dough at home and take it to the communal baker to bake.  Other times they knead and bake at home.  There is no doubt in my mind that these people were and are real bakers and real bread teachers in spite of the fact that they had no formal apprenticeship.  The benefits of bread baked in this way, and by these people, go beyond bread as food.  The benefits include the whole experience of baking and consuming the bread, and are successfully delivered by the skills, dedication, commitment, passion, and love exhibited by the bakers, however they learned.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

I went to a nutritionist several years ago to understand how to lose a couple of kilos safely and permanently.  She told me categorically that you need to do three things:

1.  You need to cut out sugar altogether.

2.  You need carbohydrates to give you energy and provide a balance to your diet but while you are losing weight, do not eat them for dinner.

3.  You need to eat fat to burn fat.

Let's repeat point three:  you need to eat fat to burn fat.  If you don't eat fat your body thinks you are at risk of starvation and so it clings stubbornly to your own fat stores in order to see you through the period of famine.  Four portions of fat is what you need whilst you are slimming.  Nothing less.  One quarter of an avocado, half a dozen almonds, six olives, 10 peanuts, one tablespoon of olive oil...there are plenty of choices.  Nutritionists prefer unsaturated fats to saturated fats and there I differ from them as I love butter and lard but while I was slimming I included them on the list.

Let's also repeat point two:  you need carbohydrates in your diet and if you make sure they are complex carbohydrates (ie don't eat white carbohydrates while you are slimming) and you don't eat them for dinner you will manage your hunger well and burn fat in your sleep!

Bread rolls made with whole meal flour, olives and avocado oil are delicious, filling, and will actually help you lose weight.  The whole meal flour will metabolise slowly, warding off hunger and the fat in the olives and the avocado oil will fill you up and count as one portion of fat, thus warding off hunger and helping you burn fat.  Perfect for a savoury breakfast or with lunch, these delicious rolls will help you diet - truly.

Olive and avocado Oil Bread Rolls

Ingredients:

300 g whole meal flour
1.5 g instant/3 g dry/6 g fresh yeast
180 g water
20 g avocado oil
3 g salt (the olives are salty so you cut back on salt)
30 black olives chopped coarsely

Method:

Measure the flour into a bowl.  If you are using dry yeast, make a well and add 100 g of water.  Cover and leave for 15 minutes and then add the rest of the water, the oil and the salt.  Knead well for 10 minutes and the pop it back in the bowl, cover, and leave for 15 minutes to rest before adding the olives.  If you are using fresh yeast, crumble it into the flour, add the water, oil, and salt and knead well for 10 minutes.  Pop it back in the bowl, cover, and leave for 15 minutes to rest before adding the olives.

After 15 minutes, fold in the olives.  Don't worry about the dough - it will recover - just be gentle so you don't squash the olives to death.  You would like to see olives, not smeared brown things.  Pop the dough back in the bowl, cover and leave for 1-2 hours or until it has doubled in size.

Remove from the bowl and divide into little blobs about 50 grams in weight.  Roll them into tight balls and pop them on a baking tray that you have lined with greaseproof paper.  Cover and let rest for 45 minutes or so.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees.

Pop the buns in the oven and bake them for 18-20 minutes.  They will be nice and brown on the top when they are done and sound a bit hollow when you tap their bottoms.  The olives run interference to the hollow sound so don't go by that alone!

Let cool completely and, when you are slimming, just eat one with your breakfast or lunch to consume a portion of carbohydrate and a portion of fat. If you are not slimming you can have more!

For other great bread recipes click here.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

Attention:  you may want to consider becoming an entrepreneur

I am sure you have noticed that the world has changed.  In spite of the fact that London is heaving (restaurants full, shops full, theatres full), travel over the Easter week end was its usual hectic experience, property prices in the south east just keep on going up, and Nissan announced it would invest in a new car plant in the UK, we need to accept that the economy, as we came to depend on it, may not recover for several years.  Strong growth, low unemployment, competition for graduates, money to mend roads, remove graffiti, and plant flowers...all of that is a thing of the past for now - and probably for a long time to come.  The UK is not alone.  All over the world, even in China, charitable donations are drying up, unemployment is high, particularly among young people, growth forecasts are depressing and real inflation - those of us who buy food are acutely aware of this - is soaring.  If you own a home and are debt free:  great.  You can pull your horns in, stop going on expensive holidays and learn to cook lentils.  If you don’t own a home, you may never own one.  If you are in debt, you may never get out of it.  And if you are a graduate?

Think very hard.

If you are a graduate and you have expectations of choosing where you work when you graduate, think again.  The days of graduates being wooed are over.  Five years ago, a graduate at a top university may have had five or six job offers, many of which came with signing packages, excellent salaries, the promise of annual pay rises over the rate of inflation, and annual bonuses.  Today a graduate is lucky to get an interview, let alone a job.  Young people all over the world are having to re-frame their futures. The idea that they will have a career is laughable (to them, you understand) when they cannot even get a job in their area of expertise.  Completing unpaid internship after unpaid internship is not delivering a paid position, applications and letters go unanswered and the milk round continues to be depressingly thin of potential employers.

Think very hard.

If you are looking for work you may need to consider, possibly for the first time, setting up and running your own business.  It’s not as hard as you think to set up and run a business although it is hard to run a successful one.  The important thing to hold on to is that you do not have to be a techie or a financial engineer.  What you do have to do is offer solutions to problems in such a way that people will pay you for it.  Your interests, passions, and skills will determine what problems you solve and how you solve them.  Your individuality and personality - if you allow them to shine through - will guarantee that your business cannot be copied for the simple reason that you are unique.

If you are the kind of person who seeks to resolve problems rather than living with them you should become an entrepreneur. If your main interest is money you can set up a purely commercial enterprise.  If your main interest is changing the world you can set up a social enterprise.  Practically, the challenge is exactly the same.

Look around you - the world is far from perfect.  Every single day you spend 24 hours interacting with people, products and services.  There is room for improvement in how we feel about ourselves, others, and the physical world with which we interact.  Find the intersection points - between people, between products, between services, and between people, products and services and you will find opportunities to improve the world that nobody will have discovered, through which you can change the world, and from which you can earn a living.

Earn your own bread.  Better still, earn some virtuous bread.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

Easter Monday 2010 - Stockholm, Sweden

"You are going to do what?"

I was spending Easter with my friend Kat.  It had been a difficult few months.  A profoundly disappointing client engagement led me to want a break from strategy consulting and I had been baking obsessively, building my bread business and trying to decide what to do next.  It was clear that I had to do something with bread and I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a bakery.  Something was stopping me, however, and I realised that it was not the right time for me to have a bakery.  I wanted to continue to work with people to change the world for the better but I needed to do it outside of the board room.  Baking and thinking, thinking and baking, I began to notice that the response to hand-made, good bread was universally and consistently positive.  One hundred percent of the time, customers were thrilled with the bread and made me feel good about myself for having baked it.  I was making them happy, they were making me happy and more good bread was being consumed by all.  It came to me one evening that it would be possible to change the world through bread.

If baking and selling good bread made me happy, I was certain it could make others happy.  My family thought I was nuts and were worried about how I would pay the bills. Most people I told about the idea thought I was nuts.  I spent long, dark days on the sofa thinking I was nuts.  Somehow, though, I clung onto the idea that good bread could change the world and that I would be able to make a business out of it.  I gave myself a year and over the final months of 2010, I developed Virtuous Bread.  I determined the mission statement and  objectives, and clarified the main activities and legal structure.  It was very clear to me that Virtuous Bread needed to be a profit-making company, albeit one that was not totally dedicated to serving the shareholder's financial goals.  To that end, I decided that there needed to be clear commercial activities and non-commercial activities and that the commercial activities would pay the bills and fund the non commercial activities.  The split between commercial and non commercial activities would be roughly 80/20, with 80% of the time spent earning and 20% of the time spent volunteering.  Both earning and volunteering would involve bread:  baking, teaching, speaking, writing, and working with people in general to educate, influence, and lead by example regarding how good bread can positively change individuals, society and the world for the better.

Although Virtuous Bread was set up as a limited company, it was always going to be a social enterprise, a fact that Unltd recognised in the autumn of 2010 when they awarded me a £5 000 grant, the first real proof that someone had faith in the concept and sustainability of Virtuous Bread, and for which I thank them from the bottom of my heart.  This gave me the courage to set up my first classes and from January to April 2011 I taught a handful of people, finding my way and imparting my skills both as a baker and as a business woman.  I genuinely felt (and still feel) like everything in my life - everything I have done and learned - had led me to this point.  Virtuous Bread was on course to make it fun and easy for people all over the world to find, make, and learn about bread and in so doing to forge the link between bread and virtue.

Easter Monday 2011 - Munich, Germany

"Your year is up, what will you do?"

I was spending Easter with my friend Sabine.  Although I had only just started, and was spending money like water investing in the Virtuous Bread, it was clear to me that I would continue:  The handful of students I had had were positive in their feed back, summer classes were filling up, the students in the primary school where I was volunteering were extremely happy learning how to bake, and the staff of The Clink were enthusiastic and open to learning about baking good bread.  However, I decided I would need to change the balance of my activities slightly in order better to meet the objectives of Virtuous Bread:

1.  I would pull back my customer base to within a one mile radius of where I was baking in order to prove definitively the Bread Angels concept;

2.  I would spend more time teaching and less time baking;

3.  I would hire someone to help me develop and run Bread Angels in order to have a better and more complete package to support the amazing people who were completing the course;

4.  I would invest time, not only in the four voluntary activities I had started the year before, but also in speaking engagements, in blogging about bread, business, and social change, and in writing a book about bread in order to reach a wider audience about the positive personal and social benefits of baking and sharing good bread.

These were the right decisions to make.

By Good Friday 2012, there were over 60 Bread Angels in the UK, South Africa, Belgium, the USA and Canada and between them have baked and sold thousands of loaves in their local communities, built businesses, and taught literally hundreds of people how to bake bread.  Many of the Bread Angels have outgrown their home kitchens, moved their bakeries to external premises and/or invested in industrial equipment to enable them to bake at scale at home.  There is a terrific social conscience among the Bread Angels - they are linking with transition town movements, attending and developing local markets, engaging communities through local pubs, baking spare loaves to give away, volunteering....the list of the amazing things the Bread Angels are doing is endless and inspiring.  Bread Angels are regularly featured in newspaper articles and on the radio talking about what they do to change the world through bread.

Because of  Virtuous Bread's philosophy regarding the importance of building and maintaining relationships, M Love, a conference for the global mobile industry invited me to open the 2011 session in Berlin to remind delegates that it is critical to consider the impact of technology on society - for better and for worse - when developing technologies for the future.  In recognition of the social change Virtuous Bread is effecting, through teaching, volunteering, and Bread Angels, Red Magazine awarded me the "food breakthrough award" in November 2011.

As a result of a consistent focus on content expertise, excellent quality, and a focus on accessibility and personal care, the Weston A Price foundation has elected to work with Virtuous Bread to help their members develop a clear and balanced understanding of the nutritional benefits of good bread in general, and sourdough bread in particular.  Further, Ryland Peters & Small commissioned All You Knead is Bread - a cook book with stories about bread as a window into society and a unifying force of all humanity.  Finally, I was asked to deliver a lecture to the first year students at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, one of the top universities in Mexico, about entrepreneurialism and social enterprise as a necessary and serious career option for them to consider.

Easter Monday 2012 - Mexico City, Mexico

"What's next?"

I am spending Easter with my partner, Enrique.  Virtuous Bread has been trading for one year.  There is money in the bank and we are debt-free.  The last piece of capital expenditure has been made to develop the Bread Angels website which will be launched in the coming weeks as a support for Bread Angels everywhere.  We employ two people on a part-time basis and although I do not take a salary from the business yet, I may be able to take a tiny salary this financial year.  Our high level plans for the year include to continue to:

- broaden and strengthen the Bread Angels network to enable even more people all over the world to earn a living and change their communities through good bread

- teach people how to bake bread in order to learn a new skill, enjoy the benefits of hand-made bread, and exert more control over their lives

- work with different groups, using bread as a catalyst for developing new skills and self-esteem

- speak and write about bread, social enterprise,  entrepreneurialism, and the social impact of Virtuous Bread and the Bread Angels  - upcoming engagements include addressing the German Bakers' Federation in June about the meaning of bread, and speaking at the Greenbelt festival  in the UK in August about the positive impact of private enterprise

In addition, I plan to:

- write a second book - topic to be decided with the publisher this spring

- employ someone full-time to help run Virtuous Bread

- develop Virtuous Bread in North America

- set up Bread Angels as a registered charity and develop social programmes associated with it.  A £5 000 grant from Richmond council will seed that charity and will be spent sponsoring deserving people in Barnes, SW London to become Bread Angels.  There, we hope to work with a community supermarket/kitchen in Barnes, providing all the bread and holding classes.

It's been quite a ride and I am proud - of the Bread Angels, of the students, of the groups with which we have worked and of the financial success we have had.  At Virtuous Bread we think money is a great thing - the more we make the more we can do to change the world.  It's our choices that matter and I hope I have made some good choices over the past couple of years and, with help from advisors, students, Bread Angels, random strangers, and friends and family, that I will continue to make good choices and have a positive impact on everyone I meet.  Thanks to all who have helped me out on this amazing ride.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

At The Clink restaurant in High Down prison we bake with both a wheat and a rye sourdough starter.  The rye starter was made by the staff of the Clink about 18 months ago when we first started baking together, and they have some of the 1857 sourdough that I gave them as a gift.  The daily bread is made with the 1857 - different varieties of wheat sourdough bread are made each day to serve with the home-made soup of the day.  Yesterday's was sun dried tomato bread and very good it looked too.  I no longer have any hand in the daily bread so when I do go down it is to experiment with new things and demonstrate new ways of baking with sourdough.  To do this we use the rye starter as it is a little bit punchier and more versatile.  To read more about starters, please click here.

Yesterday when I was at The Clink we tried a new recipe for sourdough hot cross buns and we decided to make sourdough biscuits using the left over refreshed sourdough.  One of the amazing things about sourdough biscuits (and scones for that matter) is the fact that there is no fat in them! The key to make good hot crossers is to take the time to make a pre-dough using the refreshed sourdough plus some of the flour, all of the sugar and all of the milk and let it sit for a good couple of hours to ensure maximum yeast activity to raise the final, well kneaded and very sticky dough that is enriched with eggs, butter, dried fruit, and spices.  The key with the biscuits is just the opposite - taking the care to incorporate the ingredients together without handling them very much.  Two different techniques and two different products!  Both delicious and made entirely without yeast.  All the biscuits disappeared at lunch time and guests were even coming back for more!  The hot crossers which took a lot longer, were just in time for the late lunch crowd to enjoy a taste before leaving, and for the kitchen and waiting staff who had worked a long and busy shift. Want to try (and I recommend it!)?  Here are the recipes.  No photos - not allowed at The Clink so you just have to use your imaginations....

Sourdough Hot Cross Buns (made with The Clink rye sourdough starter)

Day One, mix together:

20 g rye sourdough starter
120 g plain white wheat flour
60 g water

Stir, cover, and let stand on the counter over night.

Day One, mix together:

250 g sultanas covered in water

Cover and leave on the counter over night.

Day Two Ingredients:

Refreshed starter from Day One
Drained sultanas from Day One
450 g plain white wheat flour
150 g whole meal flour
300 g milk that you have scalded and let cool down completely
2 big tablespoons of sugar
2 eggs
100 g butter
12 g salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground clove
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground all spice
1 tsp ground mixed spice

Step One - make a pre-dough:

Measure the flour in a big bowl and make a well.

Put the refreshed sourdough in the well and add the sugar and the milk.

Flick a light dusting of flour to the cover the liquid, and cover with cling film.  Leave for two hours.

Add the eggs, salt, spices and knead well for 10 minutes.

Add the butter and knead well for 10 more minutes.

Put back in the bowl, cover, and let rest for 2 hours.

Form into small buns of about 75 g each and place them on a baking tray covered with baking parchment.

Cover and let rest for 90 minutes.  Pre heat and oven to 200 degrees.

Make a crossing mixture by stirring together:

200 g plain white wheat flour
200 g water
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp oil

Pipe the crossing mixture on the buns and pop them in the oven for 18-20 minutes.

Melt some honey or golden syrup and paint it on with a paint brush while the buns are still hot.

Sourdough biscuits (made with The Clink rye sourdough starter)

Day One: Mix together:

10 g rye sourdough
60 g plain white wheat flour
30 g water

Cover and leave on the counter over night.

Day Two ingredients:

Refreshed starter from Day One
170 g plain white wheat flour
125 g milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Options:  sugar (to make scones) or grated cheeses, herbs, anything you fancy for a savoury biscuit.  We did grated golden beetroot, goat cheese and basil.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Pour 3/4 of the cold milk over the refreshed sourdough and work it all into a milky paste with your fingers.

Sift the dry ingredients together into a separate bowl and blend them into the milky sourdough.

Knead the dough gently in the bowl just to form a coherent dough and then add the optional ingredients, mixing them in with your hands.  Add enough of the remaining milk at this point to help the dough come together.  You may not need it all.

Flour the counter top and pull the dough out onto the counter.  Knead the dough gently and then roll it out to about a 1.5 inch (4 cm) thickness.

Cut out biscuits with a small scone cutter.  Flour the cutter each time you use it and try not to twist it as you use it or you will blur the edges of the biscuits and they won't rise as well as they could do.

Bake for 10 minutes (for small) or 20 minutes (for large).

Delicious!  Everyone agreed!

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

A simple approach to baking bread with sprouted flour

Sprouted grain is just that:  grain that is moistened, and left to sprout.  In the process of sprouting, the new plant that begins to emerge from the grain begins to consume itself to get the energy it needs to grow.  In doing so, it begins to convert the carbohydrates in the grain to proteins and begins to destroy the structure of the grain.  This means that bread made with sprouted grain is lower in carbohydrates than bread made from non-sprouted grain and it also means that it is easier to digest because the grain from which it is made is, well, pre-digested.

Essene bread is one kind of sprouted grain bread.  As I understand it, essene bread is an ancient form of bread first made by the Essenes - a Jewish group who lived from the 2 century BCE to the 1 century CE.  I think the difference is that essene bread is made from sprouted grains that are ground when damp, formed into a kind of a loaf, and then baked.  Regular old bread made from sprouted grains is made with sprouted grains that are dehydrated before they are milled.  I tried to bake essene bread once and it tasted just like swamps so I gave up trying and continued to buy it when I was in Germany which was the only place I could find it.  My seeking days are over (as are my swamp bread days) because I have found a source of excellent sprouted flour here in the UK.

Recently, Francois from Bread Link sent me some sprouted flour.  I received a generous package of 1 day sprouted rye, 1 day sprouted wheat and barley, "Amish sprouted flour " (4 day sprouted spelt, azuki, and millet), and "Essene sprouted flour" (4 day sprouted wheat, spelt, and rye).  To prepare for the Weston Priceconference in London, where I met Francois and gave a talk on sourdough baking, and to satisfy my curiosity, I got down to work straight away with the 1 day sprouted rye, the Amish sprouted flour and the Essene sprouted flour.

Sprouted flour from Bread Link

I made the bread out of the rye flour in the same way I would make any other rye bread and the result was a disaster which goes to show that sometimes it's useful to get some expert guidance before starting a new project.

I made the bread out of the Essene sprouted flour and the Amish sprouted flour in exactly the same way as each other and they were a triumph!  Beautiful to behold with a delicious flavour.

Lovely loaf made with Essene sprouted flour

The thing to remember is that sprouted grain has a very weak gluten structure due to the sprouting.  It does rise but it will not cook through if it is baked conventionally in a tin.  The sprouted rye was liquid in the centre whereas its non sprouted counterpart was baked perfectly.  The option (if you were determined to bake in a tin) would be to lower the temperature to about 180 and bake it for a couple of hours, like a cake, testing it with a skewer to check for done-ness.  The easier option (and what I did with the Amish and the Essene) is to rise the bread in a proofing basket, turn it over onto a baking tray and bake it.  What surprised me (and it is a tip to leave plenty of room on the baking tray) is that, although the little Essene and Amish loaves held their shape when I rolled them out of their baking trays, they flattened, rather than rose in the oven!  The texture, however, is not biscuit-like, nor dry:  The insides of the loaves are moist with a pretty honeycombing and a light texture.  Small they may be, brick like they are not.

A lovely lady at the conference commented that she felt the bread sat completely differently in her tummy.  Ordinarily incredibly sensitive to all grains - to the point of having to avoid them - this lady felt no ill effects from the bread made with the Amish flour, and indeed felt it to be beneficial and totally comfortable to digest.  Delicious, nutritious and easy to digest = RESULT!

I am by no means an expert, and look forward to continuing my experimentation, so if you are interested in knowing more from an expert, contact Francois at Bread Link and he will be delighted to answer all your questions,  I am sure.  For the recipes - both sourdough and non sourdough -  click here for sprouted rye bread, and here for sprouted amish or  essene bread.  Please note, these recipes were formulated with Bread Link's flour and the result will most certainly be different with different brands of flour.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

Last year I had a lovely student named Tricia come to the sourdough class.  She wanted to learn sourdough because she lives for half the year on the edge of the Masai Mara and cannot  get good bread.  Nor can she always get yeast.  Nor is the electricity supply necessarily reliable.  The answer?  Sourdough!

Tricia came to take the sourdough class when she was in London in December.  We always make 100% rye and a rye and wheat and/or spelt mix and we always make crackers.  Yes!  You can make crackers at home and, believe me, they are fantastic.  Tricia went straight out and bought a pokey rolling pin from Amazon in their children's baking set and got to work.  After perfecting cracker making in London and going back home to Kenya, she made crackers and has taught others to make them too.  They are a hit!

Tricia instructing on the art of cracker making

From Sweden to Kenya via London, sourdough crackers - WOW!

Flying solo!

Why did Tricia want to bake with sourdough?

If you bake with sourdough you no longer need to buy yeast as you always have yeast to hand - trapped in its paste of flour and water.  If you lose or run out of your sourdough you can make more!  If you dry your sourdough and store it as a powder you don't have to worry about keeping it alive and dormant in the fridge if you don't want to feed it every day.  To learn more about sourdough, click here. For the cracker recipe click here and substitute 40 g refreshed rye sourdough for the yeast.  To read more about Tricia's adventures and how she landed on the edge of the Masai Mara, click here.

Sourdough is simple!

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.

Last week in Armenia I went to many houses where the people could not have done more for me to help me learn about bread, cake, food, hospitality, and life in Armenia.  I was welcomed like a long lost daughter, was asked to stay the night (or the week) was fed until I nearly burst and drank everything from young wine to fresh juice, to vodka to pear brandy (80 degrees - if you are going to die, die happy!).  The Armenian people are  simply wonderful - generous, kind, thoughtful, helpful and natural.  The way people should be.  If you want to have your faith in human kindness restored - I suggest you get on the first flight to Yerevan and begin to explore.

In an earlier post there was a little movie of Fatima and her mother making lavash in the traditional oven in the ground.  What is amazing is that  Armenians can bake cakes in those same ovens!  Cakes, in their tins, are placed on a trivet which is lowered into the oven when it has somewhat cooled down.  The oven is covered with a lid of some kind and the cake bakes.  It's amazing!

Gata in the oven

Gata on the trivet

The wonderful cooks at the Cherkezi Dzor restaurant in Gyumri showed me how to make Gata - the celebration cake/bread that is simple, beautiful, and tasty.  Because I am a yeast baker, I moderated the recipe only slightly to make it with yeast rather than bicarb.  Although I have only made with the traditional filling, if you wanted to deviate away from tradition, you could add poppy seeds, dried fruit or ground nuts (almonds, walnuts...).  The filling, by the way, is called a horitz!  When the cooks were explaining the gata to me, they said, "and the filling is just  a horitz..." and I said, "huh?" and they said, "a horitz!  a horitz! everyone knows a horitz!"  I had to confess I had never met a horitz, before discovering that a horitz is a crumble (streusel) by any other name.  However, the horitz does use mountain butter which alas I cannot get.  I had to settle for supermarket butter....

The beautiful gata was served to us after we had an incredible meal of fresh trout and sturgeon caviar, served with a basket of fresh bread (getting the fresh vibe?) followed by fresh trout and fresh sturgeon. The trout had been barbequed in the same kind of oven-in-the-ground as the bread and the sturgeon had been steamed.  Both were seasoned very simply - with bay and paprika, salt and pepper - and were the best fish I have ever had in my life.  A meal of fresh fish, bread, pickles, cake, dried fruit, coffee and plum vodka is a miracle of contrasting flavours and textures and the airy and bright restaurant decorated with antique rugs and lovely old furniture is a beautiful, atmospheric place in which to enjoy it.

A trout so fresh he jumped at the flash of the camera

Hello Mr Sturgeon!

Simple pleasures

Basket of bread on the table

Here is my very first gata - and it won't be my last.

My first gata!

The gata close up!

I will post the recipe of the gata soon and you too can enjoy baking this wonderful bread.

Read more at Virtuous Bread http://www.virtuousbread.com Bread Making Courses London - Learn How to Start a Home Baking Business -Virtuous Bread - Eat well. Do good.