Useful Recipes and Great Ingredients

 

Dear Real Bread lovers,

 

First and foremost, we wish you a very Happy and Health New Year, whoever and wherever you are!  In this instalment, we’ve returned to talk you through some of the basics of a great bread recipe; there is obviously so much information out there, floating around the web, and we’ll hopefully help you sift the good from the bad.  At least we’ll recommend a good starting point.  We’ll also explain about the importance of sourcing good fresh seasonal ingredients 😊

 

So, let’s start with a useful beginning recipe

Each bread we produce has a different recipe.  Some are easier to produce than others, so – if you’re new to bread making, it’s probably best to start with a relatively simple basic sourdough.  Here’s the recipe we recommend you start with:

*For tips on how to produce a good starter, please see our previous two blogs on how to make and look after your starter

 

The importance of sourcing good ingredients

In short, poor ingredients will undoubtedly produce poor bread, so we cannot emphasise just how important it is to start with good ingredients.  If you can get hold of them, we recommend you use organic ingredients, and don’t buy from somewhere you may suspect keeps their flour sitting around for months.  If you have a local mill, we’d encourage you to go along to speak with the miller, but if this isn’t an option, then we’d recommend suppliers such as Shipton Mill, and to be honest – such an option is probably better than any supermarket (however posh!).  If you speak with a miller, then you’d be sure to get some great advice and probably more cooking tips.  In terms of salt – we’d suggest you use a fine sea salt.

Depending on the time of year, we add other ingredients to our sourdough, such as fresh roasted pumpkin at Halloween or Cranberry’s at Christmas.  There’s nothing like experimenting, with a little trial and error perhaps, but try something seasonal if you can, which should help ensure the ingredients are as fresh as possible.

 

Signing off, until next time, soon – when we will talk about the crucial autolyse and fermentation processes.