I’ve often talked about how one of my favourite things is to make bread.  I love the process – the kneading, the proving, the adding of extra ingredients, the baking and oh my THAT smell.  But sometimes, it’s just as nice to have a loaf of freshly baked bread without all the hours that go into a yeast risen loaf.

Because with the magic of other raising agents you CAN have a yummy loaf of bread in less than half the time it takes with all the usual proving.

In my youthful pastry chef days, bread was the first job of the day.  Get the dough made then leave it to prove while you got on with ALL the other things on that day’s list.  And because you had guests that were often staying for several nights it was nice to offer them different flavours of bread each day.  So I got used to chucking all sorts of things in my dough – dried fruit, olives, nuts, all kinds of cheese, vegetables, garlic, oats … the list goes on.  One day a colleague commented how nice it was to see just plain ‘ole bread on the menu because I was always “putting different shit in my bread” ?  Ahhh, Jean-Pierre, he made me laugh every single day!

So here I am, putting ‘merde’ in my bread again!!

There’s also the amazing vegan beer that is FitBeer.  This stuff is THE stuff of stuffs.  Slightly fruity, quite crisp, a touch malty.  Vegan beer drinking heaven.  They have quite the inspiring story to tell as well.

It gives this bread a truly lovely flavour – full, rounded and rich bodied.  A bit like me ?

So if you’re put off of making fresh bread because of the sheer amount of time it takes (and, lets face it, effort because of all that kneading!) give this loaf a try.  You won’t be disappointed.  AND you’ll have freshly baked bread ?

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