heavenly fragrant ….what blue cheese was made for
There is the smell of freshly baked bread…and then there is this. A waft of sharp sour cherries and sweet aniseed that stops short of being sickly soapy greets you as it bakes. Slather with butter hot from the oven or wait and let it grace your cheeseboard. Move over walnut bread.
inspired by a loaf made by Dan Lepard
Ingredients & How To – sourdough version
Make a quantity of No knead sourdough multiseed bread but without the seeds
Instead of 350g seeds we want here 200g dried sour cherries, and the dried ones matter because they have a stronger more concentrated taste, reconstituted with boiling water or tea and then weighed to be approx 350g A word of warning, I happily chucked my cherries into a bowl, poured liquid over them and when plumped up a bit chucked them into the bread…. only then realising that being local Romanian dried sour cherries the whole being stoned idea was a bit hit and miss. hmmm. I issued a health warning to my friends.
2 tablespoons of fennel seeds.
I made two round loaves here. The texture was just lovely – as usual I probably could have left a bit longer to rise. I baked until they sounded hollow at 250C. And they were devoured and declared the favourite when served in a bread basket.
Ingredients and How To – regular yeast version
Makes two loaves in loaf tins. Four small hand shaped small round loaves, as you wish to create.
- 350g wholemeal flour (faina integrala) (and in these pictured some rye too)
- 200g rye flour (faina de secara)
- some strong white organic bread flour for shaping and dusting
- 200g of dehydrated cherries after plumping up with some boiling water
- 2 tsp (sare) salt
- 3 level tsp fennel seeds plus more for decoration
- 25g (drojdie) fresh yeast (or dried and use according to the packet)
- 1 tablespoon treacle, carob molasses (sirop de roscova) or honey – something sweet to speed the yeast up
- 400-450 ml (apa) warm water (the temperature of a bath) plus the water the cherries were rehydrated in
Pour boiling water over the cherries. Cool. separate, checking for stones.
Crumble yeast into bath temperature water. Add honey. wait unti it froths a little.
Add the yeast liquid to the flour and mix to a paste. Check the texture – rye flour is often very “thirsty” so it can take the extra cherry water – up to 100ml. So add that too to create a thick mix. Cover with a damp towel until doubled in volume.
When doubled in volume, knock down. Add salt , fennel seeds and cherries.
Knead what is quite a soft dough a little and shape into loaves or dough pieces to place in tins.
Set oven to the max setting – my oven goes to 250C but 220C is fine.
Allow the loaves to again double in volume. Piant with egg wash if you want to or tomato passata and water wash as a vegan alternative and sprinkle some fennel seeds on top.
Bake until the loaves when tapped sound hollow – 14-18 minutes for small loaves, 18-22 minutes larger loaves.
