dulcis in fundo

Ah bread... Really, if there is one thing that I miss in this country, it's probably good bread. Something that is intrinsically simple and can be found in every corner in other countries (France, Italy, Spain, Greece...) here is a "gourmet" item, only to be found in posh neighbourhood delicatessens, artisanal bakeries in just a few obscure areas of the capital, and, best-case-scenario, some food markets. All of the above of course sell bread at a cost that would make any French/Italian/Spanish/Greek person laugh and quickly run away... £5 for a focaccia? £4.50 for a ciabatta? £4 for a baguette? Come on, it's just flour, water and yeast, of which 3 ingredients one comes for free through the tap!

Facing this frustration of spongy/squishy/bouncy/never-hardening madness, or otherwise called "supermarket Chorleywood process rubbish bread", all these years I had tried many times to make bread at home, with not so great results. I know it's easy, and I know it's simple, but the manual labour of kneading quite a few times, plus all the waiting for it to rise annoyed me, and the end result was nothing like the 1 Euro loaf you can get in any corner bakery in Greece. Plus if you think of it logically, how much money do you charge for your time? If you're getting paid £6 an hour in your normal job, and you take 3 hours to make bread, that means your loaf costs an overabundant £24, which makes it actually cheaper and easier for you to take the train to E5 bakehouse and get some great loaves from there!

Hence, the breadmaker comes into the picture! I had never been sure about these things, but when a friend told me that it was great waking up to the smell of freshly-baked bread, I thought I'd go for one. I slowly brainwashed the other half (also a REAL bread lover) over some time, so I finally got one as a nameday present last year! I got the one that was rated as the best at the time (and probably was the most expensive one as well), and I have to say that I love how it makes life easier. Sort of. There are two aspects of it, at least that I have tried, and I'll tell you the results. First, you can make bread the VERY easy way, which is throw all the ingredients in the machine, programme it, and then it does everything on its own, and you wake up in the morning with the aforementioned nice smell. The bread made this way is better definitely than the supermarket ones, but due to the breadmaker bin shape it always will be a squareish loaf, with soft crust. That's ok for sandwiches that are going to be toasted, but if you're looking for something different and crusty, there's the other option.

Dough. Same as before, you throw everything in, machine does everything, but DOES NOT BAKE. So it takes less time, and when done you can shape the dough yourself, let it rise once in a warmish place (I use the oven at 40°C as in this country of constant winter no place in my house is ever warmish enough!), knead a bit, shape, let rise again and then bake. Yes, it's still gonna take up some time off your life, but the main "getting sticky and messy, and kneading 15 minutes till you think a personal trainer would be giving you the puppy-treatment in comparison" thing is gone!

I have up to now made extremely successful sweet breads of various provenances (Greek tsoureki, Mexican Pan de muerto, English hot cross buns, Italian panettone, Mexican Rosca de Reyes) as well as this nice focaccia. It's never going to be the focaccia you will buy from an Italian bakery, but it's a pretty good substitute, and the best solution I've managed to find in order to not have to change 2 buses and 3 tubes from where I live (or just 1 train + 1 airplane!) to get a decent one...

Put all the dough ingredients in the order they are mentioned in the breadmaker bin and choose the standard dough programme (mine takes about 45 minutes). 

Take out the dough and knead for a bit. Put in a large bowl and cover with a clean towel, then place in an oven at 40°C for an hour (or until doubled). 

Take out, roll and pat the dough into a 30cm x 25cm rectangle on a greased baking tray. Make indentations over the dough with your finger, and allow to prove in the 40°C oven for another 30-40 minutes, until doubled.

Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt. Bake in a preheated oven at 210°C for 10 minutes, then check and return to the oven for a couple more minutes if not ready and golden.

We all know the usual pre-Christmas restaurant outing/outrage. Desperate office boys and girls around London huddle around overpacked restaurants, eat restrictive bland 3-course menus with 2 choices of main, 2 of starter and (if you're lucky at all) 2 choices of dessert. Add to that the embarrassment of having to quickly wolf down everything so you can be out of there before the minus two hours of the booking are finished (and your double-decker has turned again into a butternut squash). And what about having to pay anything from £35 to £extortionate, upfront when you make the booking, AND getting charged full price if one unlucky sod happens to fall ill in the snowstorm? There you go…now you've got your typical London Christmas party. And "due to extreme popularity, we are only able to accommodate your group for a Christmas dinner on the 19th of November". Don't tell me you haven't heard this one! Christmas is Christmas, and whether you like it or not, a dinner in November does-not-a-Christmas-party-constitute, in anyone's (and much less a foreigner's) book.

Hence, this time my international colleagues and I went for an alternative Christmas dinner. One where you get your hands dirty (and sticky!), one that requires at least one full body apron per person, no loose hairs and future wonderment on how flour has managed to end up everywhere (including the inside of your underwear!). What I'm talking about is an evening spent making bread (and eating it) in the e5 Bakehouse. Ben McKinnon's love child is a lovely bakery squished under one of the London Fields train station arches, which dishes out yummy organic loaves. The master feature is the wood fire oven that Ben and his sister designed and built from scratch, using information found on the internet and reclaimed materials. Despite being mismatched, it's extremely pretty, sitting there and puffing fire like a gentle ancient dragon.

We ended up in the bakery after my friend Natalia (who lives nearby and met Ben when she was passing by and smelt the bread, leading to a small coffee-making day collaboration) thought it would be a good alternative idea and a great chance to avoid the usual pre-holiday restaurant rat-race. And what a fantastic idea it was. After we confirmed numbers, Ben kindly booked us in to come and make some great ciabatta breads on a freezing Thursday evening. Thinking that we would be eating only the bread, we brought along some nuts, olives, cold meats and LOTS of cheese and wine to go with it. However we were in for a surprise...(or two!)

We started with Ben showing us around and passing on the recipe for the ciabattas, and while we got messy measuring water, flour and leaven he showed us the next steps, which involved a lot of waiting for the dough to rest, and not as much kneading as I actually expected. After an initial mixing and resting we folded the dough by lifting it off the edges of the bowl with a spatula, from the outside towards the centre, something that was repeated again two times after intervening rests and cheese-and-cracker-nibbling.

After the few times of folding and resting were over, we transferred the dough into a well-floured surface, where we stretched it, and finally decorated it with rosemary, olives or sundried tomatoes, and - following the example of the Italians in the team - drizzled it with olive oil and spread a few salt flakes on top.

Then we moved on to the long table that Ben's girlfriend had cutely decorated with tea lights and where all our cheesing and wining was previously performed, and heard something about "dinner". Thinking that was the bread we had just baked, we were shocked to discover that the guys had even made some vegetarian lasagne for us which were followed by dreamy mince pies (I had been eyeing those earlier when they were patiently sitting in the bakery shelves, but I had no clue some of them were meant for us!)

After being totally filled up to the brim with food, we finished off with some freshly brewed coffee from Square Mile that Natalia had brought with her and went off into the frost with our little bags stuffed with leftover ciabatta and some of the signature Borodinsky rye bread that Ben had also made for us and which we "styled" into the bread tins.

An amazing night overall, and an amazing bakery, go in and get a loaf any time you're around Hackney, or visit the Bakery's facebook page to stay updated on future events and baking classes, which take place usually on Saturdays.

Arch 402, Mentmore Terrace

London, E8 3PH