I first made this recipe way back in 2011 and blogged the recipe back then, it's a fabulous recipe and makes the most amazingly tasty loaf. However , I really wanted to try this in a breadmaker as I was feeling really quite lazy. I couldn't find a recipe which - I think - comes close to this one so I just had to bite the bullet and give the original recipe a go in my bread machine....here goes:
I used my original recipe and the original quantities ( bit of a mistake there ) so I'll post the revised quantities for future attempts.
Ingredients
2 Teaspoons demerara sugar ( but anything will do here )
1 Teaspoon Dried Yeast
225mls Dark Beer ( I used Guinness )
420gms Strong White Bread Flour
100gms Grated Strong Cheddar Cheese
35gms Grated Parmesan
25gms Powdered Milk
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Mustard Powder
1 Beaten Free range Egg
Place the Guinness and egg into the pan, add everything else at will and turn on bread machine to standard large loaf -
Now, I came a little unstuck here as the original recipe was twice the quantity and boy this was a huge amount of dough, my poor breadmaker just could not cope with the sheer volume of ingredients so at this point I pulled the mixture out of the breadmaker and gave it a good mix by hand before putting it back into the machine and started it from the beginning - phew!
It seemed ok now so I left it to do its thing - but - Oh man..... it grew and grew and by the end of the cycle it had burst out of the machine.
I really wish that I had photographed it at this point for comedic value alone, the house smelled amazing but I had a Quatermass experiment of a loaf to deal with. I wrestled the loaf free from the pan and as it seemed a little soft on the top ( where it had burst free ) I put it in a hot oven for ten minutes.
It was the ugliest thing I've ever created but curiously it tasted ok, I served the ugly top bit toasted with some soup ( very rustic ) and wrapped up the now quite tidy looking loaf for another day.
This is the thing, the loaf that cooked in the pan without its freedom is astonishingly good, the texture is really quite light and not stodgy at all, toasted with butter it's sheer heaven.
I have halved the old quantities and would make this in a heartbeat as it's so good, so good I can't keep my hands off it!!
Original picture here for the free form loaf
Not the best picture of experimental loaf but I have swiped the ugly top off so that it at least resembles a normal loaf.
Going to make a vegan one of these at the weekend for Sam, lets see how that goes....