A love affair with bread

& a recipe for my slow sourdough bagels

I have a love affair with bread… give me a loaf & I can probably manage most of it. My favourite as a kid was a strawberry jam sandwich or marmite on toast, I would eat 2 or 3 at a time, known to my family as “the gannet”. Obviously it is always white form bread as well, it’s such comfort food for me still. But as we all know … that bread is bad for you.

But if you make your own bread then the guilt factor is zero! At least for me anyway, I am pretty easily persuaded, I love to eat & be full. Since we moved to the countryside & started living off grid I have become pretty keen on baking. I am no expert, I can make an epic pizza but I will have to explain that properly in another stack. I love to bake bread on Winter days in my wood burning stove & then demolish it with a hefty serving of butter. I would love to have sheep or cows to make my own butter & cheese some day to slap on top of my home made bread but for now that is not happening. If I am honest my sourdough is not picture perfect like you see on your Instagram feed or your recipe books, but it is still delicious & perhaps one day it will be pretty too. I am ok with that.

In 2019 Marley & I bought a pizza oven from Sicily & after years of talking about how we would love to have a food truck, we got ourselves a portable food business. Living in a small community like this means you have to be creative with ways to make a living & so we have spent years creating our brand, our business & feeding happy customers. And of course it comes in the form of bread, well kind of ! Pizza isn’t exactly bread but it begins its life as dough! Originally we wanted to have a food truck called “beans & juice” because we were planning to sell burritos & orange juice from the land, this makes me laugh thinking back to it, cute idea though! We have evolved since then.

After years of practice & handling dough, finding the right flour, using the right yeast, playing with the hydration, I have figured out how to make an excellent 24-48 hour dough & every time we sell pizzas our customers compliment the crust. I pour my heart into every batch of dough that I make & I think that makes all the difference…. I won’t give away my secret recipe for that so instead I will give you something else!

Bagels are one of my favourite breads, a good bagel with smoked salmon & cream cheese is a city treat I do miss. Food is actually one of the only “non people” things I miss, which will become clear the more I write I think. Bagels are something that you couldn’t buy in this part of Portugal when we first arrived almost seven years ago, you can find them in some supermarkets now, it’s a drive away though. Unfortunately they are wrapped in plastic & full of preservatives so I still go back to my sourdough bagel recipe now & then when we are craving them.

RECIPE for 8 bagels

• 15/20g sourdough starter + 50g bread flour + 50g water (this is how to feed your starter 12 hours before you want to start the bagels)
  

• 100g active starter

• 250g water

• 500g strong flour

• 50g honey

• 10g salt

Mix the ingredients together & let rise at room temperature for 6 hours or until doubled in size.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces, shape into circles & then put your finger in the middle to form the hole. Allow to rise again for 30-60 minutes.ch

Preheat oven to 220c & boil a large pot of water. Add some honey to the water bath. Boil the bagels for 2 minutes on each side & transfer them to a parchment lined tray.

Once they have cooled enough you can dip them in your toppings or choose to leave them plain. I use a mixture of poppy, chia & linseed.

Bake the bagels in the oven for 20-25 minutes & VOILA!

Pretty time consuming but they will be 100% worth it, trust me!

I hope you like the recipe, let me know in the comments if you try it out!

Hugs, Jaymie xo