Festival of white

Another five years have slipped by and the quinquennial white bread festival has come around again. So batch 597 was made without the usual portion of wholemeal flour, just 3lbs 6oz of medium strength 'Alto' flour from Wright's of Ponders End. It also involved a fairly newly opened packet of 'Mauripan' yeast, with the last packet having been showing its age at eight months after opening, despite being kept in what was sold as an air-tight plastic tub. One of those with the blue washer running under the rim of the lid. Maybe 500g to the packet is too much for my modest usage, perhaps 15g a week. Slightly less water than usual, 32oz rather than 33oz. This dough seemed more elastic than its wholemeal cousin. Certainly a slightly different texture. Both first and second rise faster, perhaps clipping 25% off the time.

On exit from the oven, as snapped above, this white bread looked to be the best ever. Some crinkling visible right. Quite like what one might get from a baker, something I have failed to achieve in the past.

Started the first loaf about four hours out of the oven. The bread turned out inside to have risen nicely, with no cave in the top storey and with a good crumb. But I hadn't quite achieved the flavour of traditional baker white bread that I had been looking for. A little bland, better with cheese than butter. Certainly better than Sainsbury's white. Maybe more kneading would have been even better?

The following morning, that is to say this morning, a fried egg sandwich, such things being much better on white bread than brown. The thought here being that the more complex taste and texture of wholemeal bread tends to mask all but the strongest sandwich fillings - so white bread is what you want if you want to taste the filling. This sandwich turned out pretty good, but not so good that I stretched to two of them. Maybe another one tomorrow. 

PS 1: 'Nymph Errant' of reference 1 visible in green top right. BH continues to dip.

PS 2: another festival of white, that is to say a short but sharp snow shower, has just stopped as I type this. A dusting of snow has settled on the back lawn, rather more on the (flat) extension roof. Will it stop a spin around Jubilee Way?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/nymph-errant.html.

Reference 2: https://www.wrightsflour.co.uk/about/.