The Art of Darkness

In life, I like to embrace new technology. In bread, the opposite is true.

Take breadmakers. Please. I understand their purpose and advantage to some people - fresh bread, no effort, at your beck and call. But for me they negate the very purpose of why I make bread. Like people who spend thousands of pounds on stereo equipment to recreate the exact sound of a band playing in their living room. To paraphrase Michael Flanders, I can't think of anything worse than a band actually playing in your living room. Think of the mess they'd make.

Making bread is about the inexactitude, the roughness. It's not even about making something you can eat, though it's definitely a bonus if it's edible. It's about the hand craft, the physical work, the getting to grips with your raw materials to make something. And the fact it is something you can't buy at Tesco is the whole point. It's Bootleg Bread.

But I realise this also limits my ability to get the most out of my ingredients. When I'm pounding a dough into first prove, I often wish I had the space and money for a Stand Mixer with dough hook - I'd probably get better starch breakdown, create more gluten, get more air in, get a bigger, more professional loaf. In particular this is true when I'm operating on the margins of easy breadmaking in the interests of trying something new. Something...darker.

Last weekend I had an urge to step away from the light and into the dark. I wanted to try my first non-wheat flour, a rye flour, and create an earthy, dark, low bread. To turn the authentic up to eleven, I swapped black treacle for sugar and added a trace of Irish whiskey.

By relying on just my hands and not a machine, I have several things against me: rye flour is very low in gluten, so has little stretch when kneading. Imagine making a bread out of dog turd - this is what it feels to handle rye flour dough. It's also more hygroscopic than white flour, so judging the water requirement is hard - in the end, I think I under-watered it, trying to avoid creating a whiskey foccacia, as it's easier to put water in than take it out. Black treacle is denser and slower-working than a simple sugar accelerant, and makes the flour sticky. Given the lack of natural gluten available to my prove, there is little point in kneading very much anyway. So I have to use the tool I do have: time.

I tried an overnight prove for the first time - 8 hours under wraps in an airing cupboard. After which time it had crept about two inches up the sides of my proving basket. A 30 minute bake in the morning and I had something rustic, dense, chewy and not altogether untasty.




On the other hand not exactly something the kids would look kindly upon if it turned up in their sandwich box either. So maybe not the bread to make my fortune. But then that's not the point, is it?

Mike's American Pie Bread:
500g rye flour
350 ml water
a measure of whiskey
20ml black treacle
20g salt
10g yeast