Regarding Sourdough Bread

We've been making nearly all of our own bread for years. I say 'nearly' because even I can be tempted by a tasty, fresh-baked interesting loaf at a bakers shop, and once in a while I get a craving for a cheese toasty and there's just no way anything but the pappiest bought loaf of sliced white will do for that. But other than a once every couple of months purchase, all of our bread comes from our own kitchen.

Like most bread wankers, we've got a regular loaf. For us thats a standard malted whole grain loaf made with dried yeast. Its a delicious loaf but variety is the spice of life, and our appreciation of it is boosted by having lots of other breads in-between. And sometimes that means sourdough.

Malted wholegrain sourdough.

I'm writing this blog post to sort of demystify sourdough culture, primarily for those who've been given subbings from one of our own sourdoughs. Its not an exhaustive guide or a list of recipes, the internet is full of those already. What I want to do here is talk you through the process so you understand how ridiculously easy and robust it is when you understand. Its not at all hard, and you'll be able to make artisan quality sourdoughs with ease.

I've summarised it in this video, but do read on for details.

What is sourdough?

The air around you is swarming with microbes. And I do mean swarming, they're everywhere. The surfaces around you are all covered in them. The food you eat is heavily infested with them. They're everywhere, all of the time. And thats fine, we've known that for a long time (although ironically that wasn't known in the time of Pasteur and Koch - the former, having discovered microbes everywhere but not that most were harmless became rather paranoid about it). Food in the open going off isn't about whether microbes find their way on to it, its about the way that the food is stored and handled creating specific environments where particular microbes dominate. Or in other words, if you store the same bread in the same bread bin, you get the same coloured spots of mold. Because the same conditions favour those mold species.

Sourdough is the same thing applied to certain species of yeast and bacteria. Yeast are simple fungi, they do most of the rising, making nice bubbles in the bread. There are a bunch of species you might find in a sourdough, and they're all cousins of the bakers and brewers yeasts you already know. But because they're wild ones, rather than the miracles of breeding that are used commercially, they're a bit slower, needing longer for the bread to get where you want it before baking. The bacteria are mostly what we call lactic acid bacteria, they're making it sour by fermenting the sugars mostly released from flour by enzymes from the yeast into lactic acid, which is the same glorious biochemistry as happens in yoghurt to make milk delightfully sour rather than off.

These things are everywhere, you've got yeast and lactic acid bacteria on you. Everyone has. And if you create an environment that favours their growth, then you too can have your own sourdough culture. Its really, really easy.

Ok then... How do I get sourdough culture?

You've got three options. You can buy one, either as a dried packet of mixed microbes or a wet culture, you can get one from someone who already grows their own sourdough, or you can isolate your own. None of these are hard. I'll only say I don't get why you'd use the dried culture, it doesn't save much time on isolating a wild one, and last time I saw a wet culture for sale it was £14.99, which is absurd. But if you choose to buy one then make sure its at least reasonably fresh. There's no point finding that its dead a week later when you could have made your own by then. Treat it according to the instructions it comes with and you'll be fine.

Alternatively, you may be lucky enough to get some from someone else. That also means you know someone who can tell you how to look after it, and thats great. But basically you're getting a way in thats brilliant and simple - there's no bad here.

But honestly? Making your own is a doddle. Its dead easy. You need four things - rye flour, bread flour, a container with a lid, and a little time. 

Wheat and rye with sesame, chia and sunflower seeds. Seedy breads are often dense, but delicious.

Making your own sourdough culture in 4 easy steps

1. Mix about a teaspoon each of rye flour and strong white bread flour with enough water to make a thick paste or very slack dough. Leave it until tomorrow in a loosely covered container - pick a corner of a kitchen work bench and leave it there.

2. Sniff it. Look at it. Poke at it impatiently. Then add another spoonfull each of white and rye flours, and enough water to get it to a thick paste again.

3. Ignore it for a day or two and nothing bad will happen, but each day you should be looking to add as much again as you have, until its growing gooey and yeasty all on its own. When you get as far as adding a couple of tablespoons of each flour, you'll maybe have to throw some away so you don't just have a house full of not-yet-ready culture.

4. After 1-2 weeks you've got a fast growing sourdough. Start making bread.

Ok, so how do I make the bread?

Oh, the internet is full of recipes for that. Its not hard. Make a dough by any of the recipes, and it will work.

My standard recipe uses 3 cups of flour (of which at least 1 is  white bread flour, but the others might be wholemeal, rye, malted wholegrain, or whatever else), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt,  and about 8 tablespoons (give or take) if my sourdough culture, with enough water to make it in to a fairly slack bread dough. By 'slack' I mean that I like it a little wetter than a yeast bread dough. If I won't be able to use the bread up fast then a third of a cup of that water is replaced with oil. Sometimes I add some bread improver, just a couple of teaspoons. Its easy to buy now, it contains gluten and ascorbic acid, both of which give the yeast a boost and stabilise the bubbles in the dough. And I might also add some other flavours - I've used all sorts like seeds, fruit, herbs, beetroot powder, take your pick. 

Mix the dough up, kneed for a couple of minutes, cover it up and rest it. Doesn't have to be anywhere hot but out of any drafts is a good idea. Let it double in size and then punch it. Let the air back out, and shape it. You can put it into a loaf tin now, or one of those posh baskets for 'proving' bread. Or on a well seasoned baking tray.

In summer it'll be risen again in an hour or two but when its colder I don't mind leaving it overnight. Get an oven hot (200-210C) with a tray of water on the bottom shelf - this is important and really helps you get a good crust. Bake it for about 30 minutes, until it sounds kind of hollow when you flip it over and tap the bottom. And let it cool to 'set up the crust' before eating it.

And thats it. Its the easiest thing in the world.

If you have any questions, put them in below. Thanks for reading!

Dinner diary - Jugged Hare and Tagliatelle alla Lepre

So it seems little known that there's an Italian dish almost the same as the great English classic, jugged hare. And if you judge things right, you get a splendid two-for out of one big cook. If you've a chance to cook this then please, please have a go - this is one of the all-time classic dishes and it is of quite incomparable flavour. Hare isn't especially like rabbit - it is richer, gamier, darker, and just basically better. And this is from someone who you'll know, if you read this blog, loves rabbit.

To begin with, you must procure tour hare. If they're thin on the ground where you are, don't. If you can find a good game dealer who you trust then thats great. Ideally, you'd get the hare in its skin.

Now, if you do manage that (as I did with this one, but I'll spare the images of processing it for now) hang it head side down for a few days. I'd tell you exactly how long but you can't know. You know its ready when you brush aside the white fur on its belly and the fat under the skin is starting to turn green. That doesn't mean anything untoward is happening, it just means that the bacteria in its gut have done their job and its ready. Now skin it, carefully, and save all the blood you can.

When I got this hare, way back, I cooked the saddle in another dish and saved the rest alongside the offal (liver, kidneys and heart) and froze the lot. After defrosting, I marinated it. The marinade contains herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, bay), a few cloves of garlic, olive oil, blackberry (or 'red') wine, salt, pepper and juniper berries. Some marinade it overnight, some don't do so at all. I like to put it on in the morning and cook it later. Does it make a difference? Yes, it really intensifies the flavour. But some don't like that as much, its already rich and gamey enough. Yes, that is the rib-cage in there. Yes, you do cook that. And strip the meat off it. 

Sautee stock vegetables until just turning brown (onion, carrots, celery, all chopped relatively coarsely) and reserve. Now get the pan very hot. Save all the wet ingredients from the marinade and dry off the hare before browning it. The smell at this stage is amazing. You could, if you really wanted to, not brown it and go very old-school with this recipe - literally put it in a big pan or a jug, cover it, and cook it therein. But its better browned, you get a more intense taste. After its browned, put it back in with the marinade, the stock vegetables, and probably the rest of the bottle of wine you used and the offal. And then add mushrooms, and plenty of them. 

Deglaze the pan with the rest of your wine (I use a whole bottle, half in the marinade, half added later). Season it the stew, and cook it now for at least three hours in a low oven, until the meat is very, very tender. And now its time to perform some genuine magic. Remember you saved the blood? You're going to put it in the sauce. Take the hare out, and when its cool enough to handle (because you'll need to strip it off the bones in a moment), put the rich sauce on a very low heat but do not boil it. Those clever folk in Italy realised that this is even better with some chocolate in it, so put a square of dark chocolate in the blood, and take some of the sauce and put it into the blood to warm it up. Then slowly add the blood mix into the sauce, stirring the whole time, while keeping it warm but not boiling it. Watch the sauce take on a sheen, a shininess. Strip all the meat off the bones as best you can, break it up, and put it back into the sauce.  And now you're ready to serve - its great with roast veg, but I go for mash or baked spuds to soak up the gravy, and something like cabbage.

We had a guest over when we had this as jugged hare, but we had enough for a really hefty portion with pasta the next day (image at the top). It should really be pappardelle, but my other half prefers tagliatelle - thats the dish at the top there. Its basically jugged hare with pasta, and its great. 

There are many variants of this dish. Some put shallots in the marinade. Some add some spices. But however you do it this is one of the greatest game dishes you'll ever encounter - and if you've got game lovers coming to dinner its hard to think of a better thing to cook for them. If you can't get it with the blood in, don't be put off, its still a great dish without. But there's something of a spectacle to cooking the blood in, so if you can do that, its even better. And it really does lift the sauce to another level - if you can't get that, maybe a little butter won't hurt. 

And thats it - a slow to prepare but actually very simple dish. And hard to beat.

Dinner Diary - Beef and Mushroom Rogan Josh

Yes, we're making freezer space for beef coming next week, so we're eating a LOT more meat this week than normal. Which meant defrosting two big chunks on which the labels had faded. One turned out to be very exciting indeed, and I'll cook that tomorrow. The other turned out to be still pretty good - a big chunk of lean beef. And I had a hankering for something spicy. So, a simple Rogan Josh was the choice.

This is an easy enough dish to cook. Make a paste by dropping maybe three cloves of garlic, an inch of ginger, two or three chilis, salt, pepper, some cloves, cardamon pods, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, paprika and some lemon juice into the food processor, and zuzz them up. 

Now brown your meat off, in batches if you must, and put it into a stew pot. Turn the oven on at 180C, and try not to eat too many bits of beef once they're deliciously browned. When its all brown, put a bit more oil in the pan and soften off a chopped onion, before adding your paste and cooking it until its aromatic. It doesn't take long, but it makes such a difference to the flavour of the final dish if you do this. You're basically frying off the paste and using it to get the meat flavour back off the pan surface. When you've done this, add maybe a cup and a half of stock, swirl it around, and pour it on to the meat. 

Now in go the mushrooms - about the same volume of shrooms as of meat is good. Here I used the same as I've been putting in dishes all week - field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, blewits and parasols (with a couple of little oyster mushrooms) but use what you've got. 

And then in goes maybe a cup and a half of yoghurt, at least for the amount we were cooking, and half a teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir this in well. Yes, you can use low fat yoghurt if you like, in fact thats what I had so thats what I used. And then into the oven you go with it, for maybe an hour. If when you check it it looks a bit too watery, take the lid off and let it reduce.

And basically thats it - at the end, when you taste it, if you want a little more spice add some garam masala and cook it on the hob for a minute you can, but you might be happy with how it is before that so give it a go. 

I felt a bit retro yesterday so I cooked rice with a spoon of turmeric in. I like the flavour of that, and I love the colour. Basmati is my go-to kind of rice, so I used that. 

By cooking this with mushrooms its a really rich, deeply flavoured sauce, and by cooking it for an hour in the oven almost any cut of beef will work well. Its ideal if you've a mystery lump in the freezer.

Dinner Diary - Beef Fillet with Wild Mushroom and Tomato Tagliatelle

So this sounds impossibly posh. I know. Believe it or not, this was glut management. One of the joys of being a suburban peasant - this cost me less than a spagbol would have done!

We buy beef by the eighth of a bullock. There's a farmer we deal with directly, not far from here, feeds their cattle on nothing but grass and produces really excellent beef. The plus side? Supporting the habitat made good by grazing, keeping a local business afloat, and getting superb quality product at a brilliant price. The down side? Well its nose to tail and a flat price for everything, and it means storing a freezer load. But thats ok, we usually get two eighths and split it among friends. Much homebrew is drunk on beef sharing night. Its almost as exciting as pig day, but involves eating fewer ears and trotters.

Anyway, because its nose to tail we get everything, including cuts I'd not normally buy. Like fillet steak - which is good (amazing from a well raised animal like this) but just not as good as many of the other cuts. Honestly, a well aged sirloin steak is tastier. It is however amazingly tender and great to cook fast. 

I also had, if you remember the last recipe, a spare pan full of wild mushrooms that I'd cooked off in the oven yesterday. Now this is a handy trick - if you want to get a great texture out of mushrooms in a pasta dish like this, and if you want to really intensify the flavour, its a great idea. They were baked off in the oven for about half an hour the day before while I was cooking something else.

As for the other ingredients, there's some sliced onion, chopped parsley, garlic, and half a dozen tomatoes skinned and sliced. Oh, and a glass of wine. And, of course, the pasta. We've got a garden full of chickens so making pasta is a common thing for us - 250g of pasta flour and two eggs, and a little salt, go into the Kenwood chef bowl and get beaten to a breadcrumb texture. Thats put through the pasta attachment and hey-presto, inside of ten minutes while you're softening off your onion and garlic in a little oil, you've got pasta.

You don't have to make fresh pasta of course but, you know, why not? If you don't have an extruder like this its not especially hard to mix it by hand and use a pasta roller. But there's nothing wrong with buying pasta.

Take the onion and garlic out of the pan, put it back on the heat. and season the meat. Salt and pepper on one side, and when your pan is smoking hot put some oil in and put the meat in seasoned side down. Normally someone writing up a recipe would say how long for rare, how long for medium etc. But thats nonsense - this is thick cut fillet and you're having it rare. Look at the side of the meat when its in the pan, and when its approaching half way done at the edge season the top, flip it over and cook it just as hard on the other side. Then take it out and rest it.

While its resting, that's time to cook the pasta and make the sauce. You know how to cook a pan of pasta. For the sauce, deglaze the pan with some wine, chop the cooked mushrooms coarsely and put them in, add the tomatoes and parsley, and put the onions and garlic back in. And reduce it all down a bit. When the pasta is done, add a little butter to the sauce and that's it. The last thing to do is add the meat back in.

If you've cooked the meat right it'll look like this when you slice it up. 

You want it red and juicy. Now all you have left to do is drain the pasta and mix everything thoroughly. the most common thing people in the UK do wrong with a pasta dish is they don't mix everything together at the end. Take your time, get it all, including the meat, well and truly combined with the pasta.

Dress it with a little more parsley, and thats it. I know, right, it sounds sinfully extravagant. But heck, thats one of the big advantages of being a suburban peasant. Buy direct, pick your own mushrooms, and decadent luxury is entirely affordable.

Dinner Diary - Partridge Buried in Mushrooms

I didn't post up our weekend nosh because, frankly, I'm not sure the world is ready for our pork chop recipe.

Until we deem the world can take that, here's something I cooked yesterday to use up the last two partridges from the freezer. Partridge Buried in Mushrooms. Doesn't sound right does it? Ok, lets call it perdrix sous les champignons. Sounds more like a £30 quid a plate job, right?

After defrosting the birds, this simple stew started out as most do, with onion, celery and carrot chopped up and sizzling in a pan.

Why do stews always start this way? You're softening up the cell membranes in the vegetables and releasing flavours to react with each other (pyrolysis of the sugars and all sorts of other things going on). But this holy trinity of stock vegetables turns a relatively bland idea into something fit for a king. If you want to save time, start them off with a little water and cook as hot as you dare until thats mostly driven off, and then add your oil for frying - you'll find you start getting caramelisation much faster that way.

While thats going on season the partridges with salt and pepper and dredge some flour over them. Just a little to brown and add colour. Just above the partridges there you'll also see a bouquet garni - or in other words a bunch of herbs tied together with string. I used parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and bay. And then on to the mushrooms... This dish is absolutely divine if you use blewits, especially wood blewits, but you can hurl in whatever you have. I used a mix of wood blewits, field blewits, parasols, field mushrooms and I think there was a single yellow cracking bolete in there. 

If you have to buy mushrooms then you have my condolences. Chestnut or button mushrooms will do fine, but make sure you have enough to pretty much bury the partridges when they're in the pan. Chop them to a size that they're about eatable, and put them aside.

Now brown the partridges - scoop the veg out of the pan and put them aside, and heat the pan to smoking hot. Expect the partridges to leave some colour in the bottom of the pan - YOU WANT THIS TO HAPPEN, IT IS NOT BURNING. Brown them top and bottom, and see whether you've a stray glasses of wine or cider to de-glaze the pan with. 

Whats that, it looks like I burned the bottom of the pan? Yes, it does. That stuff is called flavour there - the browning there colours the sauce and gives you a rich flavour when you get it off in deglaze.

Now turn it down, put your stock veg back in and keep putting mushrooms in the pan until you can't see the partridges. Yes, really. And then add in enough stock to maybe go less than half way up the sides of the mushrooms, to not cover the partridges entirely. Yes, again, really. You're cooking the partridges in the mushroom juice in this dish, which gives them an amazing flavour and produces a sauce so rich and flavoursome you'll be amazed by it. 

This goes in the oven until its good and done. Cover it with a well fitting lid, give it half an hour at 180C, open it up and make sure that there's enough juice starting to flow. Turn the birds over, and then put it back in the oven for another half an hour at 180C. Then turn it down to 160C and forget about it. The meat is on the bone so it won't disintegrate, it'll just keep getting better and better. If you leave it in there an hour more it'll still be fine, but don't let it dry out. You should end up with the birds around half covered by the sauce. 

You've got a hot oven on when you're cooking this so use it all - I put baked spuds and roast pumpkin on at the same time to go with it, and also cooked another pan full of mushrooms at the same time for tomorrow. If you're heating that whole space, you might as well use it.

To serve, well, you can't go far wrong with a crisp, steamed brassica and whatever other vegetables you've baked or roasted. Put a generous scoop of mushroomy gravy on the plate alongside everything else.

This is an absolutely top dish to serve as an autumn-warmer or even for game loving dinner guests. If you find yourself with a few pigeons to eat, they're good cooked this way, as is rabbit, or even pheasants. If doing pheasant you might be well served to half them before cooking this way, and of course you'll want to joint your bunny. You can even cook chicken this way - its great with chicken legs. The important thing here is to cook the meat on the bone - you're giving it a long, slow cook, and you're not trying to make soup.

If you want to vary this dish a bit, garlic works. With pigeons adding a few crushed juniper berries is delicious. But don't feel restrained by any stew recipe - everything here is interchangeable. Just know your ingredients and cook what seems right.

Dinner Diary - Partridge Baked in Pastry, Spiced Pumpkin

Wrapping a whole bird in pastry isn't new, but its something I think we should explore more. Whether its a short paste, puff paste or even a dumpling dough, this is something with a great and illustrious history - everything from batter puddings through to the decadent Cailles en Sarcophages of Babettes Feast, they're always exceptional dishes.

A while ago when we had a friend visiting with her kids I wanted to cook something that children would think 'wow thats amazing' but a parent might still get a kick out of, so I baked a whole chicken wrapped in pastry. Not a weekday dinner though, so today I did something rather more sensible. 

If you follow this blog you know I picked up a pile of partridges in Ely recently, and that I made extra pastry on Saturday. 

This evening I rolled out some pastry to, well, about the diameter of a small dinner plate, egged around the edges and put a partridge (seasoned with a few slivers of horse mushroom and some butter in it) in the middle before sealing it up. I did one bird each. Its a good idea to put them back in the fridge for a while to firm up the pastry before putting them into a hot oven.

Now while the oven was heating up I rubbed spices (coriander, cinnamon, paprika, salt and pepper) onto quarter of a pumpkin and put that into the oven. After that had 15 minutes or so, I put the partridges in. When they came out they looked something like this...

The pastry wrapped birds just needed a little rest, which is great because that gives lots of time to prepare everything else. While my other half washed some cauliflower and put it on to steam, I scraped the pumpkin out into the pan it was roasted in, added a little butter and lemon juice, and mashed it up. And thats it - a show-stopping dinner, and really easy. 

Dinner Diary - PIE DAY!

Was going to be out at a friends monthly D&D game on Sunday which means making and taking some food. And for food on the go, nothing is really better than pie.

I'd say I'm not one to blow my own trumpet but thats a flat out lie. I make kick ass pastry, in a wide variety of recipes, but very often the simplest is best. One pastry, many pies, thats hard to beat. So this was a simple shortcrust - 400g of butter, 800g of flour, a half a teaspoon of salt, beaten with the K beater of a Kenwood chef until it was like breadcrumbs (or cut the butter up and rub it through your fingertips - won't take that long). Thats enough pastry for about four good sized (plate) pies, or, as I was planning, two pies with more pastry in the fridge for week ahead. Once you've got crumbs, keep adding cold water with one hand while working it with the other until you've got pastry. Take it out of the bowl onto a floured board, kneed for a few minutes, and then put it back in a bowl, put a teatowel over it, and put it in the fridge for an hour or two.

Resting your pastry helps so much - it'll work more easily and roll out better. After resting it, I buttered two plates (dinner plates with a good sized rim) rolled a glob of pastry out thin (a little over 1/8 of an inch) and cut it to size. Then its time to fill your pie.

I had a pack of pigeon breasts to used up, and a fridge full of wild mushrooms. So in go the breasts, then salt and pepper and the shrooms, then an egg wash on the outer edge and more pastry on top...

But what about blind baking? What about keeping the crust stiff? I'm glad you asked. Now get all that Bake Off bollocks out of your head, this is real food. Look, the shrooms there will shrink below the pastry, but not before the pastry has set when you put it into a hot-ish oven. So you're left with a lovely crisp top with a gorgeous pastry bottom thats set and firm underneath but soft where it meets the meat. Thats what happens when you butter use butter on the plate and butter in the pastry. 

Anyway, egg wash the top, crimp all round the side with a fork (savoury pies get a fork crimp) and importantly put a few fork holes in the top to let steam out, and you're ready to bake.

The other pie was apple - in go sliced cooking apples, a good hefty sprinkling of sugar and some cinnamon.

Tap it on the bench to sink the sugar and cinnamon in, and then top it as for the pigeon pie (egg round the edge, pastry, egg glaze) but crimp around it with your thumbs. This is a sweet pie, thats what you do. Thumb. Not fork crimp. And put a hole in the top for steam, and you'll get a good crust again.

Bung it in the oven at 200C for 10 minutes, then turn it down to 170C for about half an hour, maybe longer - until when you stick a skewer in its all hot through. And put it aside to cook - it will be delicious.

Pigeon and mushroom pie cooked this way gives a subtle mushroom flavour all through the pigeon, with a rich musoroomy layer on top. Look how the pastry is crisp and the innards of the pie moist and lovely.

And the apple pie is, well, an apple pie with lots of cinnamon. Its an all round champion of a pie, as apple pie always is.

Now this plate pie principle is pretty much universal. You can put in mince and onion (add a little splash of water and a teaspoon of flour), chicken and mushroom, or mince and potato, bacon and egg (literally chopped bacon and beaten egg, its great), sausage meat, quince and apple, blackberry and apple, quite literally nearly anything. Sliced veg and just a little white sauce is good. The basic principle of a thick plate pie is the simplest kind of baking you an imagine, and is pretty much always a winner. And its great game night food.