Jerrywatts's blog

    I made this bread because my whole family love Italian food and baguettes and homemade sun-dried tomatoes are just heaven! I dry them in my oven and soak them in olive oil with Italian spices. I use them in everything and one day I heard someone was using them in bread and I designed this recipe so I could put everything I love in it.

    I love baguettes and for me,holes are not the ultimate goal. Good baguettes should have a crispy crust, nice taste and a bouncy crumb, not necessarily having lots of holes. I had one of the most delicious baguettes in England and it didnt even have many holes but the texture was merely light with a thin crust, full of flavour. One of my husband's quotes is" I dont like my baguettes full of holes. How would I put my buttter on it ? I'd get hungry in a minute with them holes!" You know, English people just have to eat their bread with butter. Obviously, everything is better with butter. Anyway, my point is, good baguettes should always taste nice and that's it.

    I call this baguette greedy baguette because I couldnt help putting loads of things in it and it ended up looking bloated. It was a hit with our family though and if you tried it, I believe you would agree with us. It has a very strong flavour and the crust is very crusty, largely thanks to the olive oil in the sun-dried tomatoes. With one bite, you're ensured the tastes of pine nuts, tomatoes, olives and Italian spices. Can you imagine all  the flavours explode in your mouth? We simply had one piece after another, nonstop. 

    Ok, after all the waffle, here is the recipe. I made two baguettes out of it and they are best when enjoyed fresh.

Sourdough starter  136g( 100%hydration)

AP flour 263g

Water 154g

Sun-dried tomatoes and olives 99g（I put in 69g tomatoes and 30g olives）

pine nuts 50g

Salt 5g

1. mix sourdough starter with water and put in the flour

2. autolyse for about 30mins

3. mix in all the other ingredients.

4. ferment for 4 hours, stretch and fold at the first, second and third hour.

5. rest for 30 mins and shape into baguettes

6. proof for 2-4 hours( you can even retard it overnight in the fridge)

7. bake with steam at 247°c for ten mins and then decrease the heat a bit, bake for 35mins in total

8. cool and enjoy

I made them a while ago and only managed to find two pics of them, so...

We had them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, not butter, trying to make my husband eat healthier. The lazy wife just mixed the oil and vinegar together. I hate doing dishes!

   Hey everyone, I've been on this website for a while and just love the loaves here! I'm from China and I love baking, bread especially. I feel it's time to share some really good bread with you here. I cant just keep taking without giving, right? Anyway, I got this recipe from a Chinese blogger and our family just loved it. Hope you will like it too.

   I made 9 small loaves out of the dough.

High gluten flour：………… 350g

Medium Rye：………… 150g

Salt：………… 8g

Caster sugar：………… 10g

Mature sourdough culture ：………… 225g（100% hydration）

Water：………… 300g

Pumpkin seeds：………… 60g

Fig：………… 60g

The recipe originally used walnuts instead of pumpkin seeds but I had run out of walnuts so I just used pumpkin seeds instead. They worked for me. You can use your own combo. Also, the blogger only used 220g water but he didnt state the hydration of his sourdough culture. Using my own sourdough culture, I increased the amount of water to 300g. It was too dry for my dough with only just 220g water.

1.Mix sourdough culture with water, then flour,salt and sugar . Mix well.

2. Mix in the seeds and fig pieces. No need to autolyse or stretch and fold. When I mixed everything together, the dough just came together and I felt the guten was strong enough already.

3. Ferment for about 3 hours at 20°c.

4. Divide the dough into 9 pieces,shape into oblong loaves.

5. Proof until they are 80% proofed.

6.Preheat the oven and bake the bread with steam at 230°c for about 35mins until golden brown.

7. Cool and enjoy!

When it's baked thoroughly, the crust of this bread is wheaty and crusty.

The crumb is full of flavor, bouncy as well.

This bread is definitely worth trying!