Real Bread Maker Week

Well we have just come to the end of the 2012 Real Bread Maker Week which is being championed by the Real Bread Campaign so I was delighted that the #ShortandTweet challenge for this week focused on bread.

I have had a go at two of the challenge recipes, the two-day loaf, pictured above, and the wholemeal loaf, although the wholemeal recipe I actually baked as rolls. In celebration of good bread I also made some Bath Buns but not as part of the #ShortandTweet challenge.

The wholemeal loaf recipe made a very good batch of rolls with a nice thin crust and  a fairly moist crumb, not damp and not that awful sawdust texture you often meet in wholemeal bread. I prefer my bread to have a little more spring to it so I would add a fair portion of strong white flour to the dough if I made it again, but I would say this was a success and well worth playing around with to add in other flavours from seeds, malted grains etc.

It seemed very apt for a week celebrating real bread to make a two-day loaf as the slow pace of this loaf really does develop good flavour but I did not get the texture quite right. This may well be partly because my loaf was not left to rise quite long enough once shaped. I was using a stoneground flour from Gilchesters  in Northumberland which does have a good creamy colour and fresh flavour but I don't think I did it justice in terms of the finished loaf. If you are keen to try a 'real bread' style recipe and do not have Dan's book Short and Sweet then the recipe for this two-day loaf is also available online via Dan Lepard's Guardian series on  How to Bake. 

I finished the week on a sweet note as I baked Bath Buns from a book by Bernard Clayton . I have always had a great fondness for sweet buns and these are nicely spiced with a hint of mace. They were rather good and had to be put in the freezer quickly before I ate too many.

I have been in search of the sugar nibs that are usually found on bath buns for a while and finally found something similar at both  the German Deli and also this  pearl sugar from the Scandi Kitchen.

Finally I would like to show off my two new members of the recycle team who at 4 weeks old are not actually fully on board yet, but who did have a little nibble of a crumbled wholemeal roll.  I have only named the chick at the front so far, as her friend may be a boy and not allowed to stay very long, but the sweet one at the front is Cilla and they are Buff Orpingtons.