Six more breads

from Short & Sweet by Dan Lepard
Published by Fourth Estate, 2011

I am in the grip of an obsession. All other cooking seems to have gone out of the window. I struggle to think what to cook every day and have resorted to asking the children what they want (big mistake, never do it). On the other hand, once a week or more, I produce marvellous exciting new bread, in addition to the sourdough, white and wholemeal that I'm now producing on a regular basis. It's so easy. It's so delicious. Why doesn't everyone do it, all the time?

Double cheese and chive loaf

Spelt and ale loaf
What a great loaf of bread. This was far lighter than the rather dense wholemeal I've been making so far (not that dense is necessarily a problem, but variety is good). Quite fun watching the children's horror as I poured beer into the dough too!

Simple walnut loaf
Red wine in this one, giving it a pinkish colour, and presumably doing something to the flavour, but I'm not sure what. I love walnut bread and I just don't think this one was walnutty enough for me. I don't know why that should be, it had plenty of nuts in it. Perhaps more ground nuts through the dough and fewer whole ones?

Multigrain and honey loaf
This was very strange to make, with a sticky porridge of oats, honey, linseed, sunflower seeds and water mixed in. It's delicious though, light and moist, slightly sweet and the seeds give a lovely resistance as you bite.

Cinnamon and raisin loaf
Produced this dense, sticky raisin bread the first day of the holidays, hoping to make it an exciting breakfast treat, but they all got up too early. Typical! Perfect for tea though, and it all disappeared in no time.

Black bread
Dark, savoury smelling bread that I made today. The colour comes from cocoa, coffee, and treacle. I have to admit to not yet having tried it - I put it straight in the freezer because the breadbin was still full. I wonder if it will taste sweet? There are fennel and caraway seeds in it too. Crying out for smoked salmon?