Saturday, March 26, 2011





Super Peel from Cut The Mustard


Walnut Fennel Raisin Bread with Wessex Mills Strong White Bread Flour



Cut The Mustard

I visited Cut The Mustard at 1 Greendale Ave in Bukit Timah recently. They carry a range of specialty and gourmet products at very reasonable prices. There was a range of flours from Wessex Mills as well as Organic Stoneground Spelt and Whole Wheat flour from Gilchester Organics. I picked up a bag of the Strong White Bread Flour to try. It was very reasonable at $6.50 for 1.5kg. Considering that the local Prima Bread flour is retailing at over $3.00 per kg, the price for this unbleached high quality flour from the UK is a steal.

There is also a surprise find at the store. They actually carry The Super Peel. The Super Peel is a magical tool and it works in a very dramatic way. See this video. This is probably the only store in Singapore carrying this product.

For this test bake, I used the entire bag together with 1kg of whole wheat flour, making it a total of 2.5kg. This was the largest quantity of flour I have ever attempted. As it was a totally new flour and I was clueless about how much water it would absorb, I hazard a guess of 80% hydration.

I prepared a preferment with 500g of the White Flour in the afternoon and the main dough was mixed at around 11.00pm. As it was already very late, I opted for the prolonged autolyse method. The following day after about 12 hours, the dough was taken out for a couple of folds. I decided to make my favorite walnut fennel raisin bread. The 2.5kg of flour yielded 6 loaves.

After the loaves had cooled down, I sliced a couple of them and was very pleased with the results of the bake.

 Staple Walnut Bread 1kg All purpose flour 800g Water 3 tsp salt 3 tsp yeast Bowl of walnuts Makes two large loaves Mix dry ingredients and ...