A crackle glaze (sometimes called giraffe bread, or rather oddly tiger bread – aren’t tigers striped, not patchy?) is pretty much completely aesthetic. However, the additional yeast in the glaze does add a slight touch of extra umami flavouring to the crust. It’s fun to do occasionally anyway.
This is a fairly standard 50:50 wholemeal and white mix bread dough, with a crackle glaze added.
I have made two smaller loaves, both hand shaped. You could do the second proof in a banneton, tip out the bread then apply the glaze, but I have chosen to hand shape and not use a banneton for this recipe.
Makes 2 medium sized cobs or one large
Equipment
- Large bowl
- Small bowl
- Stand mixer if using
- Dough cutter (not essential but makes life much easier)
- Pastry brush
- Cling film, tea towel or plastic bag
- Baking stone or heavy duty baking tray
- Small whisk (a fork will do though)
- Boiled kettle of water (to create oven steam) and an oven proof dish
Ingredients – for the Bread
- Strong plain white flour – 300g (plus a little extra for kneading)
- Strong wholemeal flour – 300g
- Fine salt – 1 1/2 teaspoons
- Olive oil – 2 tablespoons
- Water – 350 ml
- Fast acting dried yeast – 1 1/2 teaspoons
Ingredients for the glaze
- Rice flour – 2 tablespoons
- Cornflour – 2 tablespoons
- Caster sugar – 1 tablespoon
- Fast action dried yeast – 1 1/2 teaspoons
- Water – enough to make this into ‘wallpaper paste’ consistency – roughly about 100 ml
Method
- Mix together all the ingredients for the bread into a sticky clump – and leave for 10 minutes
- Tip out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough turns from a rough texture to smooth and shiny. This will be about 10 – 12 minutes. Alternatively, put into a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment and knead for the same amount of time (dough mixers don’t speed up the process, they just take the labour away)
- Shape roughly into a ball and place back in the bowl (cleaned a little and oiled first)
- Leave to proove until around doubled in size, this will depend on the temperature (anywhere between 40 – 120 minutes)
- Test the proof is complete by pressing a finger lightly onto the dough – it should spring back and not indent
- Tip out of the bowl and knock back
- Reshape into two balls/cobs, making sure the dome is smooth and any pleats or folds are underneath
- Lightly flour your baking tray or baking stone (I actually use a heavy duty large slate tile I bought from a tile merchant – this does my bread excellently and only cost a few pounds)
- Place the cobs on the tray/stone and cover with a tea towel/cling film/plastic bag
- Leave to rise again for about 30 – 50 minutes until not-quite doubled in size
- While the second proof is happening, mix up the glaze: mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl
- The consistency should be like wallpaper paste – whisk it a little and leave until the bread is almost prooved
- Paint the glaze over the top of the cobs and leave them for another 10 minutes
- Put your oven on to 200˚C fan / 230˚C conventional
- Boil your kettle and put the oven proof dish in the bottom of your oven
- When the bread and the oven are ready, open the oven, put the baking tray/stone in and pour the hot contents of the kettle into the ovenproof dish. Immediately shut the oven door
- Bake for 35 minutes until the top is dark brown and crackled and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped
Ink Sugar Spice ~ Lynn Clark 