Bread

Well I promised I'd make some and did.  I used Dan Lepard's recipe for Cucumber pickle juice rye loaf, however due to a lack of ingredients I left out the cucumber pickle juice, so basically it's a rye loaf.  The twist to this rye is that the recipe requires the rye flour to be toasted which gives the loaf quite a sweet/nutty taste and is responsible I believe, for the bread being brown.  I can tell that if I had bothered to get some pickled cucumbers (my home made supplier has not been replenished, oops) it would make this a truly outstanding loaf.  The vinegary sharpness of the cucumbers would have balanced out the nuttiness of the rye perfectly.

Nonetheless, it's great bread and only confirms my opinion that Dan's book, The Handmade Loaf, is fantastic if you've got the slightest interest in baking.  The only thing I'm slightly peeved about is that my leaven is looking a bit flat - it's getting a lot of TLC, but so far fermentation is pretty limited which means that sourdough making is off the agenda for the next couple of days.