Ale and spelt bread for #Boothscheers

Mr Lancashire Food is developing quite a talent for bread baking and one of his tastiest bakes so far has been a Ale and spelt bread he baked specially for #Boothscheers Beer and Cider festival, this bread is great served with soup, cheese and particularly smoked fish such as hot smoked salmon or gravalax as the beery hoppy nutty notes particularly complement the oilliness of the fish. Its a relatively straight forward recipe in bread terms and also features my favourite bread grain spelt too.

Ingredients

• 175g spelt flour
• 275g strong white bread flour
• 7g of dried yeast
• 7g of salt fine grain
• 100ml of ale ( We used Stringers Delta V) but any ale would do
• 100ml of water
• 100ml of skimmed milk ( or you could use watered down yogurt) or just more water
• Good squirt of honey - (about 1/2 tbsp) you could use brown sugar
• knob of butter

You'll also need a round proving basket, floured well.

Method

• Place the butter, milk, beer, honey and water in a pan and warm until the butter has melted, leave to cool until just warm to the touch
• Place all the other ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and attach the dough hook , give it a quick run to distribute the yeast and salt .
• Now add the cooled liquid mixture to the bowl with the mixer running on slow until you have added all the liquid, don't worry if it looks like it won't come together as it will.
• Now leave your mixer doing the work on a slow setting for approximately 6 minutes or so until you have a soft elastic dough.
• Scrape out your bowl onto a floured surface and shape into a round , now place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a shower cap and leave until doubled in size
• Turn out onto a floured surface and knock back the dough with your fingers, now reshape in a ball and place in your well floured proving bowl, cover and let prove until doubled in size again.

• Preheat the oven to 200c
• Gently turn out onto a silicone baking mat or silicone paper , bake for approx 30 minutes until well risen, golden and so that it sounds hollow when tapped.
• Allow to cool on a wire rack.