Apple cider vinegar from Carl Legge.

- Fermenting Revolution 2 – Apple cider vinegar » Carl Legge:

- Sourdough cider » Carl Legge:

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Persillade from your parsley.

By Carl Legge.
- How to make persillade from your parsley | Permaculture magazine:
Ingredients
100g leafy parsley, washed if necessary and leaves roughly picked off stalks. Don't worry too much about stalks, they will process very well.
10 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
About 100-200ml olive oil (or vegetable, rape seed, groundnut)
45ml lemon juice (about ½ lemon) or white wine vinegar
1-2g sea salt, finely ground, or to taste
Method
Finely chop the parsley leaves in a food processor until they reduce in bulk a little.
Add the garlic chunks and process until the herbs and garlic are fine without being liquidised.
Gradually add olive oil while the processor runs until you have a just loose texture to the mixture.
You may have to scrape down the sides of the processor bowl periodically so that it gets mixed evenly.
Once you are happy with the consistency, add the lemon juice or vinegar and salt to taste.
If you are storing the preserve in a jar, top off with oil and pop in the fridge.
Otherwise, pack and freeze straight away.
Use and variations
You can add one or more other ingredients to make different dishes and styles of cooking with very little effort.
If you leave this ‘plain’
* Stir 2 or 3 dessert spoons through cooked pasta. When you drain the pasta leave some cooking water in the pan to help distribute the sauce.
* Mix with flash fried squid, grilled seafood and/or new potatoes.
* Spread on top of grilled or baked fish or potatoes before you roast them
* Use as a base on toasted sourdough, ciabatta or baguettes topped with cheese, olives or other nibbles.
Add lemon zest to make a paste similar to gremolata which is a traditional partner for osso bucco.
Add parmesan and you have a parsley pistou used in minestrone or other soups.
Add nuts for a parsley pesto. Add anchovies for a provençal effect.
Add breadcrumbs for a more-ish delight.
Crunchy coating: Mix with lemon zest, chopped anchovies, a hint of ground cumin and/or paprika and a handful of breadcrumbs.
Use to coat a rack or shoulder of lamb when roasting.
The crunch & punch of the persillade crumbs is a great counterpoint to the soft & sweet lamb.
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Kefir bread.

From Carl Legge.
"I’ve previously posted about this here.
But for these loaves I changed the process slightly.
I made plain white bread using Shipton Mill No 4 flour as I wanted to make bacon sandwiches the next morning.
White bread is always best for bacon"

This makes enough for 2 loaves of approximately 750g each.
Ingredients
Poolish
Live strained kefir 285g
Strong white flour 215g
Date syrup (or honey) 50g

Dough
Poolish from above 550g
Strong white flour 650g
Fine sea salt 15g
Warm water 280g

Method
Start the poolish the afternoon before you want to bake.

Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl you’ll mix the dough in (saves on washing up).
Cover with plastic or a damp tea towel.
Leave in a warm place until the next morning.
The date syrup or honey gives the kefir a quick sugar rush to get the leaven started.
By the morning, you should see the poolish slightly bubbly.

Then add the other ingredients and knead in your Kenwood Chef or similar for 6 minutes or do it by hand.

Cover again and allow to rest for 2 hours or so.
Then fold as I show you in this post for pain de campagne.
Two short folds at intervals of approx 1 hr rather than intensive kneading are adequate to give the dough shape and structure.

Cover and rest for an hour: fold again.
And finally cover and rest for another hour and then fold.
Cover and rest for an hour.

Divide the dough in two.
Shape to your fancy – there’s some shaping tips in a video in the pain de campagne recipe above.

Allow to prove for about a couple of hours.
And while this is happening, preheat your oven to 230°C.

Slash the bread artily.
Bake the bread for 15 minutes at 230°C with some boiling water in a tray at the bottom.
Then take out the tray, turn down the oven to 190°C and bake for a further 30 minutes.

OR in cup:
Sponge
1 1/4 cups of drained kefir milk (no kefir grains left in)
1 1/5 cups strong white bread flour
Scant 7 tbsp warm water
Scant 3 tbsp honey

Dough
2 1/3 strong white bread flour
2 1/2 plain or all purpose flour
3 tbsp of olive oil or similar
1 tbsp fine sea salt
(scant 7 tbsp warm water may be needed)

230 Celcius is about 450 Fahrenheit
190 Celcius is about 375 Fahrenheit

Sourdough pain de campagne recipe by Carl Legge.

Sourdough pain de campagne recipe » Carl Legge:
recipes for the future
The recipe is made over 3 days and only needs a little time at each stage. It’s a very forgiving and flexible method. If you work weekdays, you could start on a Friday evening and have beautiful bread for Sunday lunchtime.

The 3-day method allows the dough to slowly develop good structure and flavour without being too sour.

I (mainly) use a small wholemeal rye starter. There’s a great post here from Weekend Bakers which shows you how easy it is to make. I find this uses less flour and it’s very responsive. If I screw it up, I can make another starter from scratch in a couple of days with no problems. To keep things simple, I use equal weight of flour and water when refreshing: so it’s a 100% starter.

You could replace the wholemeal rye flour with any wholemeal flour. I find the rye is very good as a starter and gives an excellent flavour to the finished bread.
I normally make 3kg of dough at a time for 4 loaves to make the most of a hot oven The recipe here makes about half that, for two loaves. Just scale up/down the ingredients pro rata if you need to. I use digital scales for accurate measuring, it really does make a difference.

Finally, the flour I mostly use is from Shipton Mill: their organic dark wholemeal rye and untreated organic white flour No. 4.

Sourdough pain de campagne recipe
Day 1, evening – Starter
Wholemeal rye starter 100g
Wholemeal rye flour 40g
Tepid water 60g

In a small bowl mix this all together and cover with a lid, cling film or a clean cloth. Leave in a warm place. The following morning, you should have a little bowl of bubbly flour.

Day 2, morning – Poolish
Big Starter from above 200g
Wholemeal rye flour 35g
Strong white flour 80g
Tepid water 185g​​

In a bowl of about 2-3 litre capacity, mix all the ingredients together. A Danish dough whisk is just perfect for this. A spoon or fork will also work… Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place until the evening. Ideally the poolish will have at least 6 hours to stand, more is not a problem. You should end up with a bigger bowl of gently bubbling flour.

Day 2, evening – Dough
Poolish from above 500g
Strong white flour 650g
Fine salt 15g
Water 300g

Total weight is 1465g-ish

In the early evening, add the other ingredients to the poolish in the bowl and mix well to form a ragged and sticky dough. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for about 1 hour.

Then fold the dough. The dough will be slighty more sticky than in this video. Just keep the surface and your hands well floured and you’ll be fine.

I fold 3 times in total at roughly 1 hour intervals. Pop the dough back in the bowl, cover and leave in a warm place after the first two folds.

After the third fold, pop the dough in the bowl, cover and put in the fridge overnight. Bakers call this ‘retarding the dough’. It allows the dough to slowly develop a good flavour. Different flavour giving compounds in the dough work best at these lower temperatures to make the rounded flavour of the sourdough.

Day 3, morning – bake
Take out dough and divide it into two. In a warm place, allow the dough to rest and warm up for about 30 minutes.

Shape the dough and prove 1-3 hours. See these videos for shaping ideas.

How to simply shape bread to make rolls, a batard, a boule or round loaf and a rectangular loaf.
Once you’ve shaped the dough, put it into a banneton or just onto some baking paper, cover and allow to prove for 1.5-3 hours. The dough should increase by 30-50% and still be springy to the touch.

While the dough proves, heat your oven to 240°C. I bake on a granite baking stone which gives a good bottom to the bread.

Once the dough is proved, slash the top of the dough to give it somewhere to expand through (and to look pretty). Then bake for 15 mins with a tray with some boiling water in it placed at bottom of the oven. The water will help give you a nice crisp crust.

Then remove the water tray and bake for another 30 minutes at 190-200°C for 30 mins.

Take the bread out and allow it to cool on a rack. Wait a while and listen to the crust crackle and ‘sing’. And enjoy.

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