Bloomer three ways one weekend

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my bread baking.  A couple of weekends ago I tried baking a bloomer.  It’s a pretty basic recipe but difficult to get the crust right. Anyway, I was quite pleased with my output, and ended up eating bloomer three ways that weekend.

How my blommer’s started off

Let me show you how my bloomer started out and grew. With hindsight, my bloomer’s shape doesn’t look quite right, it looks a bit too fat.  That aside, I was quite happy with it after it had proofed.  I gave it a few good scores before it went into the oven but I think the scores probably weren’t deep enough.  I know, that sounds cruel!

Final bake

A good bloomer should have a nice crisp crust on the outside. I can never achieve that effect even though I follow the instructions from the recipe. I put some hot water in the oven to create a steam, and sure enough, the crust was nice and crisp when it came out of the oven.  However, after a few moments it went soft again like a normal loaf.  Need to work out why my cripsy crust doesn’t last.

Despite the appearance and crust texture, or lack of, the bloomer itself wasn’t too bad.   I mean it is a basic bread recipe after all, and having baked for a few years, that is at least something I can do ok.   If I can’t even manage to get the bread texture right, then there surely must be something wrong with me.

I had slice of thick freshly baked bloomer with a thick(ish) spread of butter on top.  It was divine!

Dinner

Dinner for the evening was home made meatballs in tomato sauce.  It’s a bit like the ones you get in Ikea, only mine tastes a lot better.  I had some mince pork in the freezer but nothing else at home so was limited to what I could make. Then I remembered I always have tinned tomatoes at home to make my favourtite spag bol.  Meatballs in tomato sauce was the perfect dish to go with my freshly baked bread.

Making a rich tomato sauce it pretty simple.  Finely chop a few cloves of garlic and half an onion,  and sweat them in oil with a gulp of butter.  The tip is to keep the heat low so the onions and garlic don’t caramalise and get burnt.  After about 15 or so minutes (I tend to wing my cooking so this time is approximate) they should become soft.

Next, add in the tomatoes, tomato puree, and ketchup (I just love ketchup!) and enough water to just cover the contents.  Don’t add too much water otherwise it will dilute the flavour.  The second and main tip to making a good tomato sauce is to let it simmer on low heat for at least half an hour or even to 45 minutes if you can get the heat to very low so it’s just bubbling slightly.  This helps to enrich the flavour making it more intense, otherwise you will just be eating tomato boiled with hot water.

 

Breakfast

I still had some of the bloomer left the next morning and was thinking how I could finish is off? I raided my fridge again, and found two eggs.  Let’s make french toast!!  And that’s my bloomer three ways for the weekend.