Stop moaning FFS, it’s not like it should be a surprise is it? It’s Winter, just get on with it, it’ll be spring before you know it.

Anyway, the good news is that now you’re hibernating in your house and grumbling about the weather, it’s time to bake some bread you lazy gits. If you don’t have any leaven because you let it die then don’t come crying to me but you can still make something with yeast (not the dried stuff, the real stuff).

So tell me what you fancy and I might even do a recipe for it. Don’t be shy.

In those heady days of “Ready Steady Cook” there you were in the background, making the odd insulting comment from your restaurant kitchen. Ainsley Harriott was a “clown”, Worral Thompson “The Squashed Bee Gee”, and all the so called “celebrity chefs” on shows of its type were “jokers”.  I’ll admit it, your comments made me laugh. There you were running a Michelin starred restaurant and concentrating on the cooking whilst when you had a spare moment lambasting those who were cooking for the sake of entertainment and ratings. I respected you for it; your sneery jibes were a tonic to the beige middle England “entertainment” shows of yore. You were an angry chef, a real chef, a macho chef.  Hell, my Wife wanted to sleep with you. I mean shit, I wanted to sleep with you. Ok well, I wanted to cook with you at least.

Suddenly there you were on “Faking it”.  The little Geordie guy you trained did fabulously well and it was a cracking programme.  Didn’t you get a BAFTA for it or similar?  Then came “Kitchen Nightmares” Wow, Ramsay is on TV again, this should be good I thought.  And it was.  Lots of swearing, entertainment, cooking. Good clean macho fun.  And I liked you all the more. I ate in your restaurants, always good. Well, apart from Maze, the less said about that the better.

Then came “Hells Kitchen” and The F-Word”. Hmm, starting to get a little self indulgent here I thought.  But no, I stuck with you. Another “Hells Kitchen” came along.  It was weak and lame to say the least.  A tired format hanging its chefs whites on the hook of your personality.  It was at that point that for me you became a caricature of yourself. No longer entertaining but bullying and mean. A boorish reincarnation of the Ramsay I once admired.  I’d almost had enough, but not quite.

You were opening restaurants at a great rate and your business seemed to be booming.  Fair play to you I thought, use the exposure, the media wont love you forever after all.  I still admired you for what you’d created. The restaurants, the jobs, the brand.

Along came Hells Kitchen USA.  No Gordon.  Whilst your fee might have been fantastic, for me your stock was becoming less consommé and more cold, congealed Bisto. You were getting more TV exposure than Jamie, but whilst Jamie is happy-go-lucky, you were bully-boy-mucky.  I found myself shaking my head when I saw your name on the Electronic Programme Guide. Whilst flicking through the channels the sight of your face would ensure a fast click to the next channel.  My love affair with brand Ramsay was most definitely over.

I trust this finds you in good spirits and I hope that you decide to do what you have previously done best, that is to cook.  As in behind the pass.  In a restaurant.  Cooking. Impressing with your talent and your culinary creations as opposed to being photographed out with various celebrities, doing chat shows, other “appearances” and the like.  I’d like the original Gordon back please.  Aubergine Gordon will do.  So to paraphrase you, stop fucking about you fucking clown, get back to the kitchen, and get fucking cooking.

Regards

Doughblogs

What to do, what to do?  Think sweet bread, think France, think brioche, croissant, pain au choc etc.  Delicious yes, but a bit too obvious and predictable. I was chatting to Lisa Tse recently from Sweet Mandarin in Manchester, and she mentioned that she wanted to try to make char siu crosses with my leaven, so I thought aha! How about something based on that fluffy, sweet dough used for those pork buns of loveliness which I like to buy from Chinese bakers?  So I started doing some research, and found an old Japanese way of making bread super-fluffy and light, using something called “Tang Zhong” (let’s not be too poncy, it’s a flour and water roux). I experimented a bit, then experimented some more, and wallah!  So Ms Miers, this one’s for you, with a new Chinese/English proverb:  “May all your dunks be heavenly mouthfuls“.  More scope for rude gags.  Ok, ok.  I’ll get on with it.

For the Tang Zhong:

30 g strong bread flour
150g water

Chuck both in a non-stick pan, put the heat on medium and whisk until it comes together and thickens. It’ll take about 5 minutes and you want the consistency of glue / wallpaper paste.  Do not, on pain of bamboo under your fingernails let it colour.  Using a spatula, scrape it into a bowl and cover tightly with cling film and let it cool to room temperature.

For the bread:

More plausibly, I’m taking the site in a different direction so am swapping over to a “hold” whilst this is sorted. Hopefully it’ll swap in the next 3 days or so, if it doesn’t, and you can read this in September, it proves I am a techno-moron.

Well, the end of October is here and it’s almost sorted, just a bit more editing to do.

There’s a temorary solution.  You become a smug scientist for the day. Holly Goodhead if you will.  “Recipe” wise, you will need:

plastic box with a tight lid which your bowl (or whatever) will fit into
double bed sheet
bucket
water
a clothes peg or similar

What you do:

Put your bowl, covered in cling film in the box.  Soak the bed sheet in the bath until its wet through.  Wrap the box with the bed sheet leaving a corner hanging out somewhere. Twist it up to make a wick-like end. Put on the clothes peg to stop it unravelling.

Put the sheet covered box in a windy place. A balcony, garden table, doesn’t matter as long as there is some wind passing over it.

Fill the bucket with water and stand it next to the box.  Stick the “wick” end in the bucket.  The wind causes evaporation of the water contained in the sheet, this “pulls” heat from the box and it cools. The bucket of water and the wick keeps the sheet wet.

Wallah*! You now have your own evaporation fridge, and are the envy of all your friends.  It’ll keep your dough cool even on hot days, as long as there is wind passing over it. The stronger the wind the cooler the box and its contents become.

* It’s voila of course. I just like Wallah.

It’s game bird season.  In the same vein as chocolate with venison, liquorice marries perfectly with game flavours so why not incorporate it in the bread?  Great with grouse, either roast or casserole,  rabbit, woodpigeon, or hare. The bread is also excellent with a glass of malbec and some tangy, smooth goats cheese.  We’ll be doing this one on a Baking Day in the not too distant future, so I won’t spoil the fun and publish the recipe just yet.

Lucy Cooks

Evidently Lucy has a penchant for handsome dough mixers and who can blame her?! This is excellent news, and I look forward to throwing my dough in her general direction. Outstanding! More anon.

How to incorporate them into a bread recipe? Umm aah. Wizz them up with oil? Roast them and squish them into dough? Make small rolls containing a devilish surprise? Stuff them and wrap them with a chickpea flatbread?

So give me your ideas please.  If you’re a bored housewife (can I say that? Is it PC?), maybe I should say “stay at home mum”? No that’s dull. The porn industry doesnt make films and magazines called “bored stay at home mums” do they?  So bored or not, housewife or not, let’s have your ideas!

Best bread idea (ie the one I like) wins a jar of chilli chutney, sent presto pronto.   I’ll close it a week from today, ideas in the “leave a reply” section below please.

ETA – Made Als chilli pain au choc.  Nice but used too much cardamom (my fault entirely), and actually, it’s not going to use enough of the chilli mountain.  So am going to go with the Jesus idea of a curry bun, using a vegetable chilli and packing it into a naan-style chickpea bread.

So the Messiah gets the jar of arse blowing bullets of gloriousness.  Well done the lord.

I’m going to assume that you’re going to bake on a Sunday, and lets say that your leaven arrived on Thursday. You’ve completed the steps when your leaven arrived, and it’s sitting quite happily in the fridge, fermenting away. If it wasn’t a Thursday, then just do what I suggested when it arrives, then do it again 2 days before you bake – you want it in really good condition.

On Saturday morning, take it out of the fridge, and scrape all your leaven into a big bowl, yes all of it. Add 200 grams of room temp water, and mix in well. Then add 200 grams of strong white bread flour, and mix again until incorporated. Cover it with cling film and put it somewhere cool (not the fridge), then wash your kilner jar. It wont want to mix at first, but just cut across the leaven with a spoon and be a bit vigourous

On Sunday morning when you get up, do the following (you choose the time of course, I’m not the boss of you)

9am – take your leaven  and weigh out 500 grams into a clean large bowl. You’ll have a small amount left, put that back in the kilner jar, and back into the fridge to forget about it for a few days.

add 550 grams of water (room temp) to your ready weighed 500 grams of leaven and mix well.

weigh out 600 grams of flour (strong white) and 400 grams of a mixed grain malted type flour and 2 1/2 tsp of salt (don’t use table salt, it’s rank, and has anti-caking agent in it. Use a decent one like Maldon and grind it up in a pestle and mortar, it needs to be really fine) give the dry ingredients a mix with a fork, then chuck them into your water/leaven mix.

mix all this together, turning the bowl all the time until such point that you need to get your hands in it and really squish it together. Don’t be shy. You want all the water to be incorporated and all the flour evenly distributed. It’ll be sticky and a bit alien-like, but fear not.

Once its all incorporated, cover the bowl with a tea towel and wash your hands of the sticky dough that’s attached itself. Set your timer for 10 minutes and make a cup of tea, or do whatever it is you do to kill ten minutes (no smutty jokes).

when you hear the beep, put 2 drops of oil (olive or groundnut) on your work surface, and rub it round til you have a 12 inch-ish circle. Don’t use more than 2 drops, it’s all you need. take your dough and turn it out onto the surface. For ten seconds ONLY use the heel of your hand to push the bit nearest to you away from you, and over the main lump of dough. then turn it a quarter turn and do it again, then again, until you get back to the beginning. Wash our your bowl, dry it, put a touch of oil in it and rub it round then chuck your dough back in, and cover with a cloth for another ten minutes.

how to knead

do the kneading again – remember, only for ten seconds. cloth goes back on. timer also goes back on for another ten minutes.

knead again, same thing – 10 seconds. then set your timer for 30 minutes.

when the times up, knead it again, cover the bowl and set your timer for an hour.

when you hear the beep, weigh your dough, then divide it into two – you can do this with a really sharp knife, its a piece of piss. Cut it though, don’t tear it.

shape each piece into a ball. you do this by taking the dough, patting it out a bit (don’t go mad) then pulling the sides into the middle and pressing down so you’re effectively stretching it a little. place your dough balls seam side down on your floured surface. The next bit is the folding, so watch this really professionally made, no-expense-spared video and you will be a master in no time.

FOLDING AND SHAPING

So, your dough is now happily in your tins, cover with ripped plastic bag but don’t let the plastic touch the dough. Leave it for about 3 hours. You want it to double in size. Don’t get wound up about this because at first you won’t know exactly when it’s “ready”. You’re not dealing with commercial yeast so it isn’t critical. It also depends on the temperature of your kitchen, the weather and overall atmospheric conditions. In my kitchen it takes between 2 and a half to 3 hours on a fine day. After the second hour turn on your oven to full whack so the oven is up to temperature when the dough has proved. It’s actually better to put in the oven when it’s under proved than over proved – if you leave it too long it may collapse in the oven.

Just before you put the tins in the pre-heated oven you must do two things, both are critical so pay attention at the back. Your dough needs steam. Comercial bakeries have special ovens which have steam jets on timers, but you don’t, so you have to compromise. You need steam in the oven to stop the crust from forming too soon, which would prevent a decent rise. You also want it because it helps to develop the crust texture and flavour.

Take off the plastic bags from the dough, and with a spray mister set on fine spray, give both lots of dough a good spray with water – you want them to glisten but not be drowned, so about 3-4 sprays each. Then open the oven door and spray water inside the oven – about 8 fast pumps of the trigger (no sniggering) then quickly but smoothly place your tins on the oven shelf (no baking sheet, just on the bars) and gently but quickly close the door and turn the temp down to 220. Time it for 15 minutes. When it beeps, turn down the oven to 180 and cook for about an hour. Because you’re a nosy git you’ll want to look through the oven window. Yes! it’s risen. As you dance up and down on the spot feeling super clever and smug about what you’ve done you’ll then start to worry that the tops of the loaves are going really brown. Don’t worry, you want this for a proper crust as opposed to a hideous, inspid, soft, miserable, dysfunctional “crust” found on supermarket loaves.

After an hour take our your tins. With an oven glove or whatever turn out your loaves – you might have to give them a strong tap on the bottom (oh yes). If you then hold the loaf, topside town and tap the base of the loaf, you’ll hear that it sounds hollow, and this is your indication that it’s cooked, and you are now a bread god. Your breadmaker can be relegated to the cupboard under the stairs, or (better) the tip. As they cool you will hear them – it’s the crust cracking, it’s quite pleasant actually.

Wait for them to get fully cold, and slice them. Don’t eat it hot, you’ll get worse indigestion than Mr Creosote.

I normally slice them up and put the whole sliced loaf in a freezer bag, seal the end and bung in the freezer. But you’ll no doubt want to taste it before you do that, so go on, you know you want to you little minx. If you don’t want to slice it all just put it in an airtight bag but keep it mind that it’ll only last about 3 days max because there’s no fat or preservative in it. if you don’t want to freeze it, and want a loaf that lasts for a week, when you start your recipe substitute 20 grams of good olive oil for 20 grams of water.

This is how it should look – note the air captured in the grain, and the fab chewy crust (don’t even think about cutting off the crust when you eat it, it’s got bags of flavour, and chewing it helps digestion) Note too that it’s pretty rustic.

Keep in mind that due to the manual folding process of the dough that when it goes into the super hot temperature of the oven, that the CO2 produced can do funny things to the bread – it can tear it in odd places (usually the side with loaves) but don’t worry, it just adds to its character and chewy crust.

it’s excellent toasted, but as there is no sugar added to it it can take a while to brown, far slower than sugar laden loaves of awfulness.

So there you have it. No commercial yeast, no preservatives, no nonsense. Just flour, water, salt and natural leaven.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read about food “intolerance”. What does it really mean? Is it the GP’s way of saying “I have no idea, don’t eat wheat, you’ll be fine”? Is is even real? There seems to be a lot of intolerance when it comes to wheat based things and therefore bread, and the fabulous Richard Bertinet (of “Dough” and “Crust” fame) suggests that part of the issue with bread could well be due to the amount of preservatives in supermarket bread, the fact its undercooked, and that it doesn’t have a proper crust to chew  (which stimulates production of saliva therefore helping digestion).

My mate Andy (who has Crohns disease) always has issues with bread, and whilst some other flours such as spelt are not technically wheat free, anecdotally they don’t seem to cause the same kind of issues that full wheat type flour can cause. It should be noted that if you have a medical condition, make your own decisions about what passes your lips. Spelt is not suitable for a gluten-free diet as it contains gluten.  It’s a sub-species of wheat by the way – try it. It’s delicious.

So, this ones for you Andy – it might stop your moaning!

Spelt and Rye loaf (makes two loaves)

In a big bowl place your 500 grams of leaven, then add the water and mix well.  In a seperate bowl, mix your flours together along with the salt, then add your flour/salt mix to the leaven/water mix.  Stir it and mix thoroughly and once the flours and water are combined, cover it with a cloth and leave it for 10 minutes

Give your dough a ten second knead, replace the cover and go and watch a bit of “Spa of embarrassing illnesses” (don’t deny that you watch it).

after ten more minutes, give it another knead then:

rest for ten minutes, knead again
rest for 30 minutes, knead again
rest for an hour, knead again

By now your dough should be looking and feeling quite silky. Cut it into two with sharp knife (use a one way drawing/cutting motion, dont saw, and dont press, make the knife do the work)

Fold each piece into a tight ball, and place them in a (well floured) linen cloth-lined bowl, seam side up. Make sure you use plenty of spelt flour on the cloth, you don’t want them to stick.  Flour the tops and cover with cloths

How long you leave them to prove is dependent on your leaven, the heat and humidity in your kitchen, and the weather in general.  Hot, humid day? about 3 hours.  cold and dry? 4 possibly even 5.  Remember it’s better to under-prove rather than over-prove.

Make sure your oven is at 230c, mist the inside with your water sprayer, tip your dough gently onto a piece of floured or semolina dusted cardboard (a peel), slash the tops in a cross shape, spray with water and whoosh them into the oven.

They’ll need about 15 mins at 230, then turn down to 200 for about 25-35 mins.  Tap the bottom, it should sound hollow.

I chucked in a big handful of poppy seeds to the one below, but there’s no need if you can’t be bothered.  You could throw in pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, mixed seeds, anything you want really.  It’s a good way to get chidren to eat seeds by putting them in bread.  So stop feeding them Frankie and Bennys and start baking

Oh no, I’ve been at the wine again

eta – I love how the ads which appear on this page are for alcohol related problems.  Perhaps the advertisers are trying to tell me something? Cheeky gits.