Maritimers' bread - perfect for a cold day

The Eastern, or Atlantic provinces of Canada were settled by Scots and Irish looking for a brighter future.  They brought many of their customs and traditions from food to music - indeed there are still some gallic speaking communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.  This bread most certainly has celtic origins.  If the oats and raisins do not convince you, the porridge oats will.  It is a delicious bread, developed in the day when oats were cheap and plentiful and wheat was scarce and dear.  Wheat was needed to make bread that rose and oats were needed as a cheap filler - to make your wheat go farther.

Like most "poor people's food" this is delicious and nutritious:  simple, hearty, satisfying...a real "stick to your ribs" bread; perfect for a long day at sea.

Ingredients:

1 big mug of porridge oats, as unrefined as you can get them (Rude Health provide excellent oats)
1 big mug of boiling water
1 tablespoon of lard (or butter or coconut oil)
1 big tablespoon of molasses (or honey)
1 teaspoon of salt
300 g whole meal flour
200 g water
1.5 g instant/3 g dry/6 g fresh yeast

oats for dusting

Method

The night before you want to bake (or several hours before) measure the oats into a bowl and pour over the boiling water.

Stir in the lard, salt, and molasses.

Cover and let cool completely or it will kill the yeast.

Once the oats are completely cool, measure the flour into a bowl.

If using instant or fresh yeast sprinkle it in.  Add all of the rest of the ingredients, including the soaked oats and knead well for 10 minutes.  It will be very sticky and that is ok.  You are adding mush to your dough so you have got to expect sticky!

If using dry yeast, pop it in a little bowl and pour 100 ml of warm water over it.  Cover and let sit for 10-15 minutes until it froths up and then add it to the flour.  Add everything else and knead well for 10 minutes.  It will be very sticky and that is ok.  You are adding mush to your dough so you have got to expect sticky!

Pop it back in the bowl and then cover it and let it rest for 1-2 hours until it has at least doubled in size.  Grease a big bread tin - you want to fill it about 2/3 full.  .Then pull the dough out onto a well floured surface (remember - it's sticky) and flour your hands.  Shape it into a sausage and pop it in the tin.  Cover it and let it rise for 1 hour.  Just before you put it in the oven, spray it with a plant sprayer and sprinkle oats on the top.  Spray again to stick them down.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and pop the dough in.  Bake for 45 minutes.  This dough will not sound particularly hollow when you tap it because of all the oats.

Let it cool completely and then eat with butter and (if you are feeling particularly sinful) brown sugar.  Or just jam or cheese if you like cheese and raisins together.  It keeps for ages and is excellent toasted.

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.

What is flour?  Flour is ground up grain, right?

You may be shocked to learn that this is not necessarily fully so.  On a recent trip to Canada I took the time to read the ingredients on the back of a flour bag.  It is a national brand, an institution, in fact, called Robin Hood.  It is up there with Allinsons, Home Pride, and Hovis.  What I found was not a tempting sight.

Whilst I am, naturally thrilled to find that it contains Wheat Ingredients (it is wheat flour, afterall) it was with mixed feelings that I read about all the other ingredients in the bag.  My first question is this:  what are these things and what are they doing there?  My second question is this:  are these things in bags of industrially milled flour in the UK and if so, why are they not listed on the labels in the UK?

Read the label of a bag of Hovis, Allinsons, or Home Pride and you will see only this:  flour.

In earlier posts we have sung the praises of stone ground flour and we have always tried not to criticise anyone on this site.  Not industrial millers, not plant bakers, nobody.  Praise is the word.  Lead by positive example.  Show something good and people will adopt it....I still agree with my own philosophy, but I do think this label gives us a free and fair opportunity to explore industrial flour and allow everyone come to his or her own conclusions as regards purchasing it. Given the list of ingredients is so long, however, this is only part one.

So, here goes:

1.  What is Amylase?

According to Foodditive.com:

"Amylase is an enzyme that hydrolyses (breaks down) starches into simple sugars, and is widely used in bread making to break down complex starches found in flour. Amylase occurs naturally in yeast and when added to flour breaks down the starch to give a sweet taste, and causes the bread to rise as a result of CO2 production. Commercially amylase is used a bread improver/flour treatment agent and raising agent."

It is also known as E1100.  It enables weak (low gluten) flour to rise higher and faster than it would do ordinarily.

2.  What is Xylanase?

According to Mapsenzymes:

"Enzymes such as proteases, xylanases and lipases directly or indirectly improve the strength of the gluten network and so improve the quality the bread."

I think it all depends how you define quality.  It certainly enables weaker (low gluten) flour to rise faster and higher when it is added.

3.  What is ascorbic acid?

Yes, yes, it is vitamin C but it is also a preservative - to give the flour a longer shelf life.

4.  What is Niacin?

Yes, yes, it is vitamin B3 but it is also a colour retention agent - to preserve the whiteness of the flour.

5.  What is Reduced Iron?

Reduced iron is just that.  Reduced iron.  It is an "enriching item" and has been added to flour in Canada since 1953.  Some scientists argue that reduced iron cannot be absorbed by the body and so is completely useless as an enriching item.  Some nutritionists argue that so many processed foods contain so much added iron that we now have too much iron in our systems.  We definitely need iron and it is a personal choice as regards how we get the iron we need.  Personally I would rather get it through unprocessed food sources, the best of which, according to the NHS include:

• liver
• meat
• beans
• nuts
• dried fruit, such as dried apricots
• wholegrains, such as brown rice
• fortified breakfast cereals
• soybean flour
• most dark-green leafy vegetables, such as watercress and curly kale

Phew.  Not even half way through the list but certainly more than enough information for one post.  More to come on the subject of this bag of flour and a call to action:  contact your flour mill and find out.  What is in your bag 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.

How do I know my bread is done?

We get a lot of e mails from our wonderful students about the actual baking process which may not go exactly to plan when they get home.

Here is a list of the top five concerns:

1.  How do I know the bread is done?

2.  Does a big loaf (1 kg) take longer than a small loaf?

3.  My bread sounded done but is quite underdone in the middle.

4.  My bread gets too brown on the top.

5.  What is the optimal temperature to bake bread?

So, let's take these in turn.  However, the first thing to do is to get an oven thermometer and check the temperature of your oven.  If you are trying to bake at 220 and you are really baking at 200 or 240 you will have to adjust your timings or get your oven mended.

Tap, tap, tap

1.  Bread is done when it sounds hollow and feels thin and crispy on the bottom.  Bread is also done when the inside temperature is 98 degrees celsius.  You can buy a clever bread thermometer from a good cook store or catering supply company (or try Bakery Bits or Creeds online) and then you will always know if your bread is done.

You can also take the bread out of the oven (and out of the tin if it is in one) and tap the bottom of the loaf.  It really does sound hollow if it is done.  If it does not sound hollow just put it back in the oven (either in or out of the tin) and leave it for another five minutes and then check it again.  If you are uncertain, do this anyway and observe the difference in the sound.

For those of you whose sense of touch is more acute than your sense of hearing (that includes me) your bread is done when it feels "thin".  By that I mean when it feels like there is nothing underneath the crust - like a snare drum, rather than a drum with cotton wool under the surface.  I have difficultly describing it in any other way.  Once again, give the bread a tap and if you are not sure, put it back in the oven for 5 minutes and then try again. Observe the difference so you can get really good at knowing when it is done.

2.  A big loaf does not necessarily take longer than a small loaf - although it depends what you mean by small and big.  A loaf weighing 500 g takes as much time as a loaf weighing a kilo.  A loaf weighing 100 g takes less.  Bread rolls (usually 100 g or less) take less time than a big loaf and for that reason it is a good idea to bake them at a high temperature in order to make sure they go brown when they are done, and do not stay a pale, sickly colour.  But for medium to large loaves, it's kind of like a turkey:  the bigger it is, the less it takes per kilo to cook because the internal temperature of the bird rises and it begins to cook itself.  Try it some time.  Put a 1 kg loaf and a 500 g loaf in at the same time.  They should take about the same time to cook.

3.  If your bread is underdone in the middle it cannot have sounded hollow.  It must have sounded dull when you tapped it.  Just be brave and leave it in the oven for another 5 minutes at a time until it really does sound hollow.  Or, get a thermometer!

4.  If your bread is getting too brown try baking it on a lower shelf in the oven or covering it with aluminium foil part way through the baking process.  If you have a sweetener in the bread (honey, sugar, molasses, malt syrup, etc) your bread will brown more quickly as the sugar caramelises.  If all else fails, bake it for longer at a lower temperature, but don't go below 200 degrees celsius.

5. There are plenty of tempuratures at which you can bake bread.  The conventional domestic cook book calls for you to bake bread at 200 degrees.  This is probably because early domestic ovens only went up to 200 degrees and so home cooks were advised to bake at 200 degrees!  Aga cooks were advised differently because the top oven of an Aga is much higher than that.  Commercially baked bread (whether in a factory or by a craft baker or by the village baker with a stone oven) is baked at much higher temperatures for shorter amounts of time.  Sourdough bread is baked at a different temperature to encourage oven spring in the less powerful natural yeast.

As a guide (and it is really only a guide) you can think about the following:

Bread Rolls - at 220 for 20 minutes or on the bottom shelf of the top oven of an Aga for 12-15 minutes.

Bread with commercial yeast (500 g to 1 kg) - at 200 for 45 minutes, at 220 for 30-35 minutes or on the bottom shelf of the top oven of an Aga for 20-25 minutes.  You can also put your oven up as high as it will go and then reduce the temperature when you put the bread in (not an Aga of course) and then take 5 minutes off the cooking time.

Sourdough bread (500 g to 1 kg) - at 230 for 10 minutes and then at 200 for 30 minutes; at 25o for 10 minutes then at 230 for 10 minutes then at 200 for 10 minutes or on the bottom shelf of the top oven of an Aga for 30 minutes.

Some kinds of bread - especially those with padding such as mashed vegetables or scalded grains or flour - will be more cake like in texture and so must be baked at a lower temperature to ensure they cook through before they burn.  If you are doing something like this you may be asked to heat the oven to 250 and then bake the bread at 180.  Do follow the recipe at least the first time if there is an unusual baking instruction given - the writer usually has a reason for it!

Still unsure?  Come and take a course with us and learn how to make bread at home!

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.

Christmas is over, we are into starving, dieting, and fasting, and I wonder how much food was thrown away this year?  All that leftover food from the ritual of gorging makes me feel disgusted, if I am honest.  What is it about us that we need to do feast and then famine?  Why cannot we moderate ourselves?  Believe me, I am in the same camp:  no booze, no sweets, more exercise....sigh.

In a fit of housewifery in austerity Britain, in a desire to have a little ray of light in my otherwise dark, alcohol and sugar-free January days, and as a theme continued from Dinner Party Bread (made with leftovers and then made to look fancy) we here at the global HQ of Virtuous Bread are experimenting with all sorts of leftovers in bread.

The Irish and their early Canadian cousins have long put potatoes into their bread:  potatoes were cheap and wheat flour was expensive so potatoes were an inexpensive bulking agent in bread.  Going one further, we decided to make extra mash and put that into bread.  And when we say extra mash, we mean extra mash:  full fat milk, butter, salt, pepper, and grainy mustard.  Kneaded into white bread with the addition of fresh rosemary, the result was absolutely amazing.  Moist, delicately flavoured, soft of crumb, incredible plain and toasted - it disappeared in a flash.

When kneading mash into bread dough, prepare yourself for the fact that it is going to be sticky.  Mash is mush, afterall, and it will not contribute to the stretchy springiness of bread dough - rather it will take away from it.  Don't freak out, just keep kneading, sticking, scraping, kneading, sticking scraping....and I promise you, the results will amaze you.

Here's the recipe!

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.

Wow, it's 2012.  Time for new year's resolutions, getting fit for the Olympics, gathering strength for the US elections and adapting to our continually changing world in which we are all locked into economic recession, the perplexing impact of technology, joblessness and increasing hopelessness among young people, and the usual nasties of war, famine, and pollution.

I spent New Year's Eve in Norway where we dutifully sat after dinner to watch the King's speech.  Simultaneously translated into English by my friends, I found the speech moving.  The King is much loved in Norway and it is easy to see why.  He is human:  he sounds like everyone else, he has had setbacks to his health, and concerns about his children. During his reign he has had to deal with people criticising his country for not joining the EU, the explosion of wealth and resultant social changes in his country due to North Sea Oil, a sharp rise in immigration which has put even more strain on the social structure, and, last summer, the terrible massacre by an extreme right winger who would like Norway to "stay the way it was."

The King is an old man.  It would have been understandable if he had hearkened back to the past in his speech, encouraging people to trust in traditional Norwegian values and revert to old ways.  Instead, he encouraged people to invite their neighbours over for tea to get to know them - especially if those neighbours happen to be born-Norwegians and immigrant-Norwegians.  It is only through this simple contact, he argued, that we can resolve difference:  by understanding that we really have more in common than may appear on the surface.  The human condition, after all, is just that.  The human condition.

Baking bread this past year for my immediate community, as all the Bread Angels do, has been a revelation for me.  I have been invited in for coffee; asked to join picnics in the garden; included in the pub quiz team; and earned extra money by doing catering jobs for the owners of The Real Cheese Shop.  The tiny amounts of money, the trust, and the nurturing friendship of Jill and Vallo, coupled with the closer ties to the neighbours on my street have enriched my life far more than 15 years as a senior executive in the City ever did.

Try it.  Bake bread for your neighbours.  Come and learn if you need to.  Become a Bread Angel and set up your own home baking business if you want to.  Bread gives you a reason (if you need one) to knock on the doors of your neighbours and say "Hi, i live here, would you like to try some real bread that I baked myself?"

It may be the one of the most important questions you will ever ask.

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.

It seems incredible that 2011 is nearly over.  Yesterday I taught the final class of the calendar year - a dinner party bread class - and the class felt like a dinner party, it went by so quickly with lots of chat and banter, good food and drink, and general lively cheer.  If anyone doubts that the bulk of people in the world are good, kind, interesting, interested, curious, complicated and fun - they should really teach baking.  Teaching dozens of people every month, we meet a lot of people here at Virtuous Bread.  And each and every one of them (you) is amazing.

Basic bread continues to be the most popular class and I am pleased with that because it means people who have never baked before in their lives come and learn to bake bread.  Many students have never bought bread again and that goes some way (baby steps but you have to start somewhere) to moving the needle on the white sliced bread in a bag consumption.  Sourdough bread is also very popular and I have to say the interest in the bread is great but the interest in the crackers is overwhelming!  For those of you who do not have a pokey Swedish rolling pin and cannot find one, a wonderful student, Tricia, found a child size one on Amazon in the children's baking kit!  Maybe not great for industrial quantities, she made 100 crackers the other day and it worked just fine and she can transport it easily back to her home in Kenya where she will be baking sourdough bread because not only is it hard to get good bread, it is also difficult to get yeast!

The speciality courses, I confess, were a harder sell.  Ciabatta and Focaccia; Hot Cross Buns and Brioche; Dinner Party Bread and Christmas Bread were only about 1/2 full and I wonder why that is.  Is it because there is less interest or because you feel you aren't advanced enough for these?  Let me know and let me also reassure you:  bread is basic and fancy bread is simply bread in a fancy shape.  Kneading together flour, water, salt and yeast is where it all begins - all of it.  Every bit!  So don't be shy or scared.  Everyone can make good bread and everyone can make good ciabatta, focaccia or anything else...

Bread Angels, people who commit to setting up a home baking business to provide good bread in their local community, hold a very special place at VB because they will, I hope, be teaching one day soon which means even more people can learn to bake bread.  Not everyone wants to bake every day, nor every week, and maybe not at all but it's a basic and essential life skill and it is the awareness of the ingredients and the process that is so important.  Finally, it is the knowledge of those things that are as important to take away from a baking class at Virtuous Bread as the bread itself.

Thank you all for an amazing 2011.  The winter schedule is up and the classes are selling out fast.  I hope more bread angels will be teaching in the new year so that the bread love can be spread even wider.  Here is to 2012.

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.

"Triumphant".

That's it, that's the final word.  After baking and teaching and yeasting and sourdoughing all autumn long I was finally able to cut into some stollen this week.  First the sourdough stollen at The Clink and second (had to try it before the Fourth Advent Tea this Sunday) at home.

Triumphant.  So triumphant the The Mexican Vegan was cajoled into trying some.  He loved it.  But then again, you could argue that a vegan would adore his first taste of butter after four years.  I mean, I adore it every day...but I digress.

The sourdough stollen that we baked at The Clink was truly magnificent.  I was not at all sure it would be ok, to be honest, even though I was following the great Simone's stollen recipe.  There was no added commercial yeast.  There was the 1857 sourdough, booze (I sneaked in boozy nuts and raisins in an innocent looking tupperware and did not let anyone even smell the container, let alone lick it).  There was no aluminium foil (as banned as yeast in a prison).  We sourdoughed it, wrapped it in two layers of greaseproof paper, tied the ends with strings and even Kenny who does not like sweet things (or so he says, in reality he always eats them, he is just proud of his physique!) loved the stollen.  We shared it last Friday in the kitchen, after the lunch rush (200 covers) and while a choir was singing carols to the diners (sadly they did not think to turn around and sing them to the kitchen crew).  It was moving, I must say, to listen to carols and share the stollen that we made, while dressed in my chef's whites in the kitchen of a restaurant in a prison.  True to the spirit, I would go so far to say...I wish I could show you photos, but I cannot.

I can attest, dear students of stollen, that your stollen will be worth the wait!  Here some of you are, sprinkling, spreading, wrapping, and gloating - getting prepared for the big day a couple of weeks from now.  You will love it.  For those of you who could not attend the class, the recipe is here but don't forget, you must let it rest for at least 4 weeks after it is baked.  Bake now for pancake day?  It's certainly better than pancakes!

One down, three to go....icing the stollen

Buttering the stollen

Silent Stollen Adoration....

The last stollen class of the year

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.

When I lived in Johannesburg in 2002 the bread was abysmal.  Lots of white sliced and I cannot recall a decent baker.  I know that baking at altitude poses some challenges, but the are not insurmountable, and I could only conclude that the Johannesburgers has become used to white sliced bread in a bag - like so much of the world.

It was with interest, therefore, that I learned about the emerging bread Cape Town just in time for my visit there.  The relaxing holiday turned into a Bread Safari and I visited and talked to most good bakers and learned a little bit about the South African bread culture, old and new.  Let's start with old...

Both the Xhosa and the Zulu make something called Steamed Bread, Steamed Dumpling Bread, Imbiza, or Amadombolo.  This is a levened bread made without an oven - as in many rural areas and poor urban areas there are no ovens.  I am guessing this bread is rather puddingy in texture, but I will have to revert back and let you know once I have had time to try it out.  (Alternative:  you try it out and let me know).  The recipe, which was given to me by Alicia Giliomee the incredibly talented chef at Vergelegen Wine Estate,  is here.

Meanwhile, here is a charming representation of the recipe on an embroidered tea towel that is displayed in the District Six museum.  The lady who works there has told me to let her know when I am coming back so she can make me some to try.  This is a very living bread.

Recipe for steamed bread - from the District Six museum

More on the Bread Safari tomorrow:   Cape Town bakers awake!  Stellenbosch rocks!  Kalk Bay a la Francais!

Oude Bank Bakkerej, Stellenbosch

The Crew at Jason Bakery

C'est la vie in Kalk Bay

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.

What does the Prime Minister eat for breakfast?  Does he even eat breakfast?  And what about his family?  Well, here at the global headquarters of Virtuous Bread we have some inside information for the curious.

Virtuous Bread outside Number Ten

Not that we know everything.  Not even, that we know anything much.  We do know, however, that Samantha Cameron bakes bread and that the Cameron family loves bread.  Taking a punt on that, I delivered three virtuous loaves to Number Ten yesterday in a Virtuous Bread bag, and handed them over to one of Samantha Cameron's aides (I thought it would be a bit gauche to hand them to her in front of 35 people).  The occasion was the reception for the Red Magazine Red Hot Women Award winners and there was no way I was going to miss the chance to take bread to the Prime Minister and his family even if I was not going to hand them to her in public.

Just to make sure said aide did not run off with the still warm bread in the bag and share it with the hungry police men, security guards, and secret service men, I did tell SamCam about the bread when I met her.  I told her that there was bread waiting for her and what was in it.  This made all the listeners particulalry hungry as a breakfast reception at Number Ten includes tea, coffee and, erm, brownies...If only they told me, I could have made more bread and brought along the butter as well.

I like to think that SamCam and Fam enjoyed the bread this morning for breakfast, unlike Lord Wei whose bread was taken off him and destroyed to protect a valuable national asset (that would be him...) from a potential poisoning.  Given that there is photographic and, no doubt, video and audio evidence that it was I who delivered the bread, I hope that the secret service people did not destroy it, thinking I was foolish enough to make mischief when it is clear that the deliverer was me.  I only hope that, once having volunteered to be official tasters, the security services did not fib and say "no no, there is clearly poison in here" only to take it round the back of the bike shed, slice it, smear it with butter, and scoff the lot.

I would have done that if I would had been them because I can tell you now, the bread was fine.  Three loaves, all different and amazing - one savoury rye, one with Rude Health fruity date porridge and one with Conscious Foods millet.  No photos were taken as this is potentially a matter of national security.  The recipes, however, are in the recipe section for you to try at home.

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.

VB spent two days last week with an incredibly talented team from Ryland Peters & Small photographing bread.  Taking a few (ok, 12) bread recipes, we spent a time baking, cutting, presenting, eating, snacking, styling, and photographing for a special book on bread that will come out this time next year.

It was amazing what Peter Cassidy was able to do with bread.  My photos of bread look like, well, bread.  Brown, shapely, edible and bread like.  His photos, on the other hand, look like unmade beds - all of them earthy and redolent of the experience of the past and the promise of the future.  The most sensual photos of anything I have ever seen - and that is what bread is.  Sensual, evocative, emotional and, yes, sexy!  I cannot show you any of Pete's photos and mine are a very distant booby prize, but they are a great reminder of a great day preparing for a great book.  Thanks all.

Pete in action in his studio

Julia looking longingly at the focaccia de recco

Iona rolling out a pita bread

The kringel - eaten in a flash at the RPS offices - wouldn't you?

OK, we nearly set fire to the studio...

Iona and Pete in deep discussion about a shot

Toys for the boys (and girls) - but I will stick to the dough

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.