Well almost commercial. Our three loaves were dropped off in the kitchen of Le Bec Jaune today and we used their industrial steam oven to bake some amazing fresh sourdough. We came back once they were cooled and sat down with the head chef Matthew to critique them with some olive oil and French butter. Everyone was very happy with the finished product. The plain white and rye/white rose up beautifully into lovely round loaves. The white/rye/spelt/buckwheat possibly was slightly over-proved, but considering we have had 8 days of sun and our outside fridge is suddenly 16 degrees mid-afternoon, the proving/retarding process is becoming a little more interesting. The bread is being served as a side to the steak and kidney pudding tonight (the plat du jour), so I guess that makes it commercial?

Instead of money, they gave us a large bottle of their own brewed “extra stout”. Last week, Matthew showed us a loaf of bread he had bought from a local farmers market that had buckwheat flour in it, which was the inspiration for the buckwheat bread this week (and they gave us some buckwheat flour too – farine de sarrasin), but the bread he showed us was much darker. We think maybe an extra shot of dark beer might make it more malty and dark in colour. And we have until this weekend to perfect it, as we have been given the task of producing stout bread for Monday 17th March. St Patrick’s Day. To sit beside some lamb stew. Boom.

11 Mar This entry was published on March 11, 2014 at 6:16 pm. It’s filed under Food and tagged Bread, Le Bec Jaune, Sourdough, St Patrick's Day, stout. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.