Just as soon as the sunny weather arrives, it’s cruelly snatched away from us again. It’s a rainy day in May, and what better to lift the spirits on a damp afternoon than a spot of baking? This is another recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which I’ve some good successes with so far. This one is for buttermilk pound loaf and, because the recipe said I could, I’ve added some dark chocolate chips.
This recipe for multigrain bread is made with quark, a curd cheese popular in Germany. The addition of the quark to the bread dough gives a loaf that is quite moist, with a subtle tangy flavour. I used malted flake (granary) flour, and added wheat bran and pearl barley for an extra dimension of texture.
Autumn brings a glut of apples, and the search for recipes to use them up in. This recipe for nutty apple loaf comes from the Hummingbird Bakery recipe book. It’s a lovely tea loaf, slightly spiced, with some cheeky chocolate pieces thrown in. The recipe calls for mixed nuts; I used walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds.
In the Northern Hemisphere, it is Lammas Day today – 1st August. Lammas (“loaf mass”) is an ancient celebration of the first harvest. It is one of several holidays celebrated by Neo-Pagans as part of the Wheel of the Year; Lammas falls between Midsummer and the Autumn Equinox. It’s also known as Lughnasadh. The festival celebrates the first harvest of wheat and loaves of bread used to be brought to church to be blessed.
I got this recipe for buttery brioche from The Guardian. It seemed quite hard work, and it was in a way. It was done over two days, and the part where you rub the butter into the dough is very messy, so be warned! The result was a rich, buttery, sweet loaf of bread that was particularly good toasted (you just have to be careful about it burning, with the sugar in it).
I love making bread. Cooking is kind of like alchemy, and bread-making is food alchemy at its most basic. Turning flour and water into nourishing, sustaining food. It’s one of the oldest known prepared foods (thanks Wikipedia…) and apparently our ancestors were eating bread up to 30,000 years ago; albeit made from different plant starches. They were eating bread in the British Isles long before potatoes. Of course, bread wasn’t always as we know it and in the Bronze Age, bread made from spelt flour was common. Spelt is a type of wheat flour; it tastes slightly different and has more micronutrients than normal wheat flour. It may also be slightly easier to digest. This recipe for Roman Army Bread comes from the back of my Doves Farm spelt flour packet. I’m not sure it was passed down from genuine Roman soldiers, but with honey and olive oil, it’s playing the part!
It’s a long time since I have baked bread with rye flour and since my honey and sunflower seed loaf was so successful, I decided to try this recipe for honey rye bread from Country Bread by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake.
This is probably the most unusual loaf of bread I’ve ever made. This recipe for Medieval York Mayne bread comes from Marguerite Patten’s 500 Recipes for Bread and Scones, an incredibly battered book that used to belong to my grandmother. The book is full of her comments and modifications next to recipes, with some obscured by cut-outs of what are presumably better versions she found elsewhere. There are no marks next to this recipe, so I don’t know if she ever made mayne bread.
As Marguerite explains, this recipe comes from the 16th century and there are indeed many mentions on the Internet of mayne bread from the middle ages. The term apparently derives from the French pain de mayne (“pain” being bread, “main” being hand) and was sometimes known as paynmayn. Mayne bread was considered the “bread of nobles”, made from wheat flour, as opposed to bread eaten by ordinary Medieval folk made from cheaper grains like rye.
Some supermarkets sell a version of a honey and sunflower seed bread that is absolutely delicious. I couldn’t find an ideal recipe for this, so I put one together from several similar recipes.
The loaf, half-eaten!
Irish soda bread is made, as the name suggests, with bicarbonate of soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate). The soda acts as a leavening agent so you don’t need to add any yeast. It doesn’t need to be kneaded really either, so it’s very quick and easy to make. This recipe is for speckled white soda loaf from Country Bread by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. It’s a bit more special than your average Irish soda bread because it has pieces of dark chocolate added!
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