25 Feb Chilli and rye sourdough bread
Thailand was magical as ever. Days spent doing my favourite things: swimming outside; reading cookbooks in a hammock; eating fresh, healthy Thai food and bargain hunting in markets… Immersing ourselves in a different world. On my return, one of the first things I did was make bread. Once you have some sourdough, you see, you are held ransom to it, knowing that it has only a certain number of days before it’s no good and I was already a day over. Luckily, I’d left the sourdough in a hyperactive fridge, so it was fine.
Since I was anxious not to loose my dough, I overcame my jetlag and made the bread, combining all the ingredients down there and stirring in the sourdough combined with warm water and adding more water as needed to create that desired peanut butter texture. I put it in a greased and floured tin, covered it and left it for 10 hours on top of the radiator, before baking it this morning (1 hour, 170 degrees C). We ate it with spiced scrambled eggs (ground paprika and coriander to be precise). It’s a spicy bread, therefore you need to offset the chilli to create that winning balance. If you would like to make this bread and you live in the UK I would be more than happy to send you some of my sourdough. Remember to always save a couple of tablespoons of your dough for the future.
1-2 tablespoons sourdough