Today’s bread was rather amusing, to start with. I began making it yesterday, a yeasted wholemeal loaf, and put it in the fridge overnight. When I got it out this morning, it had obviously carried on rising, and it seemed to me that the easiest way to get it out of the bowl was to flour the worksurface, and let gravity do the work. Then, I forgot it was there, and when I came back an hour or two later, I found it was now lifting the bowl up off the worksurface. At this point, I must say, I thought it must have finished rising, and would cook into a tasty brick. I shaped it anyway, and put it in a tin to see if it would rise any more.
Much to my relief, it hadn’t finished rising, and went from the state you see here to being at least an inch above the top of the tin by the time the oven was hot enough. So, I made the usual slash in the top to allow for oven spring, and banged it in the oven.
Here you go! Look at that stretched area on the side! There’s an enormous amount of oven spring! I will be very surprised if this doesn’t have a vast cave in its middle, but we shall see in due course…
