Calling all E17 Bread Bakers: (organic) Fresh Yeast    Supply

By sponges and leavens, I have finally sourced a couple of cubes of this Bakers' gold: organic fresh yeast. These little cubes of Rapunzel in their jaunty golden yellow wrappers aren't actually labelled organic as yeast isn't presently on the EU list of organic ingredients. However, the yeast is produced by the German company BioReal using organic ingredients and processes.

A BIG thank you to the lads at Second Nature Wholefoods for going out on a limb and ordering some in for me. Frustratingly, I cannot use enough yeast in my own baking to sustain the quantities (12x42g cubes every 2 weeks) Second Nature needs to shift to make it feasible to order on a regular basis . The wholesale quantity however, is not a totally unrealistic amount if there are three or four other ardent bread bakers in the E17 area who wish to share an order. So, contact Second Nature Wholefoods, 78 Wood St, Walthamstow, London, E17 3HX Tel: 020 8520 7995. Let them know you are interested in purchasing Rapunzel yeast on a regular basis. Perhaps you could email me too so that we could co ordinate a shared order.

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   Organiclea Bread Bake

I have just got back from another inspirational Organiclea bread baking day at the Hornbeam Centre where the ardent bread bakers who attended passionately discussed their national breads for 5 hours nonstop. There was also a kitchen demonstration on how to make Chapatis over the hob and Peta Bread which billowed delightfully, hot out of the oven.

For my contribution I tried out this Brown Soda Bread from Tim Allen's The Ballymaloe Bread Book. The attraction of the recipe was to start a buttermilk plant to produce the buttermilk required and the decorative form of the bread. The buttermilk and soda made the crumb soft, dense and scone-like. My verdict: the wholewheat flour doesn't so much as disguise the taste of the soda (which I think is an acquired taste) as transmute it into something a bit more palatable. However, this may be an aftertaste of the fairies baked inside as I forgot to prick the segments to let them out!

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    Bread With Old Dough

The Bread with Old Dough recipe from Andrew Whitley's inspirational book bread matters The state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own has become our standard home fare. Dorian our geriatric house rabbit, who lives in the cupboard under the stairs, cannot contain himself when the house fills first with the yeasty smell of dough proving and then with the smell of baking bread. He runs distracted circuits around our feet until at last he is presented with a piece of just-cooled crust which he seizes upon and carries off underneath the sofa where he can scoff it, every last crumb, unchallenged.

The process entails you keep a fist sized lump of dough back when making a loaf of wholemeal bread. Pop it in an airtight container and keep it in the fridge until you next bake bread. I keep my dough in the door of the fridge so not to freeze the yeast. The longest I've kept the dough is for eight days and I haven't killed anybody yet! Before making a fresh batch of dough remember to take your matured, old dough out of the fridge and allow it to slowly come up to room temperature. Then mix up a fresh batch and knead in the old dough. Before proving, set aside a fist sized lump for the next loaf of bread. For precise, fail-proof instructions refer to Whitley's book.

Why add the old dough? It improves the flavour of the loaf, giving it a slight tang which enlivens the base earthy, nutty flavour of the wholemeal flour. It also improves the crumb, making it less dense.

The perfect slice of wholemeal bread to accompany a soft boiled egg!"Weep"!

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   Use Your Loaf!

Organic, stoneground wholewheat flour (from Shipton Mill), water, salt and yeast. No fat, no flour treatment agent: L-ascorbic acid (E300), no bleach, no reducing agent: L-cysteine hydrochloride, no soya flour, no emulsifiers: Diacetylated tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, Sodium steoryl-2-lactylate, Glycerol mono-stearate or Lecithins, no preservatives: Calcium propionate or vinegar, no enzymes: Alpha-amylase, Maltogenic amylase, Oxidase, Protease, Peptidase, Lipase, Phospholipase, Hemicellulase, Xylanase, Transglutaminase. No printed plastic packaging to dispose of. Grass roots activism in a simple loaf. A call to Bakers' arms.

I followed the Basic Bread recipe in Andrew Whitley's inspirational book bread matters The state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own. Admittedly as a first-off, the crust is a little overdone and it would have been more satisfying if I'd baked one large loaf, instead of two small, for a better proportion of crumb to crust. But hey I am chuffed and have put aside a lump of the dough to bake Whitley's Bread with Old Dough recipe. I can't wait.

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The Real Bread Campaign

Nothing is closer to our hearts than the salty, saccharin, fizzy, marshmallow soft, rainbow-hued memories of food that map our life experiences when viewed through the skewed kaleidoscopic, synergistic interactions of a cocktail of non-nutritional food additives: preservatives, colourings, flavourings, thickeners, emulsifiers and stabilisers, our generations, X and Y, have been inadvertently ingesting for several decades (not to mention our dose quotidienne of dishwashing liquid and toothpaste residue).

Under parental guidance, we have been brought up inured, our indifference possibly symptomatic of the neurotoxic effects of our formative diets, to off-the-shelf, pre-prepared, convenience ingredients, just-add-water-ready mixes and quick frozen meals. "Can't cook", we enthusiastically relinquish our own skills as means to culinary sufficiency and pride ourselves in exercising our uninformed consumer choice "don't cook!".

Here in the UK there is a current TV advertising campaign announcing that "Blue (Smartie) is back". If like me you immediately rushed out in a fit of nostalgia and bought a box of this crunchy, sugar-coated, chocolate confectionery only to discover that the colour of ALL Smarties is now disappointingly wishy washy (!!!) one is forced to acknowledge the creeping suspicion as to why is it that food industry giants are now removing additives in products aimed at children in a bid, as they claim, to improve their "nutritional quality"? If these additives are non-nutritional then one can extrapolate that the only reason they are doing this is in fact to reduce the toxicity of their products. Is it just possible that those kids who started frothing at the mouth, threw themselves on the floor and gnashed at people's ankles at the mere sight of additive inoculated food were not just simply more badly behaved than we were?

Since it is still considered okay for these additives to be in food aimed at adults, it is time we big kids make our own unadulterated food using ingredients of integrity. No need to to write to your local MP or quit eating altogether in protest, simply baking your own bread is grass roots activism at its most nutritious and delicious. Spend your money judiciously (food manufacturers and retailers, for all they call themselves market leaders, will bend themselves over backwards to meet customer demand) and tuck into some top nosh you made yourself with your own two hands.

I baked the white bread wheat sheaf loaf as part of The Hornbeam Centre's "Rise Up: A celebration of bread" Lammas celebration. As part of the day's events there was a truly inspirational talk by Andrew Whitley, an organic baker, who explained, as a cause of the disingenuous practices employed in the industrial manufacture of bread and the farming of wheat for bread flour production, why he had initiated The Real Bread Campaign. It is not every day that one has the opportunity to experience an eureka moment - I came away from his talk vowing to start eating real bread on a regular basis and to take the time to teach myself how to bake it. Watch this space.

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    Hot Happy Buns

What beauties!
Recipe makes 12 buns:
450g strong plain white flour
25g fresh yeast or 15ml (1 level tablespoonful) dried
5ml caster suger to activate yeast
250ml combined volume of tepid milk and water, mixed
5ml salt
2.5ml each ground mixed spice, cinnamon, nutmeg
50g caster sugar
50g butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
100g currants
80g sultanas
shortcrust pastry

For the glaze:
30ml each milk and water
30ml sugar

To prepare the glaze: Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over a gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved.

To make the buns:
Mix 100g flour with yeast, sugar and warmed liquid; leave until frothy (dry yeast approx 20min, fresh yeast approx 30min).
Sift remaining flour, salt, spices and sugar into a bowl.
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients.
Combine yeast mix, beaten egg, fruit and dry ingredients into a fairly soft, pliable dough.
Knead.
Allow to rise, then knock back and cover and place in the fridge over-night.
Remove from fridge, shape into buns, allow to come to room temperature and to rise.
Decorate with shortcrust pastry.
Bake at 200'C until golden (10-12min.
Glaze and place on cooling rack.

NOW GO AND BAKE!

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