Lorraine Pascale's Doris Grant Loaf

The weekend is always the perfect time for cooking and I love nothing more than to lose myself on a Saturday afternoon in spending time on a more involved recipe. Weekends offer the chance to do the type of cooking that we regrettably just do not have the time to do during the average week. It is a time when cooking becomes what it should be about, pleasure and the love of eating, rather than just throwing something together to fuel yourself for another day. For me, the weekend is about baking, in particular cakes and bread.

I'm a complete carboholic. I could never contemplate doing something like the Atkins diet. To exist without dense doughy sourdough, golden, crusty baguettes smeared with butter or bulging muffins bursting with chocolate chips or brilliant blueberries is just unthinkable.

One of my favourite baking bibles is Lorraine Pascale's 'Baking Made Easy' and today I made the Doris Grant Loaf. I've actually made this several times but I have such loaf love for this bread that I find myself always coming back to it, instead of trying the other bread recipes in the book.

Dense, deeply brown, textured but soft, grainy bread encased by a shell of satisfyingly crunchy crumb. This bread ticks off everything a carbomaniac could want. I prefer wholemeal bread generally and this is in a 'whole' different world to the pappy, soggy excuses our supermarkets palm off on us, wrapped in clinical polystyrene bags. The fact it is also a bread that you don't need to knead makes this a charming, leisurely Saturday afternoon activity rather than a strenous work out.

Frankly, this bread is so good, I literally needed nothing else with it to make a divine lunch. Well, actually that's a lie, I did have one little supplement - a pot of gleamingly golden extra virgin olive oil with a little puddle of dark, powerful balsamic vinegar to dunk my bread in.

And this bread is so soft and tender that it absorbed my little bath of oil and vinegar like a sponge. Popping warm slices of homemade bread in your mouth with olive oil dribbling down it -there's no finer lunch.

Ingredients

• 225g/8oz strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 225g/8oz strong wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 x 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
• 1 tbsp clear honey
• 300ml/11fl oz warm water
• vegetable oil or oil spray, for oiling
• a little milk, for brushing

Preparation method

1. Dust a medium baking tray with flour.
2. Sift the flours into a large bowl and reserve the grain – the brown bits that are too big to fit through the sieve. Add the salt and yeast, then make a big hole in the centre and pour in the honey and water. Mix well to form a smooth dough, working it gently with your hands if necessary. If the dough feels a bit stiff, add an extra two tablespoons of water. Shape the mixture into a ball and place on the prepared baking tray. Make sure the top is smooth and wrinkle-free. Cover the dough loosely with oiled clingfilm, making sure it is airtight, and leave to rise in a warm place for a good hour, or until it has almost doubled in size.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Remove the clingfilm from the dough and make a few slashes in the top with a sharp knife – I use a sharp, serrated knife and saw gently. Brush the loaf with milk, sprinkle with the reserved grain and then place in the oven.
4. Put about 10 ice cubes into the bottom of the oven – they will produce steam, which keeps the crust from hardening too quickly. (A quickly hardened crust prevents the bread from rising well.) Bake the bread for 30–40 minutes, or until it has risen, sounds hollow when tapped underneath and comes easily off the baking tray. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the tray.
5. Serve fresh from the oven with loads of butter. These loaves do not keep well. However, if the whole lot does not disappear in one sitting, slice up the remainder and put it in the freezer to eat as toast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/doris_grant_loaf_16985