Looking Out To Sea

Nick’s masked birthday party last week had a large cask, courtesy of Stewart Brewery. The beer didn’t all get finished on the night, so Nick ended up decanting the remains into whatever containers were lying around and brought us a two litre bottle of beer when he visited.

It’s flat now, and not very exciting to drink any more but it makes great bread. I used a recipe from Crust, the “ale and yeast poolish”, and made four small loaves. There is still a lot of beer left, so I’ll need some other means to use up the remainder. If there are no better ideas I might try stewing with it.

If I’d been sensible I would have started the poolish for this bread early so I wouldn’t be baking last thing at night. Best laid plans, etc. Whatever the regrets about timing, the loaves turned out beautifully. I haven’t had much practice at shaping loaves, so they were a bit haphazard. But this turned out to be a good thing because the varying shapes of loaves reacted differently in the oven, and I got a much better impression of how the bread reacts in general.

Specifically, the two loaves which were more compact and loaf-shaped developed a really beautiful burst and a tantalising crust. They expanded up instead of out, which is an effect I’ve been trying to achieve for some time. The two that were more baguette-shaped (flatter and longer) spread apart where they were slashed, rather than bursting up the way. I consider this a very tasty and successful experiment. We’re learning here!

I’m still not completely sure how to maintain the crispy crust after I pull the loaves out of the oven. When I made the pain de campagne last week I didn’t care about the state of the loaves because I wanted them to go stale for the fondue. So I just left them out. And the crust stayed nice and crunchy. So should I stop putting the bread away until they’ve had several more hours to cool? Helen reckons that the heat and moisture inside the bread gets trapped when the bread is trapped in a container, and softens this the crusts again. This seems reasonable to me. Or maybe the only reason the pains de campagne had nice crusts was because they were baked for longer? Something to experiment with on the next attempt.

I gave one loaf to Nick, along with the money I owed him for the beer. (Sorry for being late in my debts!) The recipe suggests that it’s good with a cassoulet and a glass of red wine. Helen improvised a not-cassoulet from the wrong type of beans and some very old sausages from the freezer. It turned out rather fantastic in the end.