A success after much experimentation: dulse & ale bread
A success after much experimentation: dulse & ale bread
6 comments
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I have a cookbook called The New Hebridean Kitchen that has some lovely stuff in it, and near the back is a recipe for a loaf of bread with butter, beer, and dulse in it. The taste is lovely, but with all those extras giving the yeast a hard time and it being a partly-wholemeal dough I've never managed to get a good rise, so the texture has always let it down. I've been experimenting with different adjustments to the recipe (alcohol-free beer, overnight ferments, extra time to rise, a pinch of sugar in the dough, baking temperatures) and have finally gotten it to work. It's delicious!
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Soo… would you share how it’s done?
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Certainly! I'll give the original recipe first, maybe it'll work better for someone else or someone more experienced can identify something I missed
Ingredients
- 600g strong white flour
- 200g wholemeal flour
- 200g malted flour
- 40g finely-chopped dulse (a type of seaweed, other seaweeds can be substituted here)
- 500ml Colonsay ale (the Colonsay brewery has gone out of business now, but you're looking for a British-style brown ale that is only lightly-hopped)
- 100ml water
- 20g instant yeast
- 20g salt
- 60g butter
Method
- Mix everything and knead until no longer sticky
- Cover and leave to proof until doubled in size
- Knock back and shape into two loaves
- Cover and leave to double again (described as "at least one hour")
- Dust with flour
- Bake at 200 C for 45 minutes with steam
But, of course, I found that following this as written didn't work for me. Maybe it's a me problem at some point. Changes I made for this loaf were:
Ingredients
- Reduce white flour to 400g
- Replace ale with non-alcoholic ale
- Reduce salt to 15g to account for reduced flour
Method
- Mix to combine and only knead until homogenous
- Replace first proof with 12 hour cold ferment
- Second proof took over two hours for me
- Remove steam source when baking
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6 comments