Tall or stout, but rising

The Real Bread Campaign main-man Chris Young is keeping me informed on the progress of attempts to bake a loaf of Real bread in a breadmaker (I assure you, it's gripping!) and I find that the game's been raised: he's trying to make an 100% sourdough. In other words he's not using fresh or dried yeast, let alone fast-action yeast, regardless of the breadmaker's very short programmed production time. I'm going to go on about breadmakers a bit, but I'll try to keep it lighthearted. It's just because I'm oven-less and unemployed in London. Over in South Wales, at my parents' home, I am told my 23 firebricks have arrived and are waiting to be turned into an oven-base (the shop's entire stock = a very small oven, but it's a start). I have arranged meetings with Mr Environmental Health and the local Planning Department to discuss, on condition I win the lottery, building a Serious wood-fired masonry oven without worrying that I'd be breaking some law or other and having it taken down again. Mr E.H. tells me that bread is a low-risk food-stuff, "but it's still possible to do some damage with it."

Loaf 3. I decide to go half-way again, making a sponge with my sourdough starter, Monster Baby, then adding normal yeast with the rest of the ingredients. (A sponge is, to me, a salt-less dough using a proportion of the final ingredients that, made earlier in the day, gives the natural yeasts and bacteria a chance to get going before being added to the main mixture. It can also be called a pre-ferment or a production starter. To do this in a breadmaker, you put in a spoonful of starter and some of your flour and water and set it to 'Dough' setting to combine (no need to kneed) then leave to culture. It's perhaps necessary to 'feed' the sponge in stages. I'll see how it goes without, first). When the sponge is looking bubbly, and smelling sour - Monster Baby is more lively than the last time - I add the rest of the ingredients and set the machine to make bread for the next morning at seven when I will be springing from my bed to do my Yoga, ho ho.

I have changed the recipe, reducing the oil, sugar, yeast and milk powder, but still there's more than I'd like, and than would be allowed by the Real Bread Campaign's definition of Real Bread.

The irate beeping of the breadmaker wakes me and I run down to find... a wonderful, tall loaf! It is interesting in texture, springy and light, with a crisp crust and an acid tang. Then for the real test, I give a slice to Tim, my housemate, who is officially a Supertaster and can taste subtleties that pass me by: he eats a whole slice, then says "Dilly, that is Brilliant". This enormous compliment is, I then realise, in comparison to the offerings so far.

Next night, loaf 4: I decide to use the sponge method again, because the flavour of loaf 3 was so interesting, and to add only the tiniest pinch of yeast and sugar, no oil or milk powder. I expected this to have an effect on the speed of the dough rising (lacking both the yeast and its sugar rush) and the colour and crunch of the crust, which relies upon the original recipe's oil and sugar. Again, an all-day sponge and an overnight bake.

Result: A tiny, dense loaf with a pallid crust and gungey, undercooked crumb. One big hole in the heart, otherwise very tiny bubbles. However, the flavour is just perfect! A hint of sourdough but overall a warm a delicate sweetness that needs butter and nothing more. I conclude that I need to make sure that my starter has more 'oomph' before I try to make an 100% sourdough in a breadmaker. Feeding the sponge in several stages may work. Tiny bricks of bread, no matter how good they taste, make very silly-looking sandwiches.

The picture is of yesterday and today's loaves, (today's is half yesterday's height!) because I love cutting right into the middle of loaves and seeing the patterns of bubbles, caught in the act of rising and as unique as whorls on a fingerprint.

Dough! Given in to the Breadmaker

I've gone and acquired a Breadmaker. It comes from a pub kitchen where it's not needed any more and has sat here for a week, receiving suspicious glances from me every so often and being used to store mobile phone cables. My housemate Tim was just writing 'Bread' on his shopping list this morning and I stopped him, saying that we probably had the ingredients somewhere and we should give the machine a try. Actually, we didn't have the ingredients and I had to slip to the shop to get sunflower oil and skimmed milk powder: -'basic' recipe? I thought a basic recipe had about 3 ingredients, not 7. I s'pose it's still far better than most sliced white loaves. The machine gets up to speed, making a "nom, nom" noise like it's eating the dough. It comes to a stop for the first proof and I try the dough, which is as sickly-sweet as one might expect from all the sugar and SMP in the recipe. Chris Young of SustainWeb is running National Real Bread Maker Week, May 1st -9th if you have a breadmaker and want to make more wholesome bread - here is the group page, I hope more information will be posted on it soon.

I love the taste of dough, anyway. I love pinching a bit off the bulk of the mixture and feeling its weight, its spring, the warmth or stickiness, the raw potential of the stuff. I love it when the yeast is just getting going, producing a whiff of spice on top of the mellow, baby-like smell of the flour in the dough.

My nearly-new niece and nephew smell like dough, "in a good way", I can imagine myself pleadingly saying to my two sisters as they look at me in alarm at this 'compliment'. I'd better be careful of saying things like "Ooo! Couldn't you just eat them?" Just to make it clear, eating babies isn't my thing. Which makes it less embarrassing than usual to say that eating uncooked dough, however, totally is. I would like to point out that this habit is endorsed by none other than Albert Roux, see The Roux Brothers on Patisserie, 1991. It takes me back to being small enough to have to stand on a chair to reach the kitchen table, when we would be given bits of dough to shape by Mummy B., which we would would roll and re-roll, shaping ambitious figures who would morph inexplicably in the oven. I found the dough irresistible, perhaps it wouldn't even make it to the oven. You eat a little bit, and then another little bit, and in your warm tummy it keeps on rising and you can burp (when you are small - not now, of course) the most wonderful beery burps that tickle your nose. Not quite to the standard of an invention by Willy Wonker, but it kept me happy when I was little.

The machine beeps reprovingly at me. I feel bereft, sitting next to it while it has all the fun with the dough. It's so mechanical, so enclosed! Worried that it will sense my jealousy and fear, I give it a friendly pat. It sighs out a breath of humid yeasty air. I am still deeply suspicious of it, as it suggests that all of the sensitivity you work to develop in making something with your hands might just be a kind of mystique-making that serves little purpose other than self-indulgence. On the positive side, I realise that while it's been doing all the 'hard' work, it has allowed me to sit, clean-fingered, and write this. I do miss the dough, though.