Cottage Loaf

I watched an interesting English TV show the other day, a woman called Mary Portas who is trying to get English shops to provide better service and products.  In this episode, she was trying to convince the owner of an independent bakery to start making artisan bread.  She failed, but they visited other bakeries who did make great bread, and I was reminded of cottage loaves.  We don't see these much in Australia, but they are a traditional English loaf, and I thought I would give it a try.  They look like a little collapsed snowman, with a smaller topknot sitting on a larger base.  I've nearly eaten all the rice bread so this will keep us in toast for a few days, if it works.  It promises to be a challenge.

Again, this is from Elizabeth David, simplified a bit.  She is turn derived it from a book called "Manna" by Walter Banfield, written in the 1930s.  I have a copy of that book, and it's very technical as it is more designed for commercial bread baking, using 1903s commercial ovens and technologies.  It's interesting to read though, and as it was written before all the modern rapid rise techniques, the quality of the bread he talks about is top notch.  It's really sad that Anglo-Saxon bread making has largely lost its heritage.

Ingredients


675g strong white flour
225g wholemeal flour
7g dried yeast
10g salt
500ml water

This is a basic recipe, I'm going to add a mix of seeds to mine, including poppy, sunflower, linseed and sesame.

Mix the dough and knead for the usual 8-10 minutes.  Leave to rise for an hour in a warm place, knock down.  Roll it into 2 balls, one a third of the total, so that the larger weighs twice as much.  Weigh the pieces if you're not sure.  The smaller piece will form the topknot.

Keep them separate, cover and let rise for about 45 minutes.  Now you have to join them together.  Flatten the top surface of the larger ball gently, and do the same for the base of the smaller one.  Cut a small cross with a very sharp knife into the top of the larger piece, about 3 cm across.  Now you have to push the smaller topknot onto the larger bottom (the 2 flattened surfaces together).  Make a cone shape with your thumb and first 2 fingers, make an indentation into the smaller piece, then push it down firmly onto the base.  It's a short controlled push, not too hard though as everything will collapse.

Now cover the joined loaf, if you have a plastic bucket this would be ideal.  Let it recover for about 10 minutes, and then put it into the oven.  The oven is not pre-heated for this recipe, it starts off cold.  Turn the oven on to 230 C, best not to use convection as you want the gradual increase in heat to let the dough rise again.  A convection setting would have the heat rise too quickly.  It should take about 45 minutes, watch closely from the 30 minute mark in case its getting too dark.  If it is, cover it with some aluminium foil.  I put some slashes in mine with a sharp knife for decoration.

The result:

I'm happy enough with this as a first attempt, but I'm not sure if I will try this again.  It was fiddly and the shape is not very practical.  It was fun to try though.

I'm very excited because I have ordered two clay pots for under cover bread baking in the oven, from the USA.  They should arrive this week.  I'm going to experiment with them next weekend, but before that I want to try and make some barley bread, which is supposed to be good for you and less fattening.  We'll see about the last part.