p.s. Here’s what the finished loaves look like the next day:

In this second vid  I’m shaping a couple of oblong bloomer loaves from a quite-sticky spent brewing grain dough. I’ve slowed it down as much as I can to show the essential steps, but with a sticky dough like this it’s best to work fast. First I stretch the dough a little to form a rough square in front of me. I fold in the four corners of the square to the middle, pinching down the folds and the dough now forms a diamond. I fold in the four corners of the diamond (the right and left corners slightly less so) and the dough now forms a rectangle in front of me. I fold this in half towards me to form a more oblong shape and then roll back and forwards with a little downward pressure and nice long rolls from wrists to fingertips to get the desired shape. It then goes into a floured linen couche to prove. The second one I shape is a bit better.

First up one of my students on Saturday invented her very own kneading method. I like it.

Second this is me mixing the dough for the borodinsky bread’s on sale tomorrow at Stirchley Market. This is a 6kg batch and includes rye sourdough starter, water, salt, malt extract, molasses, caraway seed, plus rye flour.

Finally this is me shaping that dough into tins. It only has the one rise or proof, directly in the tins – 3 hours after this and it’s in the oven. Always have wet hands when shaping rye!

Cotteridge Sourdough

Borodinsky Rye sourdough (with caraway, malt, molasses)

Ciabtatta

Stirchley Potato bread

White split tin

Bournville Babka (chocolate swirl bread)

Today see’s the fifth Stirchley Community Market since its inauguration in July. We’ve moved the market indoors for the winter, although there is still some hot food happening outdoors, and it’s at the same venue, the Stirchley United Working Mens Club on Hazelwell Street, from 4-7.30pm. We’re doing bread at this months market and will be taking down about 75 loaves of various kinds. You can find details of the loaves and prices below:

White Tin – small £0.80

Malthouse Granary – small £1.10

Cotteridge Sourdough – large (800g) £3, small (400g) £1.80

Revolution Rye (100% rye topped with Pumpkin and Sunflower seeds) – small £1.80

Borodinsky Rye (100% rye with molasses, malt extract and caraway) – small £2

Ciabatta – small £1.50

‘The Stirchley’ (Crusty part-wholemeal potato loaf) – small £1

We normally sell out before the end so head down early to grab some!

I had lots of dough leftover after yesterdays wash-out food festival at Winterbourne Gardens, so I called up my mate Carl who has an enormous wood-fired oven in Stirchley. He fired it up mid-afternoon, and we popped round in the evening to bake the remaining dough, and turn it into these whopping 1kg loaves of sourdough bread. Wander down Dell road in Cotteridge today and you can pick one up for £3, or email tom@loafonline.co.uk to reserve one. Now what to do with all the leftover cheese and ham…

Earlier this week a historic exchange took place, as a miller handed over a sack of white flour to a baker on a normal street in South Birmingham. Nothing extraordinary about that you might think, it’s a transaction that echoes centuries of intertwined relations between these two ancient professions. There was something special about this exchange though – the flour being handed over was the first batch of commercial flour from Wellesbourne watermill since the 1950′s, and the baker (me), runs Birmingham’s first and only community supported bakery. I felt honoured to receive the 25kg sack of white flour from talented traditional millwright Adam Marriot, who together with his wife Vicky have taken on the tenancy of the mill and lovingly restored it back into production. During the exchange, Adam told me of his future plans to restore a threshing machine too, and to rent 40 acres of land so that they can start growing, threshing and milling their wheat all on the same site.

The flour will be put to work over the next two weeks for Loaf’s community bakery, making our white sourdough loaf and being part of the flour in our granary sourdough (the other flour comes from Charlecote Mill a few miles down the road). I couldn’t wait quite that long though to have a play with the flour, so on Tuesday I made a couple of white tin loaves using a basic yeasted bread recipe. I had to go out before they were due in the oven, so the slashing and baking was entrusted to Jane – she did a great job:

The Wellesbourne White Tin Loaf

Shaping fougasse before it goes into the earth oven.

We had another great breadmaking course here on Saturday, with enthusiastic students creating lots of lovely loaves. One of my students took some great photos of the produce, which you can find on this Flickr set. Said student also happens to be the head honcho at School of Everything, which you should definitely check out – did you know they now have 9,000 teachers worldwide teaching anything from maths to martial arts, amazing! The next ‘Bread: back to basics’ course is on the 17th April.

]]> http://www.loafonline.co.uk/2010/03/breadmaking-photos/feed/ 0 http://www.loafonline.co.uk/2010/03/in-search-of-a-local-loaf-part-2/ http://www.loafonline.co.uk/2010/03/in-search-of-a-local-loaf-part-2/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:53:11 +0000 Tom http://www.loafonline.co.uk/?p=1305

So about three weeks ago I went to visit the historic Charlecote Mill in Warwickshire, where I had a private tour from John Bedington the Miller. When I got back from holiday I was champing at the bit to try out the wholemeal flour I had taken home, so much so that the sourdough starter was whipped out of the fridge and refreshed before i’d even taken my coat off. I keep a white sourdough starter, and taking John’s advice, I wanted to include a decent percentage of strong white flour to create a light, wholesome loaf. So I made it with a high percentage of sourdough starter (40% of dough weight), but all the remaining flour was Charlecote Mill standard wholemeal flour. A 67% hydration dough and a long, cool, overnight bulk fermentation led to a light, wholesome loaf, full of flavour and a sense of history and place.

That was two weeks back, and since then i’ve managed to organise to get a 32kg sack of flour dropped off this week, so after a little more experimentation I’m hoping to add a local, wholemeal sourdough loaf to the standard loaves I produce for the community bakery every Friday.