Neil Robinson

On the trail of great bread!

August 26, 2017
by Neil
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Updated English Muffins Recipe

I recently was looking back into this blog for my English Muffin recipe, and discovered I had never actually gone into detail about it and the posts were some of the oldest in the blog. I decided then and there that I would make another round of muffins and do a better job of documenting it. The original inspiration an much of the hard grafting for this recipe came from Chad Robertson and his excellent book, Tartine Bread.

Muffins the way they are meant to be

Muffins the way they are meant to be

I live in the UK and English Muffins are just muffins here. Unfortunately they are also nothing like the ones I remember from the US. The best there are the Thomas’ brand and what makes them stand out is the fact that when you open them (with a fork please, no knives!), the inside is full of various-sized holes. When they are then toasted, the bits that stick up are slightly charred and spreading butter on them lets it melt into little puddles in the various holes. Together with the crunch from the corn meal on the bottom of each half of the muffin, the taste is simply heavenly. Muffins in the UK are just round pieces of slightly denser bread, with few redeeming features and consistent and small holes.

Still, to make this recipe requires a bit of preparation. My approach generally takes me a day and a bit to make. The night before I want to prepare them, I take about 30g or so of starter from my starter jar, mix with the flour and water (details below), and then the next morning fairly early, I prepare the yeast-based mixture and after about 3 hours everything is ready to go. I then prepare the dough, and eventually it is spread across an oven tray lined with a tea towel and covered by the same and set in the refrigerator until the next morning. That is when they actually get cooked on an iron pan on the stove.

Anyway, now to the details:

This recipe uses a sourdough leaven and a poolish, which is a type of starter or pre-ferment made with yeast. The recipe components start below:

Sourdough Leaven

  • About 30g of starter
  • 200g of all-purpose or plain white flour
  • 200g of water

Poolish

  • 200g of all-purpose or plain white flour
  • 200g water
  • 3g active dry or instant yeast

As mentioned above, I prepared the leaven the night before using 30g from my default starter (which is 50% white and 50% whole wheat). The next morning fairly early and before the starter was fully ready, I then prepared the poolish (just mix the ingredients together with a whisk, then cover and set aside). After another 3 hours, both the leaven and the poolish were ready as can be seen in the image below.

Leaven on left, poolish on right

Leaven on left, poolish on right

Once both were ready (they have sufficient air to pass the float test, where the mixture will float on water), I mixed the main dough.

Main Dough

  • 500g Water
  • 400g Leaven
  • 400g Poolish
  • 650g of All-purpose or plain white flour
  • 350g Strong white bread flour
  • 24g Salt

Pour the water into a large mixing bowl, add the leaven and the poolish and using a whisk stir them briskly to break up the leaven and poolish and distribute evenly with the water (the whisk will also add some aeration to the mixture). Then add the flour and the salt. Using your hands or a mixer with dough hook(s), mix together to form a dough. This will not be as wet as many of the doughs that are found among my recipes, but it will still be one to use the pulling technique rather than kneading. Allow the dough to rest for 40 mins after it is thoroughly mixed (you can transfer to a new clean bowl if you wish, I find it not necessary really). Do two very easy pulls at the 40 minute and 70 minute mark then allow to rise for 3-4 hours.

Prepare a good-sized baking tray by spreading a fresh tea towel in it and then dust well with flour or a mixture of white and rice flour. Then dust liberally with coarse corn meal or coarse semolina. Empty the dough into the baking tray and gently spread it out so that it is of a fairly even thickness. Dust the top with more flour or mixed flour and rice flour followed by the coarse corn meal or semolina. Fold up the sides of the tea towel over the top of the dough and if necessary place another tea towel over an gap in the top then place on a shelf in the refrigerator.

The next morning, take out the tray and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Cut out circles using a dough cutter at around 3 inches in diameter.

Cutting the muffins out

Cutting the muffins out

Warm a steel or cast iron pan to medium-low heat on the stove and using either clarified butter, ghee, or sunflower oil, cook the muffins first on one side, and after they have risen quite a bit the other side will be ready, so flip them over and cook on the other side to finish, probably around 3 mins or so per side. Cool them on a wire rack and continue until all have been cooked.

Cooling the muffins

Cooling the muffins

Open them with a fork (not a knife!) and toast them (I toast them twice using the same setting as for normal toast bread to get a  better crunch), spread liberally with butter and enjoy!

Finished, delicious muffins

Finished, delicious muffins

February 27, 2016
by Neil
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Traditional Cornbread

Sometimes it is nice to just whip up a batch of traditional cornbread, like I remember from when I was growing up. This recipe is adapted to use weight since I stopped working in volume some time ago.

Ingredients

  • 60g butter
  • 250g whole milk
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 215g cornmeal (fine or coarse, white or yellow)
  • 120g white bread flour (all purpose flour would work here too)
  • 100g sugar
  • 14g baking powder
  • 3g salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Find a baking dish roughly 20cm x 20cm square and 4cm high. I decided to use our heart-shaped baking form as it was roughly the same amount of space. Lightly oil or use a spray oil the inside of the dish.

Melt the butter in a small skillet over a low setting. Pour the milk into a mixing bowl, add the melted butter and the lightly beaten egg and with a whisk, mix them all thoroughly together. In a separate mixing bowl, mix all of the remaining dry ingredients together so that they are thoroughly mixed. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ones and using a whisk mix them together until all of the dry ingredients have been incorporated. Do not over mix! The results should still have lumps in it.

Now using a spatula pour the batter into the pan, making sure that it is reasonably evenly spread out. Place the pan in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of it cleanly.

Allow a short rest, then eat while still warm!

Cornbread in our heart-shaped pan

Cornbread in our heart-shaped pan

Plate full of cornbread

Plate full of cornbread

Just slice each piece down the middle and spread liberally with more butter. Enjoy!

Sourdough Corn Bread

January 31, 2016
by Neil
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Sourdough Corn Bread

I have often baked traditional corn bread before, but never thought about combining corn meal with my normal artisan baking techniques.

Recently I had run out of coarse ground corn meal, which I use to prevent the loaves from sticking to the proofing baskets (or bannetons). I asked my wife to pick some up on the way home, but she brought fine ground corn meal instead. This isn’t corn flour or corn starch, this still is a bit gritty. In any case, I decided to try using it for some other recipes, including a bread one. I had a fast scan across the Internet and found a recipe that seemed similar to what I wanted to do, so I let myself be inspired by that. The original recipe I found is here. I tend to bake much wetter doughs nowadays, so I made a few changes and this is my take on it:

For the starter for this bread:

  • 50g of my standard starter
  • 240g water
  • 300g white bread flour

Mix up the starter and let it rise in a warm place until it is bubbly and ready. It took mine about 6 hours in the airing cupboard.

For the main dough:

  • 450g water
  • 565g (roughly) of the starter (all of it)
  • 250g fine yellow corn meal
  • 450g white bread flour
  • 19g salt (I tried this with 17g and it was just a bit under-salted to our taste)
  • 40g extra virgin olive oil

Combine the water, olive oil, and starter in a mixing bowl with a whisk until the clumps have been broken up and the starter is effectively dissolved in the water. Then add the flour, first the corn meal then the bread flour. Measure and add the salt. Using whichever technique suits you mix the ingredients together so that the dry ingredients are thoroughly incorporated into the wet. The result should be a fairly sticky wet dough. I used a hand mixer with dough hooks and a spatula to ensure I was getting everything into it.

I then covered the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes. I then did 4 turns of the bread, one roughly every 10-15 minutes. The dough was then allowed to rest and rise until 2 hours had passed from the initial mixing. I put that into the refrigerator overnight. In the morning I took out the dough and let it rest on the table for two hours. I then split it into loaves, and let the resulting rounds have a bench rest for 30 minutes. After that I formed the loaves and put the result into the bannetons dusted with more of the same yellow corn meal. These were covered and allowed to rest for two hours. At one hour and forty minutes I started the oven (mine takes 40 minutes to reach baking temperature).

The loaves were baked in the usual way. The resulting loaves turned out really well. My kids certainly loved them :). Here are a few shots of the finished bread loaves and the first cut loaf.

Sourdough Corn Bread

Sourdough Corn Bread

Sourdough Corn Bread, Sliced

Sourdough Corn Bread, Sliced

 

Pumpkin bread banner

December 6, 2014
by Neil
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Sourdough Pumpkin Bread

We recently harvested the pumpkins growing in our garden, in time for baking pumpkin pie, making pumpkin soup, and for a change, I decided to try making a pumpkin bread. It was quite a bit of an experiment, but it came out great.

The recipe is:

  • 600 ml water
  • 215 g starter
  • 500 g fresh pumpkin purée
  • 200 g whole wheat flour
  • 900 g white bread flour

Even reducing the water from 750 ml to 600 ml, I ended up using a total of 1100 g of flour instead of the usual 1000 g. Potentially I could reduce the water even more, but I have baked this twice now and I really like the fuller sized loaves that come from the extra flour. I had a very creamy pumpkin, rather than a watery one for this round of baking. Here you can see the dough after had risen, prior to splitting it into loaves.

Pumpkin bread risen dough

Pumpkin bread risen dough

Here is another image of the dough on the table before it was split into loaves. It has a noticeable orange-yellow cast to it.

Pumpkin bread dough before making loaves

Pumpkin bread dough before making loaves

Even after being formed into loaves prior to placement in the proofing baskets, there is a noticeable yellowish color.

Pumpkin bread dough before proofing

Pumpkin bread dough before proofing

For this batch I switched from using rice flour to using corn meal to line the proofing baskets and as a top dressing for the loaves. It results in a nice crunch when biting into the crust. Everything else was pretty much the same, except for the baking times. For this recipe I went with 23 minutes with the cover on and 26.5 minutes with the cover off. The result can be seen below.

Pumpkin bread finished loaf

Pumpkin bread finished loaf

Here in the image of the slice bread below you can see a clear color change when compared to more typical peasant loaves. The resulting crumb was also softer and the bread retained a moist texture for a longer period of time.

Pumpkin bread sliced

Pumpkin bread sliced

Eating the bread we didn’t notice any significant taste of pumpkin, but the mouth feel of the bread was vastly improved. I suspect similar results can be had with puréed carrots, butternut squash, and other vegetables.

Happy Baking!

November 11, 2014
by Neil
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Sourdough Bread on the Road

I was recently in Greece visiting my in-laws and I brought a small amount of my starter with me so that I could bake while I was there and so that my mother-in-law could also bake great bread after we left.

Upon arrival the first night I refreshed the sourdough culture I had brought with me (a small amount, around 30g in a 100ml disposable plastic bottle for carry-on baggage). The whole wheat flour she first showed me there was considerably darker and not stone ground.

The sourdough rose well though and the following day we created my standard recipe but instead of using 200g or 150g of this darker whole wheat flour, I chose to use 100g. That turned out to be a good decision. I did the usual turns in the first hour or so, and then left it to rise until 6 hours had passed. I turned it out, and then formed it into a single loaf and proofed it in a glass oven dish that had an oval shape that was not broader than the black roasting tin that I was going to bake in.

When baking time came, her electric oven came up very fast to temperature and it gets hotter than mine. We baked the bread at 250° C for 20 minutes with the lid on, and then removed the lid (the larger lower part of the roasting pan in this case), lowered the temperature to 235° C and baked it for another 25 minutes. The result was amazing!

Large oval loaf baked on the road in Greece (side view)

Large oval loaf baked on the road in Greece (side view)

Large oval loaf baked on the road in Greece (top view)

Large oval loaf baked on the road in Greece (top view)

Lowering the temperature was essential however, because a subsequent loaf where we forgot to lower the temperature (and where she had the fan on, I turned it off on the first one), meant she had to pull it out after only around 10 minutes. It was a bit charred on top but still tasted good.