Showing posts with label bread baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread baking. Show all posts

Friday, 16 March 2012

Friday's fennel loaf

This week I've gone back to one of my favourite bread recipes from the Moro The Cookbook: Bread with brewer's yeast which only needs one rise. I halved the ingredients in the recipe, as the instructions for my food mixer advise against using more than 500g of flour when making bread, as the motor can over-heat. 

So, the ingredients are 500g of strong white flour, 350 ml tepid water, 1 level tsp of salt, and half level tsp of dried yeast mixed in125ml of warm water. I've used instant dried yeast and have mistakenly used a whole sachet which I I thought would speed up the time of proving to sooner than 3 hours. The recipe called for the loaf to rise in the tin by at least a third, and no more than the top of the tin. To boost the flavour I added a couple of tablespoons of dried fennel seeds, as I love the aniseedy taste, and am lucky enough to have fennel growing wildly all around here.

Well, again I had to leave it overnight as it hadn't risen sufficiently. And by the morning it had risen to over the top of the tin, which did cause a problem with removing it later. I baked it at 200 degrees centigrade for 30 mins and 10 mins out of the tin. The finished result is a little flat on top, but the texture is moist and bubbly; it certainly smells aniseedy, and it tastes very good indeed, especially with a couple of fresh local mackeral from Deal Fish Direct - delicious.