Fermentation Baking – Brine Bread
Finished your jar of pickles and left with a jar full of salty brine? Don’t throw it out! Use it to bake a tasty, potentially colourful, easily digestible and slightly sour loaf of bread! We haven’t been eating a tonne of bread in the last few years as rice and noodles have overtaken our proclivities for bread and pasta, but with winter looming its grey and windy head in the Adelaide Hills we have been turning more and more to eggs on toast in the morning. This bread is the perfect accompaniment and a great way to make the most of your pickles!
Ingredients:
500g Flour (mostly white, but feel free to add some rye or whole wheat)
250ml of Brine from a fermented pickle and any vegetable scraps left in the jar
6g of Yeast
(optional) A slug of olive oil, dried edible flowers, seeds, nuts, olives etc
How to:
Put a big bowl on some scales.
Put your flour in tare it off
Add brine, add yeast
Mix it up
Cover with something air tight, bees wax wraps are a good cling film alternative.
Let rise for 2-4 hours on the counter or overnight in the fridge for best flavour and texture.
Grease a loaf tin with something nice (we save bacon fat for this, tasty)
Scrape all the dough in to the tin, be gentle so as not to lose C02
Pre-heat oven to 200 and let rise for another hour or so
When risen, flick a little water on top and bake for 45 mins to an hour or until internal temperature hits around 90 degrees.
Turn out on a cooling rack to cool.
