October 2013

UCB launches new craft breads range

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UCB launched its own range of mouth-watering craft breads to coincide with National Craft Bakers Week.

The collection, featuring a new signature sour dough alongside speciality breads such as sun-dried tomato, celery seed and black onion seed, is the culmination of 12-months’ research and recipe development.

Central to the success of the range, which comprises 12 varieties, is a specially developed sour dough starter, created using flour, water and the naturally occurring airborne yeasts in the UCB bakery. It is used in five of the sour dough recipes while another traditional method, using liquid crème de Levain, is used for seven French and Italian-inspired breads.

This is baking like it used to be and the so-called mother dough, created in July, will form of the basis of the university’s on-going sour dough range.

In theory, the dough can live forever. When it runs low, it is “fed” with flour and water and starts to grow again in order to produce the magic ingredient for new loaves.

UCB’s bakery team noticed a lot of interest from students around the subject of traditional, long fermented craft breads. For many young people, it is like a lost art. Traditional baking methods have been popularised thanks to widespread media coverage and TV shows. Our bakery team decided to pool our knowledge and expertise and put together a range of breads to showcase our skills and to satisfy the demand for these in vogue breads.

Richard Wood, bakery and confectionary lecturer

The team drew on the technical expertise of bakery ingredient companies Fermex and AB Mauri as it perfected its in-house recipes.

The team felt recently that our recipes and methods were developed to the extent where we could launch this range into our daily offer of freshly baked breads. With our students very much to the forefront in our thinking, we are able to teach these recipes and methods, giving students a real feel for this sector of the bakery trade.

Richard Wood, bakery and confectionary lecturer

Richard has overseen the project with bakery technician Johnny Robson, who is responsible for stocking UCB’s Cake and Bake shop from Monday to Friday. The shop is open to students, staff and members of the public.

Johnny is being assisted by Level 3 bakery and confectionary apprentices Sam Burns and Sean Brown. The team is tasked with producing three or four varieties from the craft collection each day, baking about 50 loaves in the speciality range. The signature sour dough starts at 65p.

The breads are:

  • UCB sour dough, comprising 50 per cent sour dough starter to flour;
  • Ale and mature Cheddar sour dough;
  • Beetroot sour dough;
  • Sun-dried tomato, celery seed, black onion seed sour dough;
  • Chilli, cheese and coriander seed sour dough;
  • Pain de champagne;
  • Pain de campagne with chocolate and raisin;
  • Walnut batards;
  • Ciabatta;
  • Sun-dried tomato ciabatta;
  • Black olive ciabatta;
  • Roasted garlic and rosemary ciabatta.

And don’t worry about the mother dough during the university holidays.

The UCB signature sour dough is a living and breathing thing. It will be kept alive but dormant over the university’s quieter periods. It’s going to get better and better.

Richard Wood, bakery and confectionary lecturer

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