Bloomer Loaf

Today, I am stuck on maths (Mean value theorm and it's applications).  I am also out of butter, due to recent croissant making escapades.  So, I decided to bake a bloomer loaf.   This is one of my favourite bread recipes, from Elizabeth David's Bread and Yeast Cookery - it is a straight dough (no starter, pre-ferment, sponge, biga, poolish or sourdough starters required), taking around 3 1/2 hours start to finish.  I have made this numerous times, of which the result has been consistently good.

"Bloomer 1"  recipe adapted from Bread and Yeast Cookery .  "Adapted" mainly because I'm not sure what a "81-85% wheatmeal flour" is, and even whether it is available these days.  Also, her original recipe is also very salty at around 40g salt per kilo of flour - around double what most bakers would consider putting in their bread. Hence, I have halved the amount of salt to result in a more palatable bread.    (To me, it seems that many slightly older recipes for bread include far more salt than would be considered tolerable these days - has salt become saltier over the years?)

My recipe for a Bloomer Loaf

600g Strong white bread flour  
12g salt
380 g water and milk combined (I usually use 3/4 milk and 1/4 boiling water from the kettle, since this heats up the cold milk to an adequate temperature).
7 g dried yeast (or 1 1/2 teaspoons). 
Beaten egg, for glazing


Combine the dried yeast with the warm water/milk combination and leave for 5-10 minutes until yeast is frothy.  In the meantime, combine flour and salt in a large bowl. 


Stir the frothed yeast (so that no "lumps" of yeast remain stuck in the container).  Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the liquid yeast/milk/water mixture.  Mix to form a dough, then knead until it feels silky - 5-10 minutes.  Leave to prove at room temperature for 2 hours, then gently de-gas the dough.  Leave to rise for another hour.  


Shape the dough into a loaf in the normal way (i.e shape into a rectangle on the work surface, then bring edges into the middle of the dough and seal.  Repeat a few times for a "tight" finish, then roll the dough over so that the seam is along the bottom.) 

1. Shape dough into a rectangle on your (oiled or floured) worksurface.

2. Bring first edge into the middle of the rectangle.

3. Bring 2nd edge into the middle of the rectangle, overlapping the first slightly. 

4. Use your thumb/fingers to press the edges firmly into the centre of the dough. 

 Repeat this process once more (flattern the dough into a rectangle and begin again). This helps ensure a tightly moulded loaf, which doesn't spread sideways/flattern too much as it as it rises.  After you have done this, "pinch" the edges together to create a really tight finish. 

5. Pinch together the final edges to create a tight finish.  (This is the "seam" which will run along the base of the loaf - gently roll the loaf over so that it is the right way up and place on a greased and floured baking tray).

Transfer to a prepared baking tray and leave to rise for 30-40 minutes, depending on temperature of the environment. (By now the dough should have risen noticeably, but should be just short of "fully proven".  It should still be handle-able).

Now, this stage may seem slightly fussy, but I have tried making the bread without this stage and the resulting rise is not as good :  Carefully tuck the long sides of the loaf under the dough.   (Essentially you will be left with a loaf which appears to have been rotated 90 degrees on the tray.  So if you are using a baking tray which is long but not very wide, try proving the dough on a silpat or greaseproof paper, so that you can easily rotate the dough to fit the tray again.) I think this step is designed to give the gluten strands a final "stretch" allowing the bread to rise more fully.  


Leave the dough to rise for a further ten minutes.  In the meantime, prepare the egg wash.

By now, the dough should be very nearly fully proved, but not quite.  You still want to be able to slash the top of the loaf without it collapsing on you.  So, slash the top of the dough into the pattern you desire.  I usually just go for 4-5 long cuts, about 2.5cm deep. ( However I'm only equipped with a slightly blunt knife and a pair of scissors, so this happens to be the best I can do.  I'm sure there are many more inventive patterns which could be made.)

Preheat oven to 220-230 degrees C, adding a tray of water to create steam if you wish.  (Definitely works if you do not add the water. At uni I omit the waters, since I doubt the uni ovens would survive a large tray of water used to create steam. Nor would the fire alarms.)  By the time your oven has pre-heated, the loaf should be fully proved (risen). It should appear slighlty "jiggly".

Egg wash the top of the loaf, put in the oven immediately and bake for 20-40 minutes.  (Timings seem to vary a lot.)  The loaf will undergo some "oven spring" (the additional rise which happens to dough as it is baked). Some people consider this to be a sign that the loaf is under-proved, and in some respects this is correct.   However this recipe always seems to undergo a lot of oven spring, regardless of how much time is spent proofing it (I did the experiments!)

In my opinion, this makes great bread for bacon sandwiches.

Croissants, again.

Today, I had a third attempt at croissants.  This attempt was far worse than the previous two.  This time, I used plain flour (roasted, beforehand.  20 minutes in oven at 180 degress C) and 25% butter, rather than 50%.  (Around 50% butter to 100% flour, weight for weight, is normal for croissants, but puff pastry is usually around 25-35 % butter, so I thought that until I had the technique right, I may as well cut down on my butter usage. However this may have contributed to the failure.)

On the bright side, the croissant dough did rise into distinct "layers", but on the downside they didn't rise much.  Certainly the resulting croissants were not what you could call "light".  Where the croissants had risen, the pastry had either unravelled or split, owing to lack of gluten.  (Firstly from the use of plain flour, secondly due to the roasting of the plain flour).

From now on, I will be sticking to strong white bread flour for croissants, even if it is more difficult to roll out. (Yes, I am still using a roll of clingfilm as a rolling pin, due to being a student, and a disorganised one at best.  However I have ordered one from Amazon).   And 50% butter, even though half of it seems to leak out during the cooking process.

I think that I may have also made the mistake for using salted butter for all attempts.  Even though I cook frequently, I rarely buy unsalted butter; there was no need to since everything seemed to have worked out adequately with salted butter.  However it seems possible that the extra salt in the butter may be having a detrimental effect upon the yeast - something which I had never previously considered in breadmaking (probably because most bread recipes do not require this amount of butter!)  As before, pictures of failures are not worth posting... but as soon as I work out the perfect croissant recipe and technique, I will post it on here for all to use (and so that I never forget it!). 

Achieving any form of lightness is still eluding me, I'm resorting to looking at the ingredients on pre-made croissants, to see what I can reasonably improve upon.

Also today, I was considering the use of liqueurs as flavoring in yeasted doughs, however I'm not entirely sure how they would affect yeast action and rising time.  Would it be the equivalent to adding a lot of sugar?  Guess there's only one way to find out...

Croissants, croissants and more croissants.

Still at Uni.  My new flatmates are "interesting" characters. Yesterday I attempted Parisian Croissants (Larousse page 330). I seem to end up doing a lot of baking at the moment, usually to relax after a vast amount of work.  However I'm currently lacking equipment (it's all at home).  These days my rolling-pin is a roll of clingfilm and there's no hope of finding an electric whisk anywhere.  Hence I'm making bread/bread based things, since required equipment is actually minimal.

I am a novice at making croissants, my one and only attempt at laminated dough many years ago wasn't a success.  On that occasion I overheated the dough, thinking it would aid rising, which caused a lot of butter to leak out. 

For me, there was two big failings in the recipe given in Larousse.  The instructions on shaping the croissant are minimal at best, not including the advice about the "snip" on the large edge of the triangle before rolling it up, which helps achieve a neat crescent shape.  Found out this information from Google-ing "how to shape croissants".  

But what seems worse to me, is the guidance given on how to build the layers of butter in the dough.  Here, it guides you to roll out the dough, place on 1/3 of the "softened butter", envelope fold into three and roll out again. (No guidance is given about keeping the dough/butter cold whilst working with it, in order to prevent butter leaking out).  This process is repeated another two times. The issue is that no further rolling out is indicated after this stage, leaving the total butter "layers" at 6.  Not the standard 32 usually required for good rising.  Also, at this stage, the layers are very thick and prone to sliding during the cutting/shaping process.

Having completely followed the recipe and rolled a 45x15cm stretch of dough, I tried cutting two croissants. (The dough was also very thick at this point, impeding rolling up). Upon rolling up the triangles, the layers slid apart.  This is when I gave up following the recipe, and instead performed another three butterless "roll and folds" on the croissant dough.

The additional turns and folds did improve the dough, and rolling it out thinner resulted in a better shaped croissant.  However, there does seem to be a fair amount of skill required for shaping a croissant, which currently I do not possess.  Also, getting them to become "golden brown" in the oven does seem to be a losing battle.  I did not take a photo of this batch of croissants - I was not proud of the result.   I really do not recommend using the recipe in Larousse for croissants, since there seems to be an issue (or maybe an omittance?) about the number of "fold and turns" required to laminate the dough.

 Today, I tried making croissants again, using a different recipe.  (The main differences being strong bread flour rather than plain, a milk/water mix than just milk, same amount of sugar and salt, same amount of butter).  Butter still goes in over 3 stages, but 3 more "folds and turns" are included afterwards.

The result from this batch is still not "elegant".  Baking 'til golden brown still eludes me; parts are pale, parts are brown, parts are black. And I have yet to master correct shaping technique.  This time I kept the butter and dough really cold, which worked far better than the "softened" butter approach suggested by Larousse.

I admit that the Larousse dough was far easier to roll out (I assume this may be due to the use of plain flour), which makes me think it was not the dough which was the problem, so much as the instructions. (Having said that, I could not get the mixture to form a dough with the amount of milk given in the recipe.  It seemed more like 275-325ml was required just to incorporate all the flour).  However I will probably stick to plain flour in future, for convenience and ease of rolling out.

Alas, I cannot comment of the taste of either of these.  Having previously had three liver transplants, one of the "standard" side-effects is the inability to tolerate high-fat foods.  However I like cooking, whether I can actually eat the end result, or whether I can just look at it.  It's the knowledge that I can make it which makes me happy.

Here's a photo of the second attempt at croissants.  Clearly there's still much room for improvement.

Abondance Souffle

So, it's been a while... I am now back at Uni, ready to commence a second year of maths and economics.  The Chocolate and Red Wine cake (courtesy of Claire Clarks' amazing cookbook) won first prize in the local Village Show. (I added a chocolate ganache filling to give the cake a little extra height). And if you should decide to make this cake, I highly advise sieving the redcurrant jam used for glazing the cake; unsieved jam resulted in a inelegant glaze. 

I finally managed to track down "Abondance" from Norbiton Cheese.  Not that it was quite that straightforward; I ordered the cheese then recieved a 'phone call to say that it was not in stock, so my order will be refunded.  Which it was.  Then the cheese arrived. Hats off to them, the cheese arrived in fairly good condition, proving wrong my concerns about the hygeine of ordering cheese online. 

Abondance proved to be a hard cheese with the texture of Parmesan, but the taste of Gouda.  I made a Abondance and Spinach Souffle with it: 

About 80g of Abondance was more than enough to flavor 500mls of white sauce souffle base.  As you can see, I did not precook the spinach, which would have given a better result.

Still looking for an "Apricot-Pays".  And now onto "Absinthe"...