Hello All,

I've just finished another 5 week stint of nightshifts baking in Dunbar, which is on the coast, just south of Edinburgh, Scotland.   I have run a couple of courses too, and kept up my commitments in Northumberland for the Farmers' Markets...so it's been a very busy time and I need a break...so does Alison, who has a much more stressful job than I have, though with more sociable hours, of course.

I have had only limited time to look over the TFL pages of late, and commenting has really not been possible; my apologies for this.   I know I will have missed looking over some great bread from the many fine bakers who post here.

So, we are flying to Crete tomorrow morning; back to the lovely Beach House [Anatolika] in search of sun, see: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19167/anotolika-beach-house

I've been listening to a feature on the radio just now which is claiming an increase of 20% in numbers looking to leave the UK for a holiday abroad this Easter; and why ever not?   A heatwave this time last year, now we have the coldest March on record.   I'm reading it will be 26*C in Heraklion on Saturday..so our South Coast haven will probably be a degree or two up on that scorching figure.

Here's a photo of a very happy baker at the end of last night's shift.   I'm holding a 1200g loaf of Pain de Campagne.   I'll be making some sandwiches with that in a few hours' time as we drive down to Gatwick airport overnight tonight to catch a morning flight to Heraklion early tomorrow.

My very best wishes

Andy

Last week I was getting ready for a short easter break when I realized I still had some kalamata olives, fresh rosemary and an opened pack with assorted italian cold cuts (salami, cured ham...) lying around in my fridge.  It was all a bit too much to eat in one go so I decided to try my hand at a foccaccia-inspired bread that would incorporate all these ingredients.

The result was surprisingly tasty; I didn't have high hopes -especially because I wasn't working from a recipe- but it turned out really well and very tasty.

Preparation and recipe:

a) Spread the fresh rosemary in a baking pan and put in a cool oven (I used 60 centigrade) with air circulation on for a couple of hours.  The rosemary has to be dry but keep temperatures low or you'll lose some of the flavourful organic compounds.

b) Place the cold cuts into an oven dish and put it under the grill until they start getting crispy/crumbly when cooled.  Use tissue paper to blot up the fat that comes out (optional).  Allow to cool and chop/crumble into pieces.  Roughly chop the kalamata olives.  Reserve.

Formula:

- 500 grams white bread flour.

- 300 grams water, room temperature (which in my case was 31 centigrade)

- 7 grams bread machine yeast

- 15 ml (1 TBSP) of fine quality olive oil

- 100 grams roughly chopped kalamata olives

- 100 grams pumpkin seeds

- 50 grams dried and crumbled/cut cold cuts

- 7 grams (1.5 tsp) of rosemary, ground to powder

- Couple of sprigs of dried rosemary to decorate the crust

* No salt was added as the olives and dried cured meats are already salty but this is a matter of individual taste.

Straightdough method.

Combine flour, yeast, water, olive oil and mix well until absorbtion.  Allow to rest for 10 minutes after initial mixing, then knead vigorously for another 10 minutes.

Bulk fermentation until the volume has doubled (in my case, with the generous quantity of yeast and the high ambient temperature this took 25 minutes)

Punch down/fold the dough and roll it out into a rectangle that's about 1.5 cm thick.  Spread the meat, powdered rosemary, pumpkin seeds and chopped olives on the dough, fold closed and give a short kneading to mix in everything.  The objective is to obtain an even distribution but don't knead too long or the olives will turn to mush. 

Shape into a batard /oval shape, roll through some dried rosemary leaves and place in a well-oiled pullman pan (2 liter). Brush on a slight coat of olive oil.  Preheat oven to 210 centigrade.

Bench rest until doubled in volume (in my case once again after a mere 20 minutes), put the lid on the pullman and insert into oven.  Total baking time was 45 minutes, after 25 minutes I removed the lid from the pan so the top crust could brown.  Remove from oven/pan and let cool on a rack.

The result:

The crust was delicate but very crunchy and the taste and aroma delicious so while it was a hastily improvised experiment I'm quite pleased with it.  Did I mention it tasted fine also ;-)  Of course the quick rise times and absence of pre-ferment precludes any real taste development in the dough itself but in this case that's not an issue as taste was mainly a matter of the rosemary, olives and the meat.

I am getting kind of stuck in a sourdough boule sort of rut and given the various possibilities I could be stuck here permanently and yet I'm hankering to be able to make a decent baguette. Hence, I've been wandering about this site and seeing some tasty looking recipes that play into my desire to let the dough do a lot of the work. Thanks to all these fine bakers for sharing their methods! But I was getting confused trying to keep the variations straight, so I put them into a table so I could try and see what was going on. So many routes to tasty bread to try out depending on how the mood strikes:

I changed it to an image so I could post it, this should be the PDF version on Google Docs

I put together some dough according to Bouabsa, but shaped and proofed according to Fromartz. Alas my slashing and shaping need some work in baguette form, but I'm pretty happy with the crumb: