Three Flavoured Breads and a few Fruit Scones

Three Flavoured Breads and a few Fruit Scones

I realised that the weekend's baking only produced enough bread to see us through the first week of our Easter holiday.   It is possible I could do some baking next week, up in the North West of Scotland, but I do not want to be beholden to that.

Additionally, I remembered there were a few nice ingredients lurking in the cupboard, which were ready for using up.   Here's a flavour of what I made today:

•1.    Tahini Bread

This is one made by SteveB: http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=423 which Eric blogged on not too long back, here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19548/taste-tahini   See Steve's post for the recipe and formula.   I made one or two alterations, but stayed sufficiently close to the recommended recipe and instructions.

Instead of using King Arthur All Purpose flour, I used Carrs Special CC flour, but included 5% Coarse Semolina to give more bite to the loaf.   I also increased the pre-fermented flour from 16 to 20%.   The bulk proof time was shorter, at 2 hours, but it was hot and sunny here again today, and I put the dough out in the sunshine, covered.   The dough mixed up strong, as seen in the photograph.

I was a little disappointed with the shaping of the final dough, and the result in the finished bread.   I guess fendu shapes work best with oval brotform, and I only have a round one.   Anyway, the split made in the dough piece with the dowel pin ended up completely lost.   The finished dough texture was really pleasing.   As regards taste, I found the bread to be very much as described in Steve's post.   Thank you to both Steve and Eric for posting on this in the first place.

•2.    Cheese Bread

This is loosely based on Jeffrey Hamelman's formula in "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes", pp. 180 - 181.   I have made this previously and you can see the blogpost on it here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/18164/whitsuntide-baking-and-other-antics    I did make quite a few changes along the way, but kept to the methods and most of the material proportions, ending up with just over 1.5kg of dough.   I increased the pre-fermented flour to just short of 30%.   I used light rye flour at nearly 11% of the total flour, where Hamelman uses just white flour.   I did use a small amount of dried yeast, as his formula directs, and this was very helpful in achieving the full volume in the Pullman Pan.   I used Paprika @ 1.2% on flour, which was very effective in terms of dough colouration.   I used a small amount of Strong Cheddar Cheese, plus Spanish Manchego Cheese, in the proportion and form Hamelman suggests.   I made a small boule, and a large loaf in a Pullman Pan, using 4 piecing.   A video is attached here to give more information on how this technique works.   See here:

There are also some photographs below showing the finished loaves.   Notice the high volume achieved in the bread, and the lovely moist crumb.   This is far too open for the type of Sandwich bread sold in UK supermarkets.   However, it is exactly what I had set out to achieve using a lengthy fermentation procedure, including a stiff levain, and just a tiny amount of dried yeast in the final dough.

•3.    Toasted Almond, Fig and Prune Bread

Again, this uses Hamelman's idea on pp. 185 - 186, and I have made it before; see the same post referenced above.   But I used almonds instead of hazelnuts, and, added some figs as well as the prunes.   The proportion of fruit and nut is accurate to the formula, but the amount of each ingredient does not fall into line with the Hamelman recipe.   I had no wholewheat flour in stock.   Instead, I used all white bread flour, but included wheaten bran as 2.25% of the flour content.   I made just one loaf from this dough, at a whopping 1.58kg.   I have attached a video of how I incorporate fruit and nuts into ready-mixed dough:

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Some photographs of this very dramatic bread are also attached below.   The flavours in this are just amazing.

•4.    Fruit Scones

I made a really small batch of scones as an afternoon treat to have with a pot of Green Tea.   This is based on the formula I tweaked recently when mentoring Kieran in the Scone entry for the NECTA Competition.   We had a lovely fruit and nut mix in the house, including pistachios, pecans, almonds, brazils and cashews, as well as raisins, golden raisins, cranberries and sultanas.   I added some chopped stem ginger as extra good measure.   Ordinarily I mix scones using 60% soft flour, and 40% strong flour.   As I only had strong flour in the house, I used a small proportion of light rye flour to reduce the gluten content.   I also used the baking powder kindly supplied by my colleague Dinnie Jordan, who owns Kudos Blends, and is a specialist on chemical aerators.   These scones are soooo light: many thanks Dinnie!

Formula and method below; this yields 7 scones:

Method:

• Crumb the butter with the flour, milk powder and baking powder
• Dissolve the sugar in the water and add the egg. Then add the fruit and nuts
• Add this to the crumb and combine until just clear.
• Roll out on a lightly floured surface and cut out the scone shapes.
• Place the scones on a baking sheet, and brush the tops with beaten egg
• Rest for 15 minutes to allow the gluten to relax, and to ensure the chemical reactions take place largely in the oven
• Bake in a pre-heated oven [200°C in my fan oven], for 15 - 17 minutes
• Cool on wires

Best wishes to you all

Andy