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Two buckwheat loaves
May. 9th, 2015 09:34 pmThe last two loaves I made have both contained a proportion of buckwheat. I was a bit hesitant about this, as none of my bread recipes mention buckwheat, and the bag has been at the back of the drawer for quite a long time. In fact, "quite a long time" is several years: it must be, because I bought the flour in France, and when did I last have an opportunity to do that? I buy buckwheat flour (sarrasin or blé noir to make savoury pancakes, as they do in Brittany, and just had to check that buckwheat really is the English name. My French/English dictionary won't tell me the French for 'buckwheat', but it's willing to tell me the English for sarrasin, so that's all right. Books tell you that flour becomes rancid if you keep it too long, but I've never noticed any problems.
Proportions were: the usual starter, made with white flour, plus a third each of (wholemeal) spelt, buckwheat and the crunchy wholemeal from Lode Mill.
First time round, I used sunflour oil, and added sunflower seeds at the last kneading, so that most of them were on the crust, for added crunch. I ran out of time, so it didn't have as long for the final rise as I would have liked, but it wasn't too dense, and had a good nutty flavour. It made excellent toast, but it was too crumbly to make good sandwiches (they tasted fine, but tended to disintegrate).
Next time, having remembered to buy some sesame seeds, I used sesame oil, and I may have been too mean with it (it's quite strongly flavoured, and I didn't want to overdo it) as the resultant loaf had a rather cracked crust. It tasted fine, but bits fell off when I sliced it. I meant to give it longer to rise in the tin, but forgot to do this before we went out for tea with J., so this loaf, too, had a short final rise; despite which it rose very nicely in the oven, and the sesame seeds made a very tasty crust.
That was the end of the bag of flour; no more buckwheat loaves until I've been to France to stock up again.
And in other culinary news, dinner was a gammon joint with Jersey new potatoes, asparagus and Provençal rosé, with raspberries to follow. Despite the grey clouds, I am trying to will it to be summer - we head north on Thursday.
Proportions were: the usual starter, made with white flour, plus a third each of (wholemeal) spelt, buckwheat and the crunchy wholemeal from Lode Mill.
First time round, I used sunflour oil, and added sunflower seeds at the last kneading, so that most of them were on the crust, for added crunch. I ran out of time, so it didn't have as long for the final rise as I would have liked, but it wasn't too dense, and had a good nutty flavour. It made excellent toast, but it was too crumbly to make good sandwiches (they tasted fine, but tended to disintegrate).
Next time, having remembered to buy some sesame seeds, I used sesame oil, and I may have been too mean with it (it's quite strongly flavoured, and I didn't want to overdo it) as the resultant loaf had a rather cracked crust. It tasted fine, but bits fell off when I sliced it. I meant to give it longer to rise in the tin, but forgot to do this before we went out for tea with J., so this loaf, too, had a short final rise; despite which it rose very nicely in the oven, and the sesame seeds made a very tasty crust.
That was the end of the bag of flour; no more buckwheat loaves until I've been to France to stock up again.
And in other culinary news, dinner was a gammon joint with Jersey new potatoes, asparagus and Provençal rosé, with raspberries to follow. Despite the grey clouds, I am trying to will it to be summer - we head north on Thursday.
