“The best bread you can eat,” I always say, “is the bread you made yourself!”
Long-time readers of the Happy Monk blog could be tired of hearing me say that! But it’s been a while since I last said it, and it bears repeating! I stand by the statement as firmly as ever!
Let me explain:
• Bread is elemental.
• Bread is human.
• Bread is transformation.
• Bread is sublime.
• Bread is a miracle!
If you can make it yourself, you’ve performed a miracle! And it’s no small thing to eat your own miracle!
That’s not hyperbole … I ain’t BS-ing you!
Transformative!
Bread, in its purest form, is elemental. Four ingredients! Mix them up — flour, water, yeast and salt — bake it in the oven, and that gloppy, sticky mass is transformed into something sublime — the staff of life!
It smells heavenly and of the earth! It’s seductive! It rises in the heat of the oven. It colours, browns, turns itself into a shimmering loaf. It’s nourishing, delicious to eat, full of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, protein. It’s so much greater than the sum of its parts! And it can only be explained as a miracle!
You’ve made it! This exquisite loaf of bread!
Cut into your loaf after it’s cooled a bit. Watch how the bread knife shatters the crust, how the first slice falls onto the cutting board. Watch the steam rise gently out of the pillowy crumb. Breathe in the aroma!
Bliss!
Watch how the butter melts as you spread it over the lacy network of bubbles and crust. Bite into it, and you are transported again! Bliss!
Do I have to say more?
I urge you, readers, to make your own bread! Make it with love and care. Don’t try to be super-accurate, have fun, put on some music, enjoy mixing the dough, enjoy baking it, enjoy eating your bread!
I’ve published two recipes for bread in this space.
• The Approachable Loaf; and
• The Jim Lahey No-Knead Loaf.
Here’s your assignment: It’s time for Ballymaloe
Now, I’m about to give you a third recipe: Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread. It’s not sourdough bread, but it can be made from start to finish in two hours. It tastes fantastic! I made it last week. It’s easy! And you have to try it!
The recipe is from a new bread book by Richard Hart, an accomplished baker who’s worked with bakers and chefs around the world. Richard Hart Bread has just come out, and it’s very good!
Yes, another bread book, more recipes, more stories, more beautiful pictures. But if you ask me, this one shines! It’s a classic! Bolstered by Hart’s down-to-earth approach and a way of describing his process that is passionate and fun.
A good example of this is that he chose to include Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread. There is nothing challenging about this recipe! It couldn’t be simpler. You don’t spend long hours kneading and folding. Waiting for it to proof: Two hours is all this recipe asks of you:
One hour for mixing the dough by hand, then putting it into the oven.
One hour for baking.
Six ingredients
Ballymaloe is cooking school in Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland. A British nutritionist created the bread around World War II to help people eat well on their slim wartime rations.
There are six ingredients: It’s mostly whole wheat flour with a little all-purpose flour. Also, salt, yeast, warm water … and malt syrup!
Malt syrup is made from malted barley. It tastes deep and rich, a little like molasses. It’s a bit pricey, about $20 for a jar, but really worthwhile for its earthy taste. You could use honey in its place — or maple syrup — but the bread will taste sweeter. You can find Malt Syrup at Whole Foods, Lifestyles or online.
One caveat: this recipe uses metric weight for measuring the ingredients. You’ll have to find a metric kitchen weigh scale. Borrow one or buy one online. You can pick them up for very reasonable prices. They’re more accurate than imperial cups and tablespoons!
So here’s the recipe. If you start now, you’ll have two loaves of beautiful bread in two hours!
BALLYMALOE BROWN YEAST BREAD
Makes two 900 gram loaves
| INGREDIENT | WEIGHT |
|---|---|
| Whole Wheat Flour | 804 grams |
| All Purpose or Bread Flour | 89 grams |
| Fine Sea Salt | 27 grams |
| Malt Syrup | 18 grams |
| Warm Water (approx. 104ºF) | 849 grams |
| Instant Dry Yeast | 13 grams |
| TOTAL | 1,800 GRAMS |
EQUIPMENT
Mixing bowl
2 loaf pans (5 x 9 inches)
Tea towel
Plastic dough scraper
Digital thermometer
Electronic digital metric weigh scale
Cooking rack.
PROCESS
MEASURE OUT YOUR INGREDIENTS: Have all your ingredients measured out in bowls and arranged around your mixing bowl.
MIX THE DOUGH: In a mixing bowl, mix all the dough ingredients together by hand. There is no need to dissolve the yeast in the water. Just mix it with flour and other ingredients. The dough will be loose and too wet to knead. Scrape the leftover dough from your hands with the plastic dough scraper.
PROOF THE DOUGH: Preheat the oven to 450ºF or 230ºC
Brush the sides and bottoms of the loaf pans with butter or coconut oil. Scoop the dough into the pans. Smooth the tops evenly. Put the pans in a warm place covered with tea towels to prevent skins from forming. Let rise until the dough reaches the pans’ tops, about 30 minutes.
BAKE THE LOAVES: Bake the loaves for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 400ºF or 205ºC and bake for 40 more minutes, or until they are nicely browned and the digital thermometer shows an internal temperature of 203ºF / 95ºC. Remove the loaves from the oven, then turn them out on a rack to cool.
Let me know how your loaf turns out! Let me know how it feels to be a miracle maker!
A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]
Jan 29
![A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]](https://i0.wp.com/happymonkbaking.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png?w=980&ssl=1)
A bread-fail last week produced great-tasting Sesame-Miso Frisbees or Umami Chapeaus! What to do with the remnants? Hard-bread, rusks, croutons, or what have you. And the Ravens get their fair share, too … O come to me Huginn and Munnin! Fill your beaks and carry my greetings and blessings to Odin! [ See link in my LinkTree in HappyMonk Profile ]
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#showusyourfuckedloaves, #sesamemiso, #sesamemiso, #sesamemisobread, #hardtack, #hardbread, #croutons, #huginnandmunnin, #odin, #penderisland, #southpenderisland, #happymonkbaking, #southerngulfislands|
Jul 21
Latest Happy Monk Blog: The World is Too Much With Us - In our little Island paradise, how to embrace all the beauty when the world is going to hell in a hand basket? ALSO: Baker`s Choice - Brown-Rice Miso and Sesame Sourdough [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 17
Latest Happy Monk Blog: "A Bird Came Down the Walk," a brief flirtation with ChatGPT that was awkward but offered an exquisite poem by Emily Dickinson. [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 3
Resurrected a couple of Salish Sourdough loaves forgotten inside Mildrith, the wood-fired oven. They emerged charred and hell-fired, sadly, so I took a knife to them and made them almost new again!
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#woodfired #woodfiredoven #coboven #Mildrith #Mildriththeoven #woodfiredovenbread #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #burntbread #showusyourfuckedloaves
Jun 9
Strongly recommend installing the Smell-O-Vision™ feature on your device to appreciate the aroma of these Rye-Currant Sourdough loaves, just out of the oven. Wish I could capture it in a jar, or make a scratch ‘n’ sniff postage stamp (like the recent French stamp commemorating the baguette). And this loaf tastes just as lovely as they look!
Jun 1
The Happy Monk Baking Company
Happy Monk Tidings - May 15, 2024 🍞 - BLOG REDUX: "Saving Grace"; BAKER`S CHOICE: Sprouted Purple Barley Sourdough; REGULAR: Seed Feast.
May 15
It’s late at night and chances are there’s a baker near you having fun with bread dough …
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#bakers #bakerslife #bakersofinstagram #bakerslifeforme #nighttime #nightlife #nightsky #bakingmagic
May 5
All spelt, all the time … well, with a few glugs of maple syrup
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#spelt #wholegrain #tinloaves #realbread #breadbakers #breadbakersofinstagram
#artisanbreadbakers #speltbread #speltsourdoughbread #speltbread #wholegrainspeltbread #penderisland #southpenderisland #happymonkbaking #happymonkbaker
Apr 20
New Happy Monk Blog: Spring brings mixed blessings! A sense of loss, along with warmth and a new cast of light, "That Science cannot overtake / But Human Nature Feels." Westeros and Emily Dickinson`s sensitive heart. [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Apr 3
This little guy is a workhorse, plain and simple. A brute! Thursday, it milled over 27kg of incredible flour for a recipe that needed the freshest flour possible. And its output was beautiful. Wheat, spelt, rye and buckwheat. A larger mill could have handled that in a fraction of the time, but who’s complaining? Some amazing bread was the result, milled and mixed the same day. A Country Miche from an article by Eric Pallant @epallant in the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Bread Lines.
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#spelt #speltbread #buckwheat #buckwheatbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #naturallyleavened #artisanbread #realbread #rusticbread #flourmilling #flourmill #komoflourmills #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands
Mar 2
Latest Happy Monk Blog - The Living Rock Island – Our Little Corner of South Pender Island 🍞 [See LinkTree in Profile]
Feb 28
O, for a slice of raisin sourdough! that hath been
Warm’d a long age in the deep delvéd oven,
Tasting of Hestia and the ocean green,
Rest and a slow moving song and sunburnt mirth!
O for a loaf full of the warm South
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded raisins winking at the crumb,
And cinnamon-stainéd mouth;
That I might eat, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
— Apologies to John Keats for my butchery of his “Ode to a Nightingale”
Feb 25
At the outset of the Happy Monk Baking Company, I cherished those early mornings, working alone with Mildrith in the dark before the birds began their glorious morning chorus. The world was silent, unhurried. Mildrith and me, the trees, the solid earth, a passing deer, the baskets of bread dough waiting for the oven.
Going to work in the pre-dawn hours was something bakers did, I thought. They sacrificed sleep and delivered their bread early to appreciative customers. It was a romantic notion on my part, a naïve commitment to the baking trade without fully understanding the consequences, i.e. sleep debt.
It was satisfying to have loaves ready for some customers before noon; it was a triumph! But by the time most of the bread was ready for delivery, bagged and labelled, my eyelids were growing heavy, my mind fuzzy, my body slowing down.
And it wasn’t safe driving up-island.
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#bakerslife #bakers #sleepdeprivation #woodfired #woodfiredoven #woodfiredovenbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakery #happymonkbakingcompany
Feb 1
Milling a little corn to mix in with some marinated olives before they go into a tapenade infused dough. Big olive flavour … plus a rare shot of Mildrith, the wood-fired oven!
Nov 19
Happy Monk Tidings - November 15, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE this week: Olive Sourdough Loaf; AND: An Emotional Weather Report [ See LinkTree in Profile ] 🍞
Nov 15
Happy Monk Tidings - November 1, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Sourdough Sandwich Loaf; BLOG: Don`t Let That Wonder Lawyer Tell You It`s Not Real Bread! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Nov 1
Dylan Thomas, one of my muses, would have been 109 years old this Friday, Oct. 27. One of a small-handful of poets whose words are cherished and summoned often for their music and wisdom. They soothe, they sing, they evoke. I`ll be thinking of him this bread day, under "the mustardseed sun"….. and the "switchback sea"…. as he "celebrates and spurns his driftwood thirty fifth wind turned age."
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#dylanthomas #poetsofinstagram #poetrylovers #poetryisnotdead #poetryofinstagram #poets #poetryislife #poetrylove #poetrydaily #poetryworld #poetryinstagram #bakerpoets #poetryforbakers #southpenderisland #penderisland
Happy Monk Tidings - October 25, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE - Sprouted Emmer Sourdough; BLOG: Happy Birthday, Dylan Thomas! [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 25
Happy Monk Tidings - October 18, 2023 - 🍞: BAKER`s CHOICE: Seedy Spelt and Rye Bread; BLOG: It Starts With Wonder? What`s That?
Oct 18
Happy Monk Tidings - October 11, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE: Potato Rosemary Bread; BLOG: Swimming with Otters 🍞
Oct 11
Happy Monk Tidings - BLOG: Abundance: Season of Apples; Baker`s Choice: Pender Island Apple Bread with Pender Apples and Twin Island Cider - October 4, 2023 🍞 [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 4
Happy Monk Tidings - September 27, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE THIS WEEK: Harvest Bread; BLOG: Positively Fourth Avenue - [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 27
Happy Monk Tidings - September 20, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Garlic Levain Bread; BLOG: Harumph! Author Says Leave the Baking to the Professionals! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 20
A hefty Country Miche, formula from Breadlines published by Bread Bakers Guild of America. Hefty in size, hefty in flavour. Four flours (Sifted Metchosin Wheat, Rye, Buckwheat, Spelt), a super-active levain and an intense crust colour. I think I’m addicted! It’s kind of finicky, though, and trying to work out a reasonable schedule to produce 40 loaves for Happy Monk customers.
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. #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakingcompany #wholegrainbread #breadhead #michebread #realbread #rusticbread #southerngulfislands #southerngulfislandsbakers #southerngulfislandsbakeries
Sep 14
Resistance is futile!