The piccalilli we made a couple of weeks ago is finally ready to try, so I’ve baked a sourdough loaf and bought in some nice ham from the local butchers, and we’ll be having ham and piccalilli sandwiches for breakfast.

About the sourdough… I decided to try cooking it inside a Dutch oven/casserole dish as I’ve seen talked about a lot. You start off with the lid on to rise the loaf, then take the lid off to form the crust. In theory this should give me more rise, and so a higher loaf (with more space for piccalilli!). And as ever the scientist, I needed a control, so I also baked the normal way on the baking stone. So in the name of science, we have two loaves instead of one!

The regular loaf came out as expected, and has those nice large crumb holes you expect from a sourdough loaf.

However the Dutch oven version wins all round. The confined space has made it rise higher so it looks more like a loaf, the crust looks better, and inside the crumb is much more open. I think I have been converted to this method of baking!

Also I’ve made a potato salad using up our meagre second early potato harvest, loosely based on this Cook’s Country recipe. That will sandwich nicely with the cheap corned beef I got from the local shop :)

So finally we get to the piccalilli sandwiches. We hacked off bits of the ham hock, heaped on a large serving of piccalilli, and sat down for breakfast.

And it is all delicious! The piccalilli is lovely and crunchy. The only possible issue is that it’s a bit salty, which isn’t a problem for us, but other people might find it a bit much.