My latest, greatest baking discovery is the Dutch Oven I bought a few weeks ago. Recommended by the tutors at the SFBI as one of the best ways to cook bread at home, they yet again have proved they know their onions as it’s already helped me knock out a bunch of consistently great bread in the kitchen of our rented apartment.

The reasons it works so well are two fold. Firstly, the cast iron retains heat brilliantly, and as you’re baking in a sealed vessel your bread is less likely to be subject to any fluctuations in oven temp, which means a good even bake. The second reason is that it the lid traps steam, so there’s no need to fanny about with trays of boiling water or spraying your loaves pre-baking.

You could try something like a Le Creuset, as used baking Jim Lahey’s no knead loaf (where you almost pour the dough in), will work OK, but the Lodge Combo-Cooker I acquired is the business. Firstly, it was about the quarter of the price of a Le Creuset (they are quite a bit more expensive in the UK I’m afraid), and It’s other advantage is that you can invert it using the lid / skillet as the base to bake on which helps give a better crust colour while you’re venting the loaf. NB. You don’t have to have a Dutch Oven to make this formula, but it will give you better results.

The following is adapted from one of my favourite formulas we made during the bread section of the course at the SFBI. It is basically a no knead recipe, with the dough strength being developed over a series of folds. The formula assumes that you’ve got a liquid starter on the go. If you don’t have one, there’s a whole world of bread advice out there on line, so just search, but you’ll need a week or so to get it moving. The toasted wheat germ in the recipe isn’t a deal breaker, but it adds extra flavour and colour to the crumb. I’m not sure how easy it is to get in the UK, but if you can’t find it, just sift some whole wheat flour in a fine sieve and what you’ll have left in it is the germ. Toast it in a hot oven (200 c) for a few minutes until it gets slightly darker, but don’t burn it.

Right, lets get busy.

Ingredients

For the levain (makes 189g for  final dough)

63g Strong White Bread Flour

21g Whole Wheal Flour

84g Water

21g liquid starter

For the final dough

474g Strong White Bread Flour

326g Water

12g Salt

189g Liquid Levain

5g Toasted Wheat Germ

Method

12 or so hours before you mix your dough, you need to mix your levain. So weigh out your dry and wet ingredients, mix them together well and then leave at room temperature for the allotted time. When you re-vist your levain it should have at least doubled in volume, be good and frothy and smell like there’s plenty of fermentation activity.

You’re now ready to mix your dough. Put all your ingredients in a large bowl, and get your hands in there and mix it up. You want to make sure that everything is well incorporated together, and there are no floury patches. It’ll be a bit messy, but it’s a small price to pay. One thing to note is that you want your mixed dough to be at around 26 c when you’re done, so if the room is cold / hot you can try adjusting this with your water temperature.

The dough will look pretty shaggy at this point, but fear not, it will come together. Scrape out all the dough and transfer to another well oiled bowl, and cover with a lid / cling film and set aside somewhere at room temperature. As this dough hasn’t been mixed or kneaded, it needs time to develop and ferment, which is going to take about 3 hours.

Over these three hours you’re going to fold the bread every 45 minutes (3 times in total), and I’ll explain what I mean by this now. If you imagine your ball of dough as a square, you’re going to take each side of it and stretch it slightly, and then fold it on top of itself. So you do this 4 times, and then you flip the dough over so the folds you’ve made are now underneath. The dough is pretty sticky, so make sure your hands are oiled or wet when you do this.

After each fold, you’ll notice small changes in the dough that show it’s gaining strength. It will become less ’stretchy’ and more ‘elastic’, it will start to get gassy, and also smoother and silkier. By the time you’ve done your third fold it should be slightly shiny and ’sitting up’ in your bowl with a domed appearance. Set aside and cover for the final stint.

After the full three hours, and you’re happy with your dough, turn it out onto a floured work surface, sprinkle the top with a light dusting of flour and then de-gas the dough with the palm of your hand before shaping into a tight-ish ball. Leave the pre-shaped dough on your work surface, covering it with your inverted bowl, and leave to rest for half an hour.

Return to your dough half an hour later, de-gas again, shape into a tight ball again (or what ever style you want) and place it seam side up in a well floured proofing basket (these are cheap and easy to get on-line) for it’s final proof. You now have two choices. You can either stick the dough and basket in a plastic bag for it’s final three hour proof, or pop it in your fridge to retard over night (up to 16 hours), which I would recommend as it helps develop flavour amongst other things.

Either way, and hour before you’re ready to bake, set your oven to 26o c with the Dutch Oven inside so it gets up to temperature (if you’ve retarded your bread take it out half an hour before you bake). After an hour, take out the Dutch Oven, open it and invert the proofing basket onto it. If you’ve floured it properly, the dough should fall out and sit proudly on the skillet. Now slash the top with a diamond pattern (or whatever style works for you), making sure not to cut too deep, or go too far down the side of the loaf. Now place the ‘lid’ over the top and pop back in the oven.

You’re going to bake the loaf with the lid on for 30 minutes. After this time remove it and continue to bake (or vent) for a further 10-15 minutes. This helps set the crust, and will develop it to a deep golden brown colour.

When you’ve got your colour, remove the loaf from the skillet and place on a rack to cool. Contrary to common belief, you should never eat bread fresh from the oven. It’s still cooking when it’s hot, and develops more flavour as it cools. But when it has cooled, get stuck in and enjoy the fruits of your labour. The crumb should be open with plenty of air bubbles, and have an almost translucent quality.

I know all this sounds like a bit of a faff, but once you’ve done it a few times you’ll see that it’s not much effort, and all it really takes is a bit of time and organisation. Plus, when you slice through that crust and taste that hand made, home made loaf, you’ll realise it was all worth it.

Oh and (sorry to brag) but Dan Lepard saw a (rather blurry) picture of the loaf above on Flickr and commented ‘Excellent!’. Now if that isn’t a ringing endorsement for the Dutch Oven method and this formula, I don’t know what is.

To quote Jimmy Castor’s ‘Troglodyte‘, “What we’re gonna do right here is go back. Way back. Back into time…” because last week was all about kicking it old school, both in terms of ingredients and baking methods. We’re talking ancient grains and wood fire ovens.

Ancient wheats like spelt, khorasan (more commonly known as Kamut) emmer and, einkorn, and grains like millet, sorghum, quinoa, and teff were the precursors to modern wheat. They fell out of favour centuries ago as farmers and latterly scientists, developed the higher yield grains that we ‘enjoy’ today. However, wheats with increased yields and higher levels of protein / gluten are much harder for our bodies to digest, and less healthy. For this reason, ancient grains have become fashionable again, and are considered by many to be the future of bread.

But with less gluten, come flatter, denser breads. Or so my experience had taught me. However, the SFBI has been pioneering research in dealing with these ancient grains more successfully. They have been employed by various culinary organisations to develop formulas and techniques that use these flours to greater effect and realise results that are closer to those which today’s consumers expect.

Before last week, I had little or no experience in dealing with these kinds of grains, and I wasn’t expecting great things, but I was impressed. The breads were definately heavier in general, but with most of them we managed to get surprisingly open textures, and with the exception of the quinoa (pretty rank, sorry), some damn tasty breads. We achieved this through more careful mixing, using cooked starters (using boiling water to glutinise starches and ’set’ hydration), careful handling and lots of venting.

Again, across the week we cooked a lot of bread. We kicked things off pretty simply by doing some kamut, spelt and einkhorn sourdoughs to get an idea of the different flavour profiles, before mixing things up using kamut and spelt flours as bases for a bunch of different breads incorporating different quantities of ancient grains. These included kamut with wheat germ, barley bread, sorghum and kamut, teff sourdough, Moroccan barley fougasse, millet and pecan, quinoa sourdough, cracked kamut crowns, sorgum olive bread, we even sprouted some spelt to use in an ancient grain style pan bread. Another busy week.

Running in tandem with all this ancient grain shizzle was some ancient fire shizzle. The SFBI wood fired oven got fired up early in the week in preparation for a wood fired class being held at the weekend, and luckily we got to see and taste some of the benefits. We had a long discussion about the pros and cons of wood fired vs deck ovens, and despite the romance and the appealing flavour of the of the open fire, my feeling is that it seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. With the all the work that goes in to keeping the oven at the right temperature in addition to the scheduling and effort of making the doughs, and then getting temp and proofing times to match up, it all ads up to a huge commitment.

That being said, I did have one of the finest croissants of my life baked by Mike (mentioned in the previous post) who was manning the oven for most of the week. I don’t know what it was about it, but it just tasted richer. I’d love one at home, but not sure I could bake in one every day.

This week is all about German rye breads, and other European specialties such as bagels, pretzels and French country shapes. Until then…

I seriously can’t believe that I’m now a month in to the course at the SFBI. Time really is flying by crazy fast.

Last week we moved on from more refined flours to the healthier, more wholesome, and some might say less fun, whole grains. But as we discovered, healthier bread doesn’t have to mean slicing into a loaf with the weight and consistency of a house brick. Over the week we used an array of new flours both in doughs and in preferments, including whole wheat, semolina, type 85 high extraction flour, rye, buckwheat and corn to name but a few.

Millet Bread

But before we got busy, we discussed the various challenges of baking with whole grains. In comparison to more refined flours, there are two main factors to consider when working with them (again I’m simplifying and truncating things here). The first is the lower protein percentage / quality due to the presence of more bran in the flour. This equals less gluten, and therefore flatter breads as whole wheat doughs trap fermentation gases less readily. The second thing to watch out for are fermentation times. These are again affected by the higher levels of bran (also known as ‘ash content‘) in the flours. The minerals and nutrients in bran fuel enzyme activity, and that means faster and more intense fermentation, which effects a number of stages of the production process from bulk fermentation to final proof. Interesting, right? If not, you might be in the wrong place.

Corn Bread

Anyway, as with previous weeks we went on to bake a shed-load of breads. We’ve really picked up production from the early days of the course, making on average 5 different loaves a day. It can be pretty hectic, and I’ve made a few mistakes along the way as a result, but nothing too major. So now for the list bit. This week, amongst others, we made 100% whole wheat pan bread, corn bread, millet bread, pear and buckwheat, candies hazelnut squares, oatmeal and date, semolina, raisin and fennel filones, as well as the oddly named crown of the great valley, prairie bread and power bread.

Pear & Buckwheat

Despite the more elaborate formulas we made last week, I think my favourite was the comparatively simple Rustic Filone. A short sourdough baguette made with whole wheat, white flour, a rye poolish and a liquid starter. Great crust and crumb with a really deep flavour. One to remember.

Power Bread

On a slightly different note, I was chatting to one of the other people on the course that has also quit a ‘desk job’ to do the course about how different it is being on your feet all day as opposed to sitting down staring at a screen for hours on end. I was saying to him that I’ve noticed that when I get home I’m absolutely shattered. But not the kind of shattered I was from doing what I was doing before which was borne of frustration, boredom and the ‘rat race’ in general. But from being mentally stimulated, and physical nature of the ‘work’.  I’m not sure it’s an epiphany, but it feels pretty bloody good.

Candied Hazelnut Squares

This week we’re focusing on ancient grains, so Kamut, Spelt, Einkhorn and others are on the menu. And the SFBI wood fired oven is being stoked up too. Should be interesting.

What. A. Week.

Despite the past two weeks at SFBI being fantastic, one of the things I’ve been most excited about getting stuck into is making sourdoughs and science behind the rise. I’ve done a fair few sourdough experiments at home in the past, but never really nailed it, so the past week really ticked some major boxes for me.

We started our foray into the world of sour by looking into it’s history and mythology, and of course touching on the famous San Francisco Sourdough. It’s interesting stuff (at least to me), and as a few readers have expressed an interest in knowing more, here’s a potted version.

Sourdough was discovered / invented by accident in ancient Egypt at around 1500 BC. The story goes that some women making loaves on the banks of the Nile left a couple out in the humid, sunny conditions. They discovered their omission, and added the dough that had started to leaven to the rest of their batch. They liked the resulting lighter bread and it’s flavour, and kick started a great bread making tradition.

We then went on to de-bunk some of the myths that surround the art of making bread with natural yeast. There’s quite a bit of romanticism surrounding sourdough cultures. You’ll hear of ones that have been passed down from some German monastery in the middle ages, but the truth of the matter is that a starter’s life-cycle and feeding schedule means that every few weeks or so it’s a totally new beast. Any traces of ancient flours or yeasts would be long gone after a few months. Sad but true.

The same is true of cultures that use stuff other than flour and water to kick start them. Some people swear by using fruit like grapes or rhubarb to get things started, but any natural yeasts that exist on the skin of such fruit will most likely not be that happy in their new habitat, and again will die off and be replaced pretty quickly. Although, fruit may contribute some sugars that will help kick start the fermentation process, so it does have it’s uses.

We then went on to talk specifically about San Francisco sourdough. I was under the impression that the starter would have a specific formula, but no. What makes an SF sourdough is Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis, the natural yeast that’s in the air out here. Traditionally the starter is made with just flour and water and can be either stiff or liquid, but people have been known to add fruit, yoghurt, apple juice and probably all sorts of other things.

But the starter is only part of the story of that trademark tang. The other factor is the way the bread is made. The bread’s dough picks up these additional flavour profiles by retarding it overnight, which slows down fermentation and develops that taste and tang. Obviously, you can do this anywhere in the Word and create a near perfect facsimile of this kind of sourdough, but you wouldn’t really be able to call it a San Francisco sourdough as it wouldn’t contain that specific yeast. So hopefully that’s put that one to bed.

The majority of the rest of the week, we got busy in the lab. We kicked things off by starting our own culture that we managed to coax into life in time to be used in a starter on Thursday. And then be baked bread. LOTS of bread. Across the week we made SF sourdoughs, bulk and shape retarded sourdough baguettes, ciabattas, olive bead, walnut and raisin batards, sour wholewheat boules, braided challah and a chocolate bread.

I’ve probably missed a couple, but I think my favourite bread of the week was a ‘hand mix’ we did. Simple and easy, but a bit time consuming. We mixed the flour, water and starter by hand until properly combined and then bulk fermented it for around 3 hours, folding it every 45 minutes to build up it’s strength. We then divided the dough, roughly shaped it into 1.5 kilo rounds and set aside for half an hour or so. It was then shaped, popped into floured baskets and retarded over night to be baked first thing the following morning. The results were fantastic. Great crust, great crumb, great flavour, and very little effort. Time did most of the work. Probably not that practical from a big production point of view, but proper artisan stuff.

So that was the week that was. This week we’re doing whole grains. Until then…

So my first week at the SFBI is over, and it’s been a blast. I’ve decided to do a post a week as opposed to boring everyone with continual stream of stuff as it happens. So this is post number one. I’ve also been given the green light by the college to post formulas (recipes), so I’ll probably share a few of them as we go. The majority of them thus far deal with pretty large quantities, but most should be able to be scaled down for home use.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the college is a bit of a pain to get to. It’s based in South San Francisco, and I’m currently staying in Russian Hill. So I have to get a bus, BART and then a shuttle at the other end that drops me off at the SFBI. With classes starting at 8am, this all this means I’ve been having to get up at a slightly painful time of 5.45 every morning! This will ease off when we move into our new place in Noe Valley in a couple of weeks, but I guess bakers hours are something I’m going to have to get used to.

But once you’re through the door of the SFBI, you kind of forget about all that. The college is based around a commercial bakery called Thoroughbread, based in the Mission, so there’s a buzz in the building from the start of the day, with the ovens, mixers and bakers already busily at work when we arrive.

Day one started with a few inspiring words from Michel Suas, the boss at SFBI, outlining the course structure and introducing us to the instructors who are looking after us for the bread section of the course, Mac McConnell and Frank Sally, and then pretty much immediately we got down to business.

A fairly big part of week one is about orientation, with about two thirds of the day spent doing practical work in the ‘lab’ and the remaining third in the classroom. We’ve been covering off elements of the history of baking, the science of what makes a great loaf, formulas (formulas are the new recipes), bakers percentages, how to use typical bakery machinery from deck ovens to mixers, and making A LOT of baguettes.

We’ve been making so many of these French sticks, as they are the perfect training loaf. Making baguettes combines a range of hand skills including pre-shaping, shaping and slashing, and making them in slightly different ways provides a great illustration of the effects of various methods on the finished product. We’ve been varying mixing times from short to intense, and observing the effects of differing lengths of bulk fermentation. It’s been really interesting, and has clearly pointed out where I’ve been going wrong with my home bread baking experiments.

The above is obviously VERY top line as if I wrote everything that’s gone into my slightly addled brain over the last 5 days, I’d be here all week, but safe to say so far so good. Really looking forward to this week when we’re going to start playing around with pre-ferments and mixing up the raw ingredients a bit.

So until then…

Photo: Unknown

The seed for this adventure was first planted a little over a year ago when I read this post on the Chow blog. My wife and I were feeling increasingly disillusioned with our careers / industries, and had been talking for some time about opening our own cafe bakery. But with very little in the way of experience, we didn’t really know where to start. It was beginning to feel like it may always be a bit of a pipe dream, and then I read the Chow post and a large penny dropped.

So we did some research, found out more about the course, talked about it for a while, and decided to go for it. To be honest, it’s all a bit scary, but also exhilarating. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that I’ve been bitten by the baking bug, but this is a whole new ball game. I’m going to be well out of my comfort zone, and when you throw into the mix quitting a perfectly good, well paid job at one of the UK’s most respected ad agencies, you’ve either got a recipe for disaster, or the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.

We don’t have any time frame on when / if  we’re going to start our own business, but that’s partly what this trip is all about. As well as doing the course, we’re going to do some work experience, travel around the States, and generally immerse ourselves in country’s food culture, whilst getting a plan together of the kind of business we want to open. But I guess there’s also every chance that we might end up by missing our day jobs, and we’ll yearn to return to London at the end of our adventure. Only time will tell.

So can an Advertising Wanker be transformed into a Master Baker? You’ll have to keep it locked right here to find out.

I’m going to be away for Easter in Australia visiting the future in-laws, so am going to miss out on the traditional treats that I’d be indulging in with the family down in Cornwall.

Food wise, the main thing I’m going to miss is the Hot Cross Buns. I love them. Toasted, slathered in melting butter and a good dollop of course bitter sweet orange marmalade. Anyway, I told myself that I wasn’t going to miss out, so decided to make my own for the first time. This recipe is lifted pretty much lock, stock and barrel from here on the BBC Food website, and the results went down a storm.

Ingredients

625g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground mixed spice

45g unsalted butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing

85g sugar

1 lemon, zest only

1½ tsp fast-action yeast

1 free-range egg

275ml tepid milk

125g mixed dried fruit

For the topping

2 tbsp plain flour

vegetable oil, for greasing

1 tbsp golden syrup, gently heated, for glazing

Method

For the buns, sieve the flour, salt and ground mixed spice into a large mixing bowl, then rub in the butter using your fingertips creating a breadcrumb like mixture. Make a well in the centre of the mixture, then add the sugar and lemon zest and yeast.

Now beat the egg, add to the flour with the tepid milk and mix together to a form a soft, pliable dough and then turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Carefully work the mixed dried fruit into the dough until well combined. Knead lightly for at least 5 minutes.

Grease a large mixing bowl with butter. Shape the dough into a ball and place it into the prepared bowl, then cover with a cling film and set aside in a warm place for one hour to prove. Turn out the proved dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knock back the dough. Shape it into a ball again and return it to the bowl, cover again and set aside for a further 30 minutes to rise.

After half an hour, turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, then flatten slightly into a bun shape using the palms of your hands. Cover the buns with the tea towel and set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Grease a baking tray with butter and transfer the buns to the tray. Wrap the tray with the buns on it loosely in greaseproof paper, then place inside a large polythene bag. Tie the end of the bag so that no air can get in and set aside in a warm place for a further 40 minutes to rise.

While this is going on, Preheat the oven to 240 C, then prepare the cross topping by mixing the plain flour to a smooth paste with 2 tablespoons of cold water. When the buns have risen, remove the bag and the greaseproof paper. Spoon the flour mixture into a small plastic bag, nip off the tip of one of the corners to create a piping bag, and pipe a cross across each bun.

Now, transfer the buns to the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. As soon as you remove the buns from the oven, brush them with the hot golden syrup, then set aside to cool on a wire rack.

The buns will be very sticky to start with, but the golden syrup will sink in over time. Eat as suggested, toasted with butter and orange marmalade, or however you like them.

It’s been around for a while, but I first read about Jim Lahey’s ‘no knead bread‘ in a Saveur magazine when I was in New York last year. I’d already got the bread baking bug, and the idea of a loaf that required no kneading seemed a bit odd, even a bit sacrilegious. I did a bit of research on line, and found out that everyone raves about the loaf, and it basically put Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery on the map.

Anyway, it definitely got me interested. How could a loaf requiring so little work be so good? Life just isn’t like that. So I gave it a go. The loaf is cooked in a cast iron pot, a bit like an Australian damper, so you’ll need a Le Creuset or something similar for it to work.

Ingredients

3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
Olive oil
Rye flour (for dusting)

Method

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together for a minute or so to form a ’shaggy’ dough. Transfer the dough to a larger bowl oiled with some olive oil. NB. the dough will expand to around 4 times the size, so make sure your bowl is big enough. Cover with clingfilm and let the dough develop for 12-18 hours at room temperature.

After this time the dough will be aerated. Remove it from the bowl and fold on itself once or twice. The dough is stickier than with regular bread, a bit like when making a sourdough, so be prepared to get a bit messy. Using dough scrapers is a good idea. Let the dough rest 15 minutes in the bowl or on the work surface, then try and shape into a ball. Generously coat a tea towel with rye flour, place the dough on the left hand side, scatter the dough with more flour, and then fold the towel over the top to cover it. Let rise for around 2 hours at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 230°C. Place a cast iron pot in it at least 30 minutes prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and put the dough in it. Shake from side to side so it fills the base. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes or so uncovered, until the loaf is nicely browned. Take the loaf out and place on a wire rack to cool. I know this is going to sound a bit sad, but the loaf’s crust crackles as it cools, which is pretty exciting.

When you cut into the loaf, you won’t be disappointed. The crust is crisp, crunchy and satisfying, and the dough inside a cross between really good French bread and a Ciabatta. Honestly, its great. And for so little work. There is such a thing as a free lunch.

Two final notes. I cooked mine in an oval 27 cm pot, but think it would have worked better in the round 24 cm version. Secondly, I tried this recipe again at the weekend substituting the strong white flour with a ‘Farine Bise‘ that I bought in Paris, but it was much less successful. The crust was less impressive, and the dough much heavier. I guess it rises better with the plain white.

UPDATE: Tried the loaf again at the weekend in a smaller pot, with great results. Check out photos on my Flickr page here.

Not surprisingly, I’m still a way off nailing a good imitation, but this bread is pretty tasty, even if I do say so myself, and has a great crust.  The recipe uses an 80 to 20 mix of grey flour and rye flour to add a bit more flavour and texture. If you can’t get grey flour, strong white would do just fine.

Ingredients

400g grey flour

100g rye flour

5g yeast

7g salt

300ml water

1 x teaspoon honey

1 x tablespoon olive oil

Method

First up measure of 300ml of tepid water and mix in the yeast and honey. This should activate it before you add it to the dry ingredients. Next weigh out the flours and mix together with the salt in a big bowl. Now add the water and yeast mixture , the olive oil and mix together. As you mix, the mixture should come together to to form a dough. You’ll have to get your hands in there to combine everything.

Once you’ve done this, turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead for at least 10 minutes. Everyone has their own technique, but this video should get you started. Why do you need to knead? The short answer is that it develops gluten, which makes the mixture ’stronger’ so that it can trap the carbon dioxide that the yeast creates and makes the bread rise. If you don’t knead enough, or your yeast is inactive, you’ll end up with a very dense, heavy loaf.

After kneading for 10 minutes, form the dough into a round ball. See my previous focaccia recipe for the technique for doing this. Once prepared, either place the dough in a proving basket in a lightly floured tea towel, or in a bowl inside a plastic bag  and allow it to rise. This will take about an hour during which time the dough should have doubled in size. When you’ve got to this stage, turn out the dough, ‘knock it back’ (again see the focaccia recipe), form into a round again and repeat the rising process.

When the dough is twice the size again, turn it out and knock it back again. This time roll the dough into a cigar shape, and then flatten it. This should leave you with a strip a little over a foot long. Now fold this strip over end on end, so it becomes a third of the length and flatten down. Tuck the longer sides under with the edge of your palms to create a cylinder tapered at either end. Transfer this onto a floured board or peel, cover with a tea towel and leave to ‘prove’ for about an hour.

Now turn on your oven as hot as it will go, and place a baking tray at the bottom. Just like with the focaccia, you’re going to fill this with boiling water when you bake the loaf. When the oven is up to temperature, the loaf should have swelled to double it’s size again. Slash the surface of it (which will help the bread rise), and then slide it into the oven after putting the water in the baking tray. Don’t hang about.

Bake at full temperature for 10 minutes, at which point the bread will have risen as much as it’s is going to as the crust will have ’set’ and should be golden brown. Turn the oven down to around 170 / 180 and bake for a further 20 – 25 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is.

After the full 35 minutes, remove the bread and place on a baking tray. Resist the temptation to cut into it now. The bread is still cooking, and if you cut it open you’ll release heat and steam, and the bread won’t finish cooking properly. And that’s it. When it’s cooled, slice and eat with whatever you fancy.

Then I came across ‘River Cottage Bread’; a small but sensible handbook on the subject, which has basically become my bread bible. The book contains lots of recipes for breads from standard loaves, to ciabatta, naan and beyond, which are great, but for me the most interesting part of the book is the more practical stuff.

From my limited experience, it seems to me that once you’ve got the basics of making dough down, you can freestyle to a certain extent. But the stuff that is more rigid, and vital to creating consistently good bread, are the techniques and tips, and thats why this  book has become so invaluable.

For example, the book explains that you need to try and re-create the conditions of a bakers bread oven as closely as possible in your own home. It recommends that as well as having your oven as high as possible for the initial baking process, that you should also have a tray of boiling water in the oven to generate steam, as this creates optimum conditions for the bread to rise. This is the sort of stuff that you don’t discover by trial error, and kind of need to know. As you might expect, there’s also lots of practical advice on rising, proving, how to prepare your dough properly for the oven and so on.

The other great thing about the book is that it has kept me motivated to keep baking. It’s honest with you, and manages your expectations. You’re not going to produce a Poilane loaf on your first attempt. Like most things in life, baking bread takes practice, but if you stick at it your results improve quickly. I’ve created a bit of a visual document of my progress over on my Flickr account.

If you want to get a copy, you can get one from River Cottage or Amazon here.