Sourdough maslin barm batch rolls, 15cm tall and about 6cm wide, with a dark upper-crust and torn crumb sides: my renegade big-flavoured take on a 19th century Scottish bread making tradition I’ll be demonstrating and discussing at @_grainz_ next Tuesday 8th October, together with (hopefully) John Castley @wildhearthbakery in Scotland, and the legendary John Downes.
In these pictures here I seeded a flour barm with sourdough, then used a mix of white, rye, spelt and oat flour – the maslin mix – in the dough to give it a meatier texture, then used equal parts barm to flour to make the flavour shout loudly. Love this mix, the hop flavour comes through alongside the sweetness from the malt mash and the intense acidity from the sourdough-seeded barm.
Barm making method draws directly from much older European brewing traditions, replicating the initial steps of beer-making with hop boiling and malt mashing then seeded with either the remains of an old ferment, or spoonfuls from the top of a beer ferment. Up until this point bread in Britain was made, like in most of Europe, with a straight dough – flour, water, brewers yeast, salt – in the trough where it was left to ferment. But the brewers ferment had to be purchased from the brewer or a distiller and making a barm freed bakers from this cost.
A virgin, spon (spontaneous) or “bastard barm” was effectively a natural fermentation. A Paris, Parisan barm or “flour barm” was a corruption of the Viennese poolish tradition (a cold flour and water liquid ferment seeded with a brewers yeast) popular in France during the 1800s merged with a straight barm method: whisking flour into the hot mash gelatinised it and produced an easily fermentable emulsion and a gentler flavour and produced a barm that kept its power better when stored.
Why should we care and make it today? Barm making has the potential to reestablish the relationship between the baker with the brewer, the hop grower, the maltster, the grain grower, and their customers, bringing beer and bread back together.
