More bubbles in my sourdough

June 30, 2021

I’ve long been a sourdough fan and back in 2015 I shared how I made my loaf. It’s always made a fairly dense loaf and that’s been ok. Recently though I’ve been experimenting and have made a bubblier sourdough on more than one occasion, so today’s post is all about that.

It may be different to your sourdough recipe, or those of the sourdough artisan bakers - but this is my new way of making my sourdough. And part of the reason I’m sharing it here is so I can remember the quantities of the ingredients - sadly, true.

The ingredients are:

500g white bread flour
300g water
150g sourdough starter
8-10g salt.

Now having just compared that to my previous recipe I’ve realised that my experimenting has led me to swap the water and sourdough starter quantities. How strangely peculiar.

Anyway, the method is pretty much the same - combine all the ingredients until they come together, and leave in a warm place.

At this stage it is a bit bumpy and lumpy - but don’t lose faith. Every 30 minutes or so I use the flexible dough scraper to “turn” the dough, making sure I scoop from underneath and fold that into the top. I usually count 20 turns on each attempt.

Gradually it looks more like the dough you were expecting. Then I cover it and leave it in a warm place until I’m ready to cook it several hours later. The trick is to leave it long enough so the dough rises, but not too long that it over-prooves, as an example - if I start this around lunchtime, I’ll cook it between 9-10pm. If that tells you anything about me, it tells you I’m a night owl.

For cooking times - I heat the oven to 220 degrees and put a small ramekin of boiling water in the oven once it’s at temperature to help with the crust. I’ve taken to cooking the loaf on baking powder, but mainly so I know it will be easy to get off the small baking tray.

This loaf had a bubble at the top of the dough, and I learnt that that will burn. Next time I’ll make sure the bubbles are less obvious, I think.

It still tastes good though!

London Mules with Haycocks No 9

September 19, 2019

* This is a collaborative post

I am rather partial to a spot of gin. Which given its popularity right now is handy. So when I was invited to a Gin tasting and masterclass with Haycocks No 9, I think you can probably work out what my answer was.

Had I heard of Haycocks No 9 before? No, but there’s so many gins out there that that didn’t surprise me. What I learnt though was that it’s a spiced gin liqueur, it goes with everything (quite literally - and you know me, I like to be thorough in my testing) and I found a new gin to add to my gin list.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Haycocks No.9 (@haycockslondon) on Jun 19, 2018 at 4:28am PDT

We were greeted on arrival with a London Mule - Haycocks No 9, fresh ginger, lime juice and ginger beer, and very welcome it was too. In fact it’s a drink we might have had at least another of as the masterclass ended.

I’ve already mentioned that there’s hundreds of gins out there, so I was curious when they said the last thing they wanted to was make another gin, because the world doesn’t need another one. They didn’t want to add just another flavour. They realised that despite mixing so well, gin was never made for mixing, predating cocktails and tonic by decades.

Their inspiration is the humble coriander seed. Bear with me.

That’s why gin mixes so well, so they thought they’d create something different, but something that mixes as well as gin, but tastes like nothing else. And from the tastings we had, both with mixers and neat, it definitely tastes good.

Its botanicals are chosen not just for how well they go together, but also for how well they mix individually. Each one had to bring a citrus, zingy or uplifting spice note to the party. Think turbo-lemon-sherbert for grownups. But here’s the thing, there’s no lemon in sight. Unless you add a slice, of course.

As is my way I managed to choose a mixer that on its own sounded good but didn’t really deliver (Fentiman’s sparkling lime and jasmine drink - the one in the instagram photo above.), but when mixed with the gin, was very, very drinkable. In fact Haycocks paired with Fentimans at Taste London as the pairing worked so well. MOH tried his with Cherry Coke - also good (though I’m not a Cherry Coke fan), and with San Pellegrino bitters, again also good.

What’s more they explain the science on their website. And if you’re not feeling quite so brave, or need a bit of help or structure then there’s a fab Flavour Pairing Wheel which you can download too.

And as they said on the night it did take a fair bit of tasting to create, though no brand owners were permanently broken in the making of it (only temporarily!)

Tough work, I guess. But worth it.

Thanks Haycocks No 9 for a great evening, and for providing the opportunity to try your spiced gin liqueur with so many mixers.

* I was invited to this event to try the product and share an honest review on my blog. All views shared here, are as ever, my own.

Making three ingredient scones

September 12, 2019

I am rather partial to a scone. Whether it’s plain, fruit or cheese. With afternoon tea, or with soup (the cheese ones obviously). If you’re a cream then jam, or a jam then cream kind of person, I don’t mind.

I read a recipe recently, in the Sunday papers, about a three ingredient cookbook. It clearly stuck with me - one of the recipes was for scones - and I developed a scone craving. So while MOH cut the grass I gave it a go.

Can three ingredient scones, really work? The answer is kind of. Probably not for scone aficionados, but I think they’d be good for a scone craving, a bit of a science lesson or if you ever had the need for impromptu scones.

3 INGREDIENTS: LEMONADE, DOUBLE CREAM AND SELF-RAISING FLOUR

Yes, that’s right lemonade and cream and flour. And it works, weirdly. It fizzes too, hence the science lesson comment before. The recipe called for the flour to be sifted. Usually I wouldn’t bother, but given it was already a cheat recipe, I did. And quickly remembered why I usually don’t.

I do bake, but with more of a rustic style. Usually I can manage scones though. This time the mixture was quite claggy and my cutter was struggling, so they weren’t all quite as scone-like as perhaps they should be.