Recipe for muesli bread (From York Press)

Recipe for muesli bread

12:24pm Saturday 4th February 2012 in Too Many Cooks

Home baker JULIAN COLE gives his recipe for muesli bread

I HAD this idea at breakfast one morning, funnily enough. It’s a bit of an experiment, but it seems to work.

The recipe uses a ferment, a yeasty super-charger that gets things going. This helps in rich sweet dough.

Soaking the muesli in the ferment also stops it from being too dry in the finished loaf.

Use whatever muesli you have: the nicer the cereal, the better the bread, but anything should work.

Ingredients:

300g strong white flour
100g muesli
Teaspoon easy-blend yeast
Tablespoon natural yogurt
Teaspoon honey
Teaspoon salt
Tablespoon milk powder
Teaspoon cinnamon
Tablespoon brown sugar
50g cold unsalted butter
300ml warm water

Method: First mix the yeast with about a tablespoon of the flour and then put in a large jug with the warm water, yoghurt, honey and muesli. Whisk this mixture and leave to get frothy, perhaps for 30 minutes or so.

Place the remaining flour in a large bowl, add the salt, milk powder, sugar and cinnamon, then pour in the frothy ferment. Bring together into a rough mass, cover and leave for ten minutes. Then grate in the cold butter and knead it through.

At this point, either carry on kneading for eight to ten minutes, or knead briefly, leave for ten minutes, and knead briefly again. The dough will be sticky so a little more flour may be needed, but resist adding too much (try wholemeal for variety, if you have some to hand).

Cover bowl with clingfilm or a tea towel and leave to rise for an hour or so. Gently deflate, roll and shape into a loaf and place on a floured baking tray. Cover and leave to rise for about 40 minutes, heating the oven to 200C in the last ten minutes. Slash diagonally across the loaf before placing in the oven. Cook for 45 minutes, remove and place on wire cooling rack.