Apricot bread

Baking tool:

• dark loaf tin 30x10x8m,
• carefully greased with butter

 

Dough (makes one loaf):

 

Starter:

• 50 g extra strong wholemeal flour
• 7 g easy-blend/easy bake dried yeast
• 75 ml luke warm water

 

Dough:

• 500 g extra strong wholemeal flour
• (plus extra for dusting)
• 1 tablespoon dark brown muscovado sugar
• about 350 ml luke warm water
• 1 teaspoon barley malt syrup (health shop)
• 8 g salt

 

Filling:

• 50 ml liquid honey
• 50 g soft unsalted butter
• 200 g dried Turkish apricots,
• ‘ready to eat’, minced
• 1 level tablespoon flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

On top:

• honey

From the Far West of the United States: 100 % wholewheat apricot bread. Michael Pollan, the modern advocate of  ‘Real Food’, is by no means the first American who is concerned with food-ethics. A famous predecessor was pastor Syvester Graham. He lived convinced that food treated with chemical products, particularly white flour, led to unbridled sexual behaviour. He thought the same of meat and alcohol. He was succesful.  So much that demonstrating bakers and butchers stopped him when he wanted to give a lecture about his food reformation in Boston in 1837. That reformation did not succeed totally, but in America the special graham flour is for sale until this day and breads such as the apricot bread are still baked. It has to be said: this is the real taste of wheat!

• Starter: Mix flour and yeast in a measuring jug with the water. Whisk to a creamy consistency. Cover and leave to rise to a volume of 300 ml at room temperature.
• Dough: Mix the flour in a bowl with the starter and the sugar. Dissolve the malt syrup in the water. Stir 300 ml into the bowl. Knead briefly; add some more of the malt water if the dough seems too dry. Add the salt and knead a firm dough (8 minutes kneading machine, lowest position). Cover with a damp cloth. Leave to rise at room temperature for an hour.
• Filling: Knead honey and butter evenly through the risen dough. Shake the apricot chippings with cinnamon and flour. Knead through the now somewhat sticky dough.
• On a thickly floured surface roll out the dough into a rectangle as wide as the length of your loaf tin (30 cm). Leave to rise 10 minutes under the damp cloth. Then roll up and put into the tin with the fold underneath. Cover with the cloth and leave to rise again at room temperature until the dough peeps over the rim of the tin (about 1 ½ hours).
• Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas 6.
• Bake about 35 minutes on the lowest shelf. The bread must sound hollow when tapped underneath. Turn out on a wire rack. Brush the top with honey while the bread is stil warm. Leave to cool completely.