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Saturday 3 November 2012

Bread Sticks and Bloggers- Bread in Fife Part One

It's quite extraordinary the lengths that bloggers will go to meet up and bake. Between the three of us we made a 450 mile round trip to Freuchie in Fife, to learn how to bake Mediterranean Breads with Colin Lindsay at Bread in Fife


So who, you might ask, are the three bloggers baking bread?

Louise, Janice, Jacqueline
Louise (Lou) from Please Do Not Feed the Animals, Me and Jacqueline (Jac) from Tinned Tomatoes.

Colin
After some refreshments and a little discussion about our various bread making experience, we got down to business. Colin is testing the heat of the water  with his fingers.



We started off making an olive oil dough, all the ingredients were weighed, even the liquid.  I was very interested by the importance of the temperature, not only of the liquid, but also of the flourThe ideal temperature for fermenting dough is 27C.  Colin gave us a formula to get the right temperature for both flour and water, double 27 = 54  minus the temperature of the flour = temperature of the water.  We used flour from  Shipton Mill and fresh yeast, but you could use dried yeast.


Once we had  incorporated all the liquid we started to knead our dough.




Colin showed us a variety of ways of kneading, including air kneading,  all of which is pretty physical, but the air kneading is really hard work.

 Here is Jac, checking whether her dough is ready by stretching it out paper thin, and if you can do that without it breaking, then the gluten has stretched enough and you are ready to prove your dough.  We set aside the olive oil dough to prove, in a converted plant propagator/mini greenhouse in Colin's porch.  It had a little heater in the bottom to keep the temperature even, of course you only need this sort of thing if you are proving a lot of dough, a warm room or airing cupboard will do just as well.

This 'beast of yeast' is a plain flour, yeast, salt and water dough that Colin had made before we arrived, so we would be able to continue baking while the olive oil dough proved.

 Bread Sticks

The first  thing we made were bread sticks, not the very thin brittle type of Grissini, you get on the table at Italian restaurants, these were more substantial.
Here are the 'toppings' that we had to choose from: olives, Parmesan cheese, sesame seeds and poppy seeds.

Colin showed us how to incorporate sesame seeds into our dough by folding the dough over the seeds, turning and folding again.
When you start to knead them into the dough, they rise to the surface.
By rolling and pushing the dough firmly in a circular motion against the table, the seeds start to go under the layer of dough.  Reading that back, I'm sure it makes not sense to anyone who hasn't seen it - you had to be there!

 Then you roll the dough flat and divide into strips.  Take each strip and roll it into a long sausage.
Place your chosen topping on a sheet of baking parchment on your baking tray, damp the bread stick with a little water from a spray bottle and roll in the topping.  You can also sprinkle with some flakes of sea salt.

These are Lou's lovely evenly rolled bread sticks.

These are my rather gnarly and unevenly rolled bread sticks - I think bread sticks can say a lot about your personality!

And here they are after baking.We tucked into them with a cuppa and discovered that you had to go easy on the salt, as some were a little oversalted, especially where we had used olives and parmesan!  However, they tasted great and we all agreed we would make them again.

We used the rest of the plain dough to make Fougasse, a traditional hearth bread, but with slashes cut into the flat breads.

These would be good with a bowl of soup, but as they are so plain, you really need something to go along with them.

The recipe for the bread sticks and the olive oil dough is on the Bread in Fife website, the Fougasse uses the same recipe as the bread sticks.

In Part Two I will show you about how we made pannini and the Focaccia featured at the top of the post.

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10 Comments:

At 3 November 2012 at 20:42 , Blogger Traceyr said...

All that bread is making me hungry Janice. That certainly is a long way to go to make bread but so glad you have had a good time. :)

 
At 3 November 2012 at 21:30 , Blogger Debs Dust Bunny said...

I would love to attend a bread making course. I bake most of the bread we eat but my skills are still pretty limited. I can't wait for part 2 to see more!

 
At 4 November 2012 at 00:50 , Blogger Please Do Not Feed The Animals. said...

Oh dear - not sure what you are trying to say about my personality! ;) Uptight and neurotic might be too close to the bone!

Love your documenting of the day and for posting all the detail - will be handy to refer back to.

You did mention on the day how we make things difficult for ourselves - choosing baking buddies at the opposite end of the country. Oh well - adds to the fun. :)

 
At 4 November 2012 at 00:56 , Blogger Lyn B said...

Love Focaccia, fantastic post :) Looking forward to part 2!

 
At 4 November 2012 at 08:20 , Blogger Chele said...

I saw Louise's post on this event too and it looks like it was a great day out. Colin is a great teacher isn't he.

 
At 4 November 2012 at 08:49 , Anonymous Laura loves cakes said...

What a fabulous day...your breads look wonderful and I bet it was great fun! I'm going on a bread course soon and I can't wait! You guys are all certainly dedicated bloggers travelling so far to the course! :-)

 
At 4 November 2012 at 09:02 , Blogger Janice said...

Lou -I'm in awe of your neatness and you are certainly not uptight and neurotic! I am always interested to see how differently people approach things, we had a great day and, despite the distance, I would definitely do it again.

 
At 4 November 2012 at 12:30 , Blogger Gez Butterworth said...

Sounds like a fab day was had by all. I think your bread sticks look fab and just perfect for little people!

 
At 4 November 2012 at 14:35 , Blogger Jacqueline Meldrum said...

It was a brilliant day! You have reminded me of a lot of the tips too. Great post Janice and roll on our next trip to Bread in Fife. Maybe in the Spring?

 
At 4 November 2012 at 21:00 , Blogger Choclette said...

What a brilliant day that sounds and what fun that the three of you managed to do it together. I did a fantastic baking course three years ago with Andrew Whitley, but I was the only food blogger on it.

 

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I love to read your comments and try to reply when I can. I have had to enable comment moderation due to high levels of spam, so it may take a little time before your comment is visible. Please let me know if you make one of my recipes or if you have any questions I will try to answer them. Janice

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