Freedom

While I am sad to have stopped baking bread commercially, I still think that it was the right thing to do. I am no longer tied to having to start at 5 every morning or be unable to go out for the day if I want. Not that I don't appreciate that for a lot of people that is the norm but after a 40-year career I feel that I should be able to take it easy if I so desire.
Not only that but I have been so wrapped up in producing a limited range of products that I've been unable to try any of the hundreds of recipes that I have for different breads.

So today (well I started yesterday but you know what I mean) I made a couple of breads that I haven't made for a long while.
First up was Marmite Bread, based on a recipe from James Morton, the bake-off bloke from a few years ago. This is a yeasted bread with added sourdough starter for flavour as well as the Marmite.
I mixed the dough last night and left it in the fridge,

and by this morning it had risen quite well.

I shaped it into a cold Casserole dish and let it rise while the oven warmed up to 240 degrees,

then it had 40 minutes with the lid on,

then 20 more with the lid off, until it was done.

after cooling it sliced as a dense, full flavoured loaf. Yvonne, who is not a Marmite fanatic enjoyed it.

The other loaf was a recipe from a website called Red Brolly, who do food and sewing blogposts. This one was called Summer loaf and has Cranberries, Walnuts and Pistachio nuts in it. Again its yeasted and has milk as well as water in it.

The dough rose well,

and I shaped it into two cast iron pots as it was a bit big for loaf tins. (3200 g of dough in a double mixture, it would have made 3 large tin loaves.) It has 100 g Pistachio nuts, 200 g Walnuts and 240 g Cranberries in it.

 As you can see it rose into a panettone sized loaf,

after 50 minutes baking at 230 degrees.

and I actually got a good distribution of fruit and nuts as well.

So that's two off the list; and bread for a week.