A crusty loaf

Do you remember that BBC advert where Gary Rhodes scaled a cliff to tell some campers cooking sausages, “The secret is not to prick them”? 

I was reminded of it watching the Great British Bake Off when Paul Hollywood kept insisting that another piece of accepted culinary wisdom – leaving bread to rise in a warm place - should be overturned. He claimed that if you leave dough in a cool place it will have more flavour because it will rise more slowly.

I have to admit that I didn’t take either man seriously at the time, but I used Hollywood’s advice this week when I made some bread with stone-ground flour from Imbhams Farm Granary and he may have a point...

Bread made with flour from Imbhams Farm Granary

Sussex Seeded Bread Mix

This bread mix is made up of wheat grown in West Sussex and lots of seeds including linseed, sunflower and sesame. There is also a packet of yeast included, so the only ingredients you have to measure yourself are the oil and water. It’s bread-making made quick and simple – the dough only needed 30 minutes to double in size. However, the resulting loaf, although crunchy and nutty, was a little disappointing in flavour.

Sussex Bread Flour

This is 100 per cent West Sussex wheat. Taking Paul Hollywood’s advice, I tried adding less yeast to the dough and leaving it somewhere cool so that it would rise more slowly. It took 2 hours to double in size and once baked it had much more flavour. We are talking sturdy, wholesome, farmhouse bread with a gloriously biscuity crust. Mr Bake Off was absolutely right. Perhaps now I should stop pricking my sausages?

Sussex credentials: The wheat is grown in West Sussex. It is ground into flour in Haslemere, Surrey, which is just over the West Sussex border.

Availability: Imbhams flour is available online or from farmers’ markets.