These tear-apart batch rolls are soft in texture and perfect for a saveloy.

about 400g onions, peeled and sliced
50ml sunflower oil, extra for kneading
2 tsp black onion (Kalonji) seeds, or fennel seeds
75ml cold milk
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp fine salt
500g strong white flour, plus more for shaping
100g strong wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp dry instant yeast

Cook the onions and oil for 10 – 15 minutes until they’re soft, golden brown and lost most of their moisture. Scrape into a bowl, and mix in the seeds, milk, one egg, salt and 200ml warm water. Add the yeast and flours and mix to a sticky dough, adding more water if needed, then leave the dough 10 minutes. Oil a 30cm area of the worktop and your hands. Knead the dough for 10 seconds. Leave 10 minutes then repeat the quick knead twice more at 10 minute intervals, return the dough to the bowl and leave an hour. Divide into 8 pieces and shape into balls. Roll each out to about the size of a pita then roll up tightly into a long sausage. Place these seam-side down and touching on a tray lined with non-stick paper. Cover and leave for 1 1/2 hours then brush with beaten egg and bake at 200°C/fan 180°C/390°F/gas 6 for 25 minutes.

If you have any questions about the recipe you can ask on our forum

This bread machine is wooing me much more than I thought it would, and it has some curious benefits that I didn’t expect plus a few really annoying points that they gloss over in the ads, but I’ll save all that for the review.

that look it gets when the gluten starts to disintegrate and the surface starts to pull apart and collapse

David follows recipes sometimes and then – without warning -  he’ll lob in extra flour, seeds, anything in the name of “using it up” and then we get a mutant bread when we open the lid. That was the case with his last loaf. The top crust sat about 5cm lower than it should in the machine so that was a warning, and the crust had that look it gets when the gluten starts to disintegrate and the surface starts to pull apart and collapse.

So when I banged the baking container over the cooling rack this brick of a loaf fell out. It had this rich ruddy brown crust and big reassuring aroma, but the weight made me think it could be a stomach scourer from a health-food shop. The sort Dr Kellogg would have loved.

Once it had cooled I stuck it in the bread bin and toyed with what to say when David asked me what I thought of it. Do you do that? Almost plan the escape route before the inevitable tricky question is raised. It wasn’t until this morning that he asked me, “what did you think of the loaf?”

I ummed a bit and said, “It’s like an old-fashioned health loaf from the Doris Grant school of baking. I mean, it’s good but very solid and firm.”

Then I thought I’d at least taste it before damning it further. I went down to the kitchen to make some cheese on toast. There was some gruyere left over from a Guardian recipe I was testing so I cut two slices of the loaf, grilled each on one side plain then flipped them over and put a good handful of grated cheese with some cubes of chorizo mixed in on each then slipped them back under the grill to melt and blister. The taste was glorious and the bread the star. If it had been a white loaf there would have been none of that rich nutty flavour that stopped it tasting fatty and dull. Just a few twists of black pepper on the top and it was perfection.

you can just see the bright yellow colour of the golden linseed in the crumb

I apologised, I was wrong. Judging the bread by the crust, whilst it might tell you what the inner appearance will be like, will tell you zilch about the flavour. This was the bread you’d want with herrings, oxtail, smoked salmon or blue cheese. It mightn’t suit a sausage sandwich but melt some cheese on top and it was the business.

Cover it with a slice of cheese and spread it with piccalilli, or top it with some fried herring roe with a little lemon and parsley, or just buttered on a plate with a good beetroot soup and sour cream, and that’s a perfect meal for me. Might even have some for dinner this evening.

Do you ever jump too quickly and judge a loaf a failure before it has a chance to cool? There’s a lesson in there I need to learn. Here was a great bit of baking that I would have missed out on by being too much of a snob about heavy bread. This might even set off an episode of competitive baking between us, in search of other heavy breads. I’m thinking of something wholemeal, with sunflower seeds and crisp fried onions.

Highlight of the week: Met Gordon Brown at the Mumsnet 10th anniversary party held at Google HQ. Chatted about baking and the Julie/Julia movie.

a soft crust of almonds hides chunks of fresh pineapple baked in a real vanilla syrup

Baked pineapple with almonds
from The Guardian

With a little vanilla syrup, pineapple baked in this way is to serve on it’s own, either hot with ice-cream or at room temperature with a little sorbet. So to respect the delicacy I’ve added a soft almond pudding crust that bolsters the texture so it feels more filling when the weather is cold or if you’re just in need of a little comfort.

1 large ripe pineapple
about 125g caster sugar, more if needed
juice of half a lemon or lime
75ml brandy or orange juice
1 split vanilla pod
75g butter, softened
1 large egg
75g ground almonds
25g plain flour
flaked almonds

Trim the skin from the pineapple, quarter, cut out the core then slice into 1cm pieces. Place the pineapple in a baking dish big enough so the pieces half fill it, then sprinkle on 50g sugar, lemon juice, 50ml brandy and 75ml water. Submerse the vanilla pod in the dish, cover with foil and bake at 180°C/fan 160°C/350°F/gas 4 until hot and tender. Make the frangipane crust by beating the butter and 75g sugar until smooth, then beat in the egg, almonds, flour and 25ml brandy. Just before serving spoon the mixture over the pineapple, sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake at 200°C/fan 180°C/390°F/gas 6 until brown on top.

If you have any questions about the recipe you can ask on our forum

Drawing up my personal list of Melbourne’s ‘top 10’ bakeries was a tough job. Not because ten great places are hard to find, but because there are now so many bakeries in the metropolis which deserve to be included – bakeries which are turning out bread and cakes which are noteworthy by any standard. I’ve tried to make the task easier by excluding everything outside the metropolitan Melbourne area (so no Irrewarra or La Madre), and anything essentially ‘ethnic’ will have to wait for the ‘Melbourne Foodie’ list (sorry, Balha’s Pastry).

I then decided that, as I’d written about and recommended Phillipa’s, d chirico and Loafer elsewhere on this site, I could afford to leave them off this list – not because they didn’t deserve inclusion, but because they were already up there in the posh seats. But I still couldn’t whittle it down to ten; and so what I’m now able to give you, not in any particular order but all unmissable,  is my baker’s dozen of Melbourne’s finest, not-to-be-missed bakeries.

n.b. Many, many Australian businesses still don’t have even the most basic web page. Go figure.

1. Knead
396 Burwood Road
Hawthorn 3122 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9819 5883
Try their ‘pinolate’ pine nut cookies, tarte au sucre (sugar-and-cream-filled brioche), gluten-free chocolate brownies and their seeded and sprouted grain breads.
www.kneadbakers.com.au

2. Natural Tucker
809 Nicholson St
Carlton North 3054 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9380 4293
Melbourne’s oldest traditional sourdough bakery, the website says, owned now by John and Jan Bryers but started in 1984 by John Downes on the site of one of Melbourne’s oldest, turn of the (19th/20th) century, bakeries. So many other great bakers in Melbourne can trace their careers back to time spent at Natural Tucker. Try their sourdough loaves, pies, organic Anzac cookies, sourdough croissants.
www.naturaltuckerbakery.com.au

3. Let Them Eat Cake
147-149 Cecil Street
South Melbourne 3205 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9686 0077
No wonder their website describes Christopher Montebello as their “Artist and Pastry Chef”. There’s something of the exclusive fashion boutique about this utterly beguiling shop. This isn’t a bread shop, it’s where you come for perhaps the most creative, original, and occasionally madcap petit fours, cake making and cake decorating in the whole of Victoria.
www.letthemeatcake.com.au

4. Aviv Cakes & Bagels
412 Glen Huntly Rd
Elsternwick 3185 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9528 6627
Apparently, ‘Aviv’ is Hebrew for Springtime. Quite simply, the best bagels in Melbourne, if not Australia; doughnuts and almond scrolls, cheese, apple or apricot danish, and at the end of the week (Thu/Fri/Sat), challah.

5. Brunetti
194-204 Faraday Street
Carlton 3053 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9347 2801
A Carlton icon. Patron Giorgio Angelé originally came to Australia as a pastry chef with the 1956 Italian Olympic team, returning later as a migrant, and acquired Brunetti in 1991. Excels at all the things you’d expect – cannoli, rum baba, panzerotti (filled pastries), bocconcini di nonno (flourless almond biscuits with an amarena cherry centre).
Also at: 214 Flinders Lane
Melbourne 3000  VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9663 8085
and: 1-3 Prospect Hill Road
Camberwell 3124  VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9882 3100
www.brunetti.com.au

6. Firebrand Sourdough Bakery
69 Glen Eira Rd
Ripponlea 3185 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9523 0061
There’s an ‘Italian’ bread style popular in Australia we don’t see in the UK, the ‘casalinga’ (lit: housewife). Made here in a 1930’s wood-fired oven, using a wholewheat leaven, white flour, water and sea salt, hand-shaped, risen in canvas cloths and baked on the oven floor; or buy their walnut bread – white flour, biodynamic wholewheat flour, organic rye flour, wholewheat leaven, water, and sea salt, mixed with top quality Californian walnuts.
www.firebrandsourdough.com

7. Dench
109 Scotchmer Street
Fitzroy North 3068 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 94863554
There are some terrific loaves being made here – potato bread, walnut, apricot & honey loaf, beer bread, raisin loaf; on the sweet side, don’t miss local favourites like their friands; and most of all, gingerbread cats, sold to benefit the Whittlesea Vet Clinic, which provides free care for animal victims of bush fires.
www.denchbakers.com.au

8. Sugardough Panificio & Patisserie
163 Lygon St
Brunswick East 3057 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9380 4060
There’s something ineffably sweet and irresistible about this shop which struck us the moment we looked in the front window. Maybe it was the striped awning, maybe the cosy, almost domestic interior – but really, it was the obvious love, skill and attention to detail which had gone into everything they had on sale. As another reviewer commented, it looks and smells just like grandma’s kitchen. The best bomboloni in town; we went in for a bread roll and came out with one of everything.

9. Babka
358 Brunswick St
Fitzroy 3065 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9416 0091
Most of what’s baked here fits in with the east European air (isn’t ‘Babka’ Russian for Grandma ?) Sunflower and rye loaves, baked cheesecake and a highly recommended lemon tart. Can get very busy, and we hear that service can suffer at those times.

10. Laurent Boulangerie Patisserie
306 Little Collins Street
Melbourne 3000 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9654 1011
Sourdough olive bread, rye loaves, baguettes and epi, pain de mie; macarons and meringues. And numerous branches; Laurent is also remarkable for having maintained quality while expanding the business to over a dozen locations.
www.laurent.com.au

11. Brioche by Philip
208 Commercial Rd
Prahran 3181 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 95251966
Run by Philip Chiang, their eponymous brioche can be found with interesting flavour combinations, such as fig, walnut, and blue cheese. In the 2010 Foodies’ Guide To Melbourne, their sourdough baguette was named ‘best bread’, bringing together a full-flavoured moist crumb with a crispy crust. And in a way, that’s what Philip is best at – the fusion of different styles, trends and flavours. Must be seen.

12. Fatto a Mano
228 Gertrude Street
Fitzroy 3065 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9417 5998
Means ‘made by hand’. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it.  Still using the leaven handed on by their predecessors on this site, the much-loved Gertrude St Bakery. Pumpkin loaf, focaccia, or for your takeaway lunch, try either the eggplant (aubergine) or potato and olive pizza.

13. Dolcetti
223 Victoria St
West Melbourne 3003 VIC
Telephone:  (03) 9328 1688
Marianna Di Bartolo was brought up on her mother’s Sicilian cooking, and it shows. Lemon-spiked ricotta cassateddi, panna cotta tarts, almond or pistachio biscotti, chocolate, prune & grappa cake – and some amazingly good nougat. George Biron, from Sunnybrae, clearly approves – and if George likes it, that’s good enough for me.

I took these photos when Loafer was owned and run by brothers Georg and Antoine von Baich and their family, two Canadians who were such a vital part of good baking in Melbourne during their years there.

Though they’ve now moved to Europe to pursue new ambitions, I understand that Loafer continues to produce some excellent bread and cakes, under its new owner, Andrea Brabazon, and it remains on my ‘must visit’ list whenever I’m in Melbourne. The shop has a wonderful sense of light and space, which I hope these images capture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loafer Bread
146 Scotchmer Street
North Fitzroy 3068 VIC
Telephone: (03) 9489 0766

The chapters most immediately relevant to a baker are those on breads & pancakes, and on fermented grain “porridges”. In the former, the basic sourdough starter recipe suggests using potato or pasta cooking water and possibly some organic grapes or berries to kick start the process, and asks us to cover the open bowl with something porous like cheesecloth, and the following bread recipe encourages experimentation, with its use of leftover grains and a variety of liquids, including stock, beer or sour milk, and we are urged to allow as long as it takes for the dough to rise.

There are also recipes for an onion-caraway rye bread, an Afghan flatbread and the sprouted-grain Essene bread, amongst others, but the book is primarily a call for us to be more aware of the ubiquity of fermented foods in all their forms, and most of all, it is its author’s personal story of a love affair with fermentation and its perceived health benefits.

Given that you can’t spend an evening in front of the television in the UK without being bombarded with adverts extolling the benefits of “good” micro-organisms in commercially-available yoghurts, it’s perhaps surprising that “artisanal” fermentation is still in its infancy here; and surely any reaction against the bland flavours of processed foods should wholeheartedly embrace the stinky-zingy-tangy palate of fermented flavours, so many of which we could cultivate in our own homes.

I’d never assert that any one book contained all the answers, but at least this book isn’t afraid to ask us questions, about how we eat and how we react to now-unfamiliar food tastes and smells, which our ancestors would almost certainly have been familiar with. So much more than a bread book, this paperback will also guide you through fermenting vegetables and beans, dairy products and more; the section on “country” wines, made from fruits and vegetables, reminded me of the knockout potions my grandfather used to brew from his Buckinghamshire garden, drinks so strong that my Aunt Joan still calls them “idiot’s brew”.

This book clearly grew from the author confronting a health crisis in his own life, and from his need to acquire a new focus and meaning, and along the way he has clearly created a happy synthesis of where he came from, where he is now and where he is heading. It’s an unusual book, a kind book, and an affirming book. For anyone who ever looks inward, and contemplates their own place in the bigger scheme of things, it’s a rewarding book.

above, a rosemary-topped focaccia straight out of the oven and left to cool on the balcony, at The Green Grocer

On past trips to Melbourne, Dan’s been delighted to hold bread making classes and other events at The Green Grocer, an outstanding organic cafe, food and wine retailer and cookery school in North Fitzroy, in the heart of the ‘good bread belt’ – Dench Bakers, Loafer Bread and Natural Tucker are all just around the corner, and if you need some written inspiration, then Books for Cooks, that unequalled paragon amongst foodie bookstore, is just a short tram ride away. Even the Piedimonte’s supermarket on the corner sells a terrific pane di rosetta.

dough for the Mill Loaf, resting at The Green Grocer

Classes at The Green Grocer have their own rhythm and charm, taking place in a fully-equipped kitchen above the cafe, the separate ‘wine room’ next door with its cool and breezy balcony overlooking the bustle of Scotchmer Street and St George’s Road providing a charming opportunity to unwind afterwards with a glass of wine or a bottle of organic Mountain Goat Steam Ale brewed just down the road in Richmond, and chat more informally with the class members.

More suited to a shorter evening class than an all-day event, Dan’s classes here have concentrated on dealing with and explaining some of the more complicated ideas from The Handmade Loaf and The Cook’s Book, along with basic techniques for baking good open-textured naturally fermented and yeasted breads at home. He’s talked about how Australian flours differ from those widely available in the UK, France or Italy, for example, and how best to use them to make outstandingly good bread, and one popular feature has been to lead the class through all the stages of making the Mill Loaf (from The Handmade Loaf), using 3 different flours (baker’s white, wholewheat and rye) from Four Leaf Milling in Tarlee, South Australia, and  an ‘overnight’ method where you make the dough the night before, stick it in the refrigerator, take it out the following day and bake it when it’s puffed up and lively.

the baked Mill Loaves, left to cool out on the balcony at The Green Grocer

At these classes, Dan has also made the focaccia from The Cook’s Book. This is a good example of an impossibly sloppy, sticky dough that turns into something malleable and easy to shape, all due to the quantity of bubbles forming inside the dough – gently stretched and folded, until full of holes and ready to be shaped. The underlying concept is to mix and move the dough along, through the different stages, only when you can observe the changes that tell you it’s ready. Dough watching rather than clock watching, and realising that that you have much more time to do other things when you make bread this way. Finally, the loaves are baked using a baking stone in The Green Grocer’s large gas-fired ovens.

To compress the whole process into a single evening’s class, Dan presents doughs made at different times during the preceding day, so that the class can see all the stages from unmixed flour to fully-baked loaf, and then breads baked before the class are enjoyed with a glass of wine, so that once the class is finished, everyone can taste and talk about the end results.

It would be unfair to end this article without mentioning the cafe and shop at The Green Grocer once more. I’ve always found it a delightful and informal place to eat really good food, and would recommend you to visit their website and check out the Menu, which changes with the seasons, and the wine list. Brunch items such as eggs with sourdough toast, porridge with fruit, nuts and seeds, and fresh juices are served all day, along with a selection of salads and hot lunch dishes, or you can choose something from the bakery counter to enjoy with one of their organic fair trade coffees or range of more than a dozen types of tea and herbal infusion. The shop has the variety of organic fresh produce which the name might lead you to expect, along with ‘larder essentials’ (most of them made on the premises), convenient meat, cheese and dairy products, and their range of ’slowfoodfast’ and freezer products, if you’re looking for a take-home meal.

the Mill Loaf, make with Australian flour and baked in Melbourne

The Green Grocer
217 St George’s Road
Fitzroy North 3068 VIC
Telephone (03) 9489 1747

looking out from the back seating area at Crust and Crumbs in Amsterdam, down a 'tunnel' lined with big loaves and preserves

When we visited, this bakery was known as ‘Crust & Crumbs’, but we understand it has since re-opened as the ‘Vlaamsch Broodhuys’.

slices from the bread at Crust & Crumb

paper wrapped individual crumbles and applecakes

loaves sit stacked behind the counter on a spotlit shelf

the setting is as remarkable as the bread; watch out for cyclists who aim at pedestrians

distorted cups hold either fresh coffee or sweet butter biscuits

organic jams and fruit pastes on the shelf

a multigrain loaf (back) and a leaven bread (front), baked with a thick dark crust

above, all that plastic but are they an Easter treat or a horror story? Michael Hanson did what any man would do, sacrificing his digestion for the sake of knowledge and eating his way through the hot cross buns of Britain

 ot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns, one a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns”. Except that at Harvey Nichols, the ultra-swish London department store, they cost £1; a pound a pop! But head down to your local supermarket and you could pay as little as 10p. Now, it is said that quality comes at a price but is such a differential worth it? Is the cheapest so unbearably bad? And the most expensive: ostentatiously overpriced, or worth every penny?

My task is to find out. Is there such a thing as “The Best Hot Cross Bun in Britain”? As an experienced baker I feel well qualified to undertake such a mission. I was putting paper crosses on hot cross buns (HXBs) before I left junior school. I even remember the practice of placing little metal crosses on slowly proved buns and removing them after baking, leaving a pale, shadowy imprint of a cross.

above, straight from the oven at home, these buns look perfect, puffed and golden with the pale crosses standing out clearly

Easter was a very special time for me, out-of-school hours spent in a cramped, old fashioned bakery, one-speed Artifex mixers, an antique Alfred Hunt drawplate oven, washing, cleaning and drying fruit in the hot flour loft above the bakery. I ate so many sultanas it’s a wonder I could manage a single bun. But when they came out the oven, oh, the smell and sight of 500 HXBs on the drawplate. They couldn’t cool down quick enough! They were heaven-made bread. I wouldn’t care when the old bakers told me I would get indigestion from eating them while hot. We didn’t have to glaze them, so golden were these objects of my desire.

My father and grandfather were bread bakers and I continued the tradition, baking all through my teenage years and into my twenties and thirties. Now I just bake for friends and pass on my knowledge. Is it possible to find the bun of my childhood: soft, warm, yeasty, aromatic, and more-ish? Will I find a bun that can be eaten warm from the oven, utterly butterless? Is it all just rose-tinted nostalgia? Does the Holy Grail of buns still exist or will I have to dig out my grandfather’s recipe and make my own? Whatever the outcome, I needed to find out.

The British love their HXBs. The condition we now find them in is a perfect symbol of the state of so much of our national food culture, even more so than the oft used example of the white sliced loaf. Our buns have become commoditized, bastardized, mechanized, and entirely ‘secularised’. Supermarkets compete to sell the cheapest, sometimes using them as a “loss leader” (where goods are sold at less than their cost price, because they can lure in customers and generate other business), leaving the industrial bakeries which compete to manufacture them with little or no profit.

above, glazed with a sugar wash and cooling on a rack, these HXB are just what I wanted

An automated factory is easily capable of churning out up to a million buns a day, with little or no human input save button pushers. The UK baking industry’s journal, British Baker magazine, said back in January 2007 “The UK is the world’s bargain basement for bread according to new figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit.” A situation that benefits neither UK manufacturer nor consumer. Our bun has been bastardized beyond belief, filled full of “necessary” chemical improvers and cheap sub-standard ingredients, pumped full of air and water, giving us the crumbly, cakey, emulsified pap that too often passes for an Easter bun.

Many non-Christian cultures revere bread as a gift fit for a Goddess, and for millennia have made sacred breads as reminders and/or offerings. Ancient cultures honoured the fertility of Mother Earth and the gift of fire with sacred and seasonal ceremonies. Then later, the Christian church continued these traditions and the Eucharist was respected with a symbolic ‘cake’. Today in many European countries, people still bake breads at home in a reverential way, to be blessed and offered to the community. Our HXB was a direct relation to these ‘eulogia’.

Any crumbs of our former sacred and blessed respect for food have long since been swept away from Britain’s dinner table by a public that has little respect for the earth, let alone the baker’s craft. What does our supermarket bun tell us about the state of our culture? Has our society become cheap, imitative, soulless and devoid of taste? Baking is a passion and we should find and support bakers who try to bake our daily bread in a considered and thoughtful manner.

So I set out to try and find the cheapest, the priciest, as well as the tastiest HXB. What makes a good HXB? Here are my eight points:

1. A bun that is round and domed, not flat and square

2. A bun that is evenly- and well-baked to a deep golden colour

3. The crumb should have a soft-bread texture: that is, one that tears into flaky wisps of crumb rather than crumbles into sawdust or crushes into pap.

4. After being squeezed gently between the fingers, the bun should inflate again.

5. A bun that can be cut without crumbling, toasted without burning and buttered without disintegrating

6. A bun with ample fleshy fruit and peel, with genuine spice that allures not repels, that doesn’t taste of chemicals, burn your tongue or linger in your mouth hours after eating

7. A good cross, one you can pick off, short not chewy.

8. All this at a price most people in the street can afford.

above, the heart of a good hot cross bun

My odyssey began in London’s Knightsbridge in that temple of conspicuous consumption, Harrods, and from that luxury point encompassed the full spectrum of price and prestige. I can see that the homogenization of the high street made my task harder. Some small local bakeries still make a decent HXB, often at a fair price, but many lack the skills, and use bought in premixes (packets that combine other ingredients to make the baking easier) that simply need adding to a bag of flour, a block of yeast and a bucket of water – the fruit goes in later.

I found a good one at Dunns in London’s Crouch End for 60p. Greggs, Britain’s High Street baker is producing a very passable bun that is a credit to the remnants of the once proud Master Bakers of Britain. It lacked a generosity in spice and fruit but at only 25p it gets my vote so far.

As my search continued, I posted my findings in the Forum
If you find a better bun, or even want to report a bad one, join me there.

above, the open texture of a ciabatta, from a dough kept wet with 72% water (assisted by 30% strong white flour combined with a softer flour)

Remember: baking is not a set of separate processes, but rather one single process defined by different stages. Thus, change any part and you will cause changes in every subsequent stage, from mixing to baking. Assess each of the ideas presented below, and work out what modifications are best for you.

Stretching the dough: gently tipping the dough on to either a flour dusted or oiled surface, light pressing out and stretching the dough into a rectangle, and finally giving it a ‘book fold’ before returning it to the bowl, then repeating this every hour or so during the bulk fermentation.

above, even the gutsiest wholewheat loaves can display an open crumb texture

Increase the dough’s water content: with a more fluid dough, it is difficult to maintain a bold, round shape during proving and baking. Some sort of dough containment, such as a cloth-lined and flour dusted basket, or a flour dusted proving board may be needed (a heavy dredge of flour on a wooden board will hinder the spread as the dough proves). Too wet a dough, and it is a problem keeping the slashes clean and open. So for sheeted doughs and flat breads this is useful.

Use a sour leaven, or old dough addition: either in place of or in addition to commercial yeast. I often rely on the combination of a small percentage of commercial yeast (0.5%) and a sour starter (naturally fermented, and used at around 30% to flour weight), as it gives both speed (a bulk fermentation of 2 –3 hours @ 22C, depending on the strength of the gluten in the flour, and a final prove of 2 ½ – 3 hours, depending on the ambient bakery temperature. And yes, I would describe this as ‘yeasted’ bread.

Extend the fermentation with as little leavening as possible: often this requires some control of the temperature, as in a retarding cabinet. I find that if the temperature is kept at around 15C – 17C, this seems to allow tighter doughs to develop a more expansive texture when mixed with a sour or combination starter.

Use a pre-ferment: I don’t know whether to thank either my US or French colleagues for this one, and the method I use depends on the mixer type that I’m using. With a fork petrin, I mix the sour leavening with the flour, mix for 1 – 2 minutes, then leave in the bowl for 20 minutes. Next I’ll add any additional yeast (if I’m using it), mix for a further 5 minutes, then add the sea-salt mixed with a little water, and mix for a further 4 minutes. I add the leavening at the beginning here because I have found it difficult to mix the dough evenly in a petrin. However, after talking with baker friends, I’d suggest that with a twin-arm or a spiral, leave the leaven out, mix the flour and water, leave for 20 minutes, then add the leaven, any additional yeast, and after a few minutes, the salt.