There’s some ham and piccalilli in the fridge, but no bread to eat it with, so I’m making bread!

I’m going to try a long loaf today, rather than the normal round one, so I won’t be using La Cloche. I’ll be taking a couple of ideas from the baguettes and using the roasting tins to help steam the loaf, and also adding some diastatic malt to then help the crust form.

And this time I won’t forget to score at an angle to try and get an ear on the loaf!

It completely filled the baking stone, I hope it doesn’t expand off the edge! Maybe a 750kg loaf is more suited to my stone.

Well it stayed on the stone… but without much rise it didn’t get the ear properly :( Looks like I need to work on my oven spring…

Well despite a lack of rise, the crumb is proper sourdough style, and it taste great! The crust is nice and chewy, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to kep the temp up or cook for a bit longer to make it really crusty.