Yesterday I made bread… To cut the long story short, we recently purchased a seeded flour from a British brand called Allinson. They do great white flour and as there was an offer we decided to taste the seeded one.
Tip: Seeds weight! (fact) Because of this, it is important that you consider the advice on the pack for the water/liquid to flour ratio.
I did not, and used the typical 500 to 370 ratio (from the ciabatta). Unfortunately, this resulted on an almost soupy mix which I then had to correct… This particular packet, on a beer bread recipe, was recommending to use 300 of liquid only and so I was way out. Correcting it was not difficult with some basic maths but i think it is better to know your flours.
The other tips I wanted to share with you are a very useful couple of tools that I have to help with my baking:
1. My plastic scrapper to work the bread dough as suggested by Richard Bertinet on the CD of his wonderful book Dough, which I bought last Christmas. I bought mine at Divertimenti, a kitchen supplying specialist in Marylebone High Street, but I have since noticed that you ca pretty much find them anywhere… even, I dare say, Amazon!
2. A pizza stone (You can see it in the picture above). I was very lucky to get mine free (using my Boots points a few Christmas ago) but you can find them anywhere. They are the typical item that companies make to be given as presents and as such, they become very cheap when the relevant season has finished, so keep an eye out.
It is not an expensive item and, to me, it makes a massive difference when compared with baking trays. Specially non stick ones which they scratch and I will worry about the dangers of Teflon ingestion.
Here i have found a few examples to illustrate, but do research: Divertimenty, John lewis, this is a thread at a baking forum that you might find useful.
Photograph by Cristina Lanz-Azcarate
Tips by Cristina Lanz-Azcarate
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