A recipe for more delicious self-expression!

There’s a fine line between edible beauty and culinary kitsch. And we all draw our lines in different places. Personally, I feel that bread should look like bread. I love a well-made loaf that shows the individual baker really cared, or was even a bit inspired, but the freakish confections of crust, those bread showpieces baked to look like other things – bird cages, motor cars, swans, bears etc. – leave me curiously unhungry.

Still, I love playing in the bakery. So to keep myself amused in this week’s swelter, I made a couple of simple sourdough loaves and decorated them as the Green Man and his Queen, using foliage and flowers from the garden. Easy to copy, and a showstopper centrepiece for your table, indoors or out.

Ingredients

• 400g ripe white leaven
• 800g Shipton Mill’s organic white no.4
• 400g Shipton Mill’s organic Emmer wheat
• 24g sea salt
• 730g filtered water

Method

• Combine water and leaven in large bowl.
• Add flours and salt.
• Mix into a sticky dough and knead (20 rock & rolls, if you follow our method) until smooth.
• Cover and ferment at room temperature for 3 hours, folding twice.
• At this point, you can shape and prove the loaves, or refrigerate the bowl of dough, as I did, until you’re ready next day.
• Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a boule. Set in well-floured bannetons to rise.

• While the loaves are proving, sketch your ideas for two faces on a scrap of paper. Be bold and simplify the lines as much as possible.
• Pre-heat your oven to 240 C. You will get even better results if you use the Dutch oven method, but it was just a tad too hot yesterday for me to feel like wrestling with a cast iron pot!

• Turn the first loaf out onto a paper lined tray and brush as much excess flour off as you can, to minimise stripes. Using a very sharp blade, carve a face. Slide the loaf into the oven.
• Repeat with the second loaf.

• Bake for 25 minutes, turning temperature down to 210 C after first 10 minutes and allowing 5 minutes extra for second loaf.
• Allow to cool on rack before decorating.

After three years without a break, we finally flew off to Croatia, to reunite with family, friends and the beautiful Dalmatian Archipelago.

Naturally, we took our starter with us… Those of you who’ve been to our live classes know that our starter, Bread Astaire, is pretty liquid, so Dragan stiffened it into a small lump of dough and packed it in his suitcase. Once we arrived, we gave Mr. Astaire a couple of drinks, and soon had him bubbling with excitement to be baking abroad.

Not content with sourdough-on-the-go, Dragan also packed his seeds and sprouting jar, so we had regular supplies of freshly sprouted beans, broccoli, radish and alfalfa. With jewel-like tomatoes and cucumber, dressed in olive oil and lemon – all locally grown – we feasted like kings. Peaches were in season, as were cherries, more precious than rubies, and the water melons were sublime.

Renting a boat is the ideal way to explore, and it doesn’t have to be a superyacht. We threw a few beers, a big watermelon, some sourdough and salad in a bag, chucked it in the icebox and headed out for the turquoise and aquamarine bays we love to swim in. The scent of hot pine trees, herbs and lavender fields wafting across us as we swam was like a balm.

And now we’re back!

Our Friday bake for Cornwood Stores & Tearoom resumed without a hitch (apart from one bust oven, being fixed today). Our first classes back have been brilliant – baking with beginners and professional cake-makers expanding into patisserie. We have plenty of classes coming up this summer too, and if you can’t see the date you want, do just ping us an email and we’ll see what we can sort out. We look forward to seeing you!

Saturday 7th May 2022 10 am to 3 pm

Max. 4 participants

Cost: £215 per person including lunch & your own korovai to take home

Learn to design and bake your own traditional ‘korovai’, to mark weddings and family celebrations.

This traditional bread is found at celebrations throughout Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia. A little experience of baking is helpful, but more important is a willingness to enter into the spirit of this kind of special occasion bread, designed to unite families and friends in peace, wherever in the world they may be.

Shipton Mill’s Organic Light Rye flour has been our go-to rye flour since we started selling bread in 2008. It packs plenty of character and flavour into the light, chewy crumb, and makes a fabulous partner for a cheese or charcuterie board, as well as the classic smoked salmon, trout or mackerel.

These baby rye loaves (450g) last for up to a week thanks to the lactic acid bacteria in the 100% rye sourdough leaven acting as a natural preservative. They represent bread at its simplest: flour, water and salt. (The wild yeast is in naturally present in the leaven; if you want to know more, please come along to one of our Artisan Sourdough & Rye Days!)

Rye is so low in gluten that there is no point kneading it, and it is excellent for the digestion. It might look like mud pie when you’re mixing it, but it’s a stunner when it’s baked. Add walnuts & fennel, or figs & caraway, or go sweeter by adding barley malt, molasses and dried fruit, for a super healthy malt loaf.

Wishing all our baking friends, wherever you may be, a Very Merry Christmas, and a Happy, Healthy 2022! Looking forward to baking with you all again one day soon!

Penny & Dragan

To get you baking stunning stollen, pretty wreaths and perfect petit fours, all in time to wrap for Christmas, we invite you to two special workshops on Sunday 10th & Sunday 17th December.

Stollen is a traditional, German Christmas bread: an enriched, yeasted dough stuffed with rum-soaked, spiced fruits and home-made almond paste (or hazelnut paste for anyone who hates marzipan!). Baked and coated in melted butter then dusted with icing sugar, the artisan version is softer, fresher, plumper and infinitely more luscious than anything you’ll find in a store. Making your own is much easier than you might think, and you can bake them in batches and wrap them as gifts.

A baked Christmas wreath looks very pretty as an original, alternative decoration – or the centrepiece of a feast. We make a simple bread dough, and a special decorative dough, to make holly leaves or berries, sleigh bells or angels … or anything you want for Christmas!

The petit fours are the almond and hazelnut treats we’ve featured in this blog before. They are gluten free and dairy free (just nuts, sugar and egg), and lend themselves to all kinds of decoration.

Bring a friend, enjoy a glass of mulled something with your lunch, and go home with a smile and your arms full of Christmas cheer.

Price: £185 per person, including lunch, refreshments, all ingredients and recipes. Arrival 10 am, wrap up by 2 pm. Please email us to book.

The Tour of Britain comes through Cornwood today, and we’ve been up baking goodies for the spectators, (since the cyclists will be whizzing past too fast for food…)

I just wanted to note that it’s been great to see local villages decorating their squares and shop windows with gaily painted bicycles; the local wool shop even yarn bombed a bike for their window. To see a spirit of gentle fun and excitement spreading through the community after such a hard 18 months has been very comforting.

The Cornwood Store & Tearoom is now doing a brisk trade in slices of our luscious focaccia pizza. If you can get there before the rush on Friday, I recommend them. But in case you live that bit too far away, I thought I’d share the recipe with you here.

It’s the simplest thing, and like all simple cooking, the better your ingredients, the better the effect. We use Shipton Mill’s No.4 Organic White Bread Flour, together with extra virgin olive oil, pitted Kalamata olives, genuine mozzarella cheese and organic English vintage cheddar. You can be as creative as you like with the toppings, but simplicity is really its own reward.

Dough ingredients:

• 500g white bread flour
• 350g tepid water
• 60g olive oil
• 5g instant yeast
• 10g salt
• 1tsp dried herbs, or one Tbsp fresh minced rosemary.

Topping ingredients:

• 1 can Napolina chopped tomatoes
• 8g fresh, minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1tsp honey
• 250g mozzarella (we get Galbani)
• 100g strong cheddar, grated
• 24 olives – Kalamata are great

Method:

Pour water and oil into a medium bowl, then add flour, yeast, salt and herbs. Mix to a dough, and knead for five or ten minutes, stretching it up out of the bowl. You want a very, very soft, runny dough. Cover and leave to rise for one hour in a warm place.

Pour the dough onto a parchment lined tray . Oil your fingers then spread the dough gently out to the corners, aiming for an even thickness all over. Leave to prove until it has puffed up again, about 30 minutes.

In a separate bowl, put the tomatoes, removing about two tablespoons of the juice. Mix in the fresh garlic, honey, pepper and salt. Once the dough has proved, spread the tomato sauce evenly all over it. Cover with the mozzarella, torn up into small chunks, then the olives and finally the cheddar.

Bake at 190 C / 374 F for 25 minutes, turning down to 180C / 356 F for the last ten minutes, or if the cheese starts getting too brown.

Sprinkle with more dried herbs, or fresh basil.

How long do you think a loaf of bread should keep?

If you’ve never baked your own, and are still buying from the store, then your expectations will be pretty high. Industrially-produced breads are laden with chemical preservatives and fungicides, to give them a shelf-life that is seemingly indefinite – in fact, it’s more like embalming than baking. But who wants to eat that?

If you make your own bread, you’ll probably be aware that sourdough and yeasted breads differ. Bread raised with bakers yeast will keep for two or three days, while bread raised with a wild yeast sourdough will keep for three or four days before you need to start thinking about bruschetta or croutons.

Our 100% rye bread is an excellent keeper, but the star of our show, and the loaf that our lovely neighbours in the village of Sparkwell order most often, is Dragan’s Seeded Bread. Made with a mixture of khorasan, einkorn and spelt flours, plus a soaker of mixed sunflower and sesame seeds, it is super-hydrated, and raised on a deliciously mature leaven. It keeps for over a week,( if you can bear to test it that long).

The hydration in the seeds helps the moisture-retention, and the acidity in the leaven from the lacto-acid bacteria, provides a natural preservative. Together with the ancient and heritage flours, it’s pretty much a winner all round.

If you want to try it yourself, the recipe is below:

Dragan’s Seeded Sourdough Superstars

Makes two 1kg loaves

Seed soaker (make 12 hours in advance):Put 200g sesame seeds + 200g sunflower seeds in a bowl. Dissolve 50g barley malt in 500g-600g water. Pour over the seed mixture. Leave to soak overnight.

Leaven (make in advance): Prepare 6 to 8 hours beforehand, at room temperature (20°C approx..). Take 100g starter (made with strong white bread flour) and feed with 200g water plus 100g white spelt and 100g wholemeal spelt. Total leaven: 500g

Dough:

• 150g Khorasan
• 150g White Spelt
• 100g Wholemeal Spelt
• 100g Einkorn
• 21g salt
• 4g yeast

1. Mix all the flours, salt and yeast together. Add the leaven and the seed soaker. Use a spatula to mix this all into a soft and wet mixture, like thick porridge.
2. Leave to rise for 2 to 3 hours, remembering that the longer you leave it, the better the taste. Fold the ‘dough’ gently with a spatula to help the gluten development and the activity of the yeast.
3. Divide mixture between two oiled tins.
4. Leave to rise for 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 230°C. After 15 minutes reduce to 210°C, place the loaves into the hot oven and bake them for 30 to 35 minutes.
5. Check the temperature inside the baked bread with a probe thermometer. If it is 94°C it is baked. Otherwise, bake for another five minutes, or until it reaches that temperature.
6. The crust should be rich golden brown. Glazing it with olive oil enhances the appearance of the seeded top.