This is really good but you should try to make sourdough potato bread sometime, it’s delicious.” I’ve probably heard my Dad utter a version of thatfifty times to date, usually just after eating a slice of my fresh sourdough bread. Towards the end of its life, we recommend transforming the loaf into croutons, stuffing or even a croque monsieur. With Johnson’s help Gail’s may have reached 60 cafes, but Molnar deliberately resisted the turbo-charged growth seen by other brands in the sector. “I actually slowed down when people were speeding up. I said the money had to go on food not rent. You were seeing incredible competition for prime spaces that would have meant I’d have had to cut corners.” To shape as a batard: flip the resting round over onto the floured surface and fold the top half up and over to the middle and the bottom half up and over the recently folded top. You’ll have a long horizontal rectangle sitting in front of you. Turn the rectangle 90º and grab a small portion of the top, pull up and fold over a little bit, pressing down to seal. Take the rolled top and continue to gently roll it down toward your body with two hands working together. As you do each roll and work your way down the vertical rectangle, use your thumbs to gently press the dough into itself.

After five years supplying chefs, the team saw a gap in the market to bring high-quality bread out of high-end restaurants and into neighbourhood cafes. Molnar and Avidan bought half the company and in 2005 opened the first Gail’s in Hampstead, north London with Mejia giving them her blessing to use her name. “She just said: you’d better do a good job.” Feed a sourdough starter 4-12 hours before starting the bread, ensuring it is active and bubbly. The active starter should be able to pass the float test. Take a small dollop of starter and place it in room temperature water. If it floats it is ready to make flour. Add the called for levain and about half of the reserved water to the mixing bowl. Mix until well combined. I came to London and realised there wasn’t a great food scene. There were some good restaurants but certainly not much good bread,” he explains.Since 2005 the bakery sector has gained momentum, with Denmark’s Ole & Steen, French import Paul, Brussels-born Le Pain Quotidien and even Greggs expanding at pace across the high street. Molnar is unphased, and believes there is still a niche for Gail’s bread on the high street. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise until doubled in a warm place.This is called bulk ferment.

A heady but pleasant whiff of freshly baked bread wafts enticingly from the clutch of units on an industrial estate in north London. I love how eating good food tugs at an invisible, interconnected web of food-memories we’ve constructed over the course of our lifetimes. This complex web, with scattered connections between foods, smells, experiences, and memories, is gradually filled in and ever-evolving: it shapes the corpus of foods we enjoy, giving them significance in place and time. Perhaps the construction of this web is instilled at a primal level, maybe it’s a way we’ve evolutionarily progressed to favor foods that provide proper nourishment by exciting our senses, pushing out hollow foods that provide nothing or are uninteresting. I believe it’s one of the many reasons we’ve stayed alive for so long, eating the things we need instead of those we don’t. Minimum life based on 'use-by' date of product. Average life based on last week's deliveries. Life guarantee shown based on delivery tomorrow with the Life guarantee starting the following day. I hope this sourdough bread with roasted potato and rosemary, with its deep, rich flavor and surprisingly light texture, helps you form new food-memory connections for you and whomever you share your loaves with. Perhaps now my Dad's desire for potato bread is satiated, at least until I develop my next recipe. Cover each basket with plastic and then place it in the refrigerator at 38°F (3°C) for 13-14 hours. 8. Bake – Next Morning: Preheat oven at 6:00 a.m., Bake at 7:00 a.m.Let the potatoes cool until you can handle them, then peel and puree in a blender (or mash them with a potato masher) until smooth and just a few large chunks remain. Let cool until called for during mixing. We’re a bit like ageing scientists now, trying to pass the knowledge on to the next generation,” says Molnar. “But bread shouldn’t just be in the hands of great chefs, it should be more widely available for people. I’ve always believed that.” Shape into a ball by gently spinning it toward you in a circular motion. This tension really helps give it that oven spring and rise.

Gail’s eye-catching in-store displays, where bread, cakes and sandwiches sit out on a counter, was a deliberate choice by Molnar. “The world in which I grew in the United States was about wrapping everything and putting it in the fridge and hiding it,” he explains. “My wife’s Italian and at her house they’d have this table of food that never emptied. am:Feed sourdough starter with flour and water. Depending on how active your sourdough starter is, it could take between 4-12 hours for it to be active enough to bake a loaf of bread. Mix flour and water (reserve 100g water for the mix, later) in a bowl until all dry bits are hydrated. Cover the bowl and store it somewhere warm near the levain for 1 hour. 4. Mix – 12:30 p.m. I steamed my oven in my usual way, described here in my post on how to steam your home oven for baking. I set out to pay homage to that bread but modify it slightly (as I do) until I found just the right flavor and texture. I do hesitate to call this potato bread (or pane alle patate) because that might definea bread that has much more potato than my formula. And, as my Dad indicated, most of his memories of this bread from Italy usually have equal ratio potato to flour. While I know that would be delicious, this formula produces a lighter loaf that still pairs very well with other foods (aged cheese comes to mind immediately). If this bread was intended to be eaten on its own, and with 100% potato it surely could be a meal-in-a-slice, I’d continue to push the potato percentage even higher, perhaps to 75% or even up to 100% per tradition. Let’s save this for a future experiment.At 78-82°F (25-27°C) ambient temperature, bulk fermentation should go for about 3 hours. Perform a total of 2 sets of stretch and folds during bulk, spaced out by 30 minutes. Potato and rosemary are a classic pairing but you could substitute the rosemary for another spice such as thyme (which is what I tried for my first few attempts seen below), or omit it entirely for a cleaner, more potato forward flavor. Speaking of rosemary, I find not all rosemary plants produce the samelevel of potency in their leaves. Some plants, like mine, are quite pungent and strong while others are simply not. Start with the recommended 1% rosemary and scale up/down to suit your taste after youtry thefirst bake. As with my previous polenta sourdough with rosemary, I like to keep the spice light so it doesn’t obscurethe other flavors throughout. Arriving in the UK in the late 1990s, it was a struggle to find a good London sourdough that led him to finally quit the world of business and take up baking. Into the bowl of the large industrial mixer the chain’s development baker Roz Bado tips, by hand, precise pre-measured quantities of a strong white Canadian flour, malt, and the decades-old sourdough “starter” – the crucial “living” ingredients of flour, water and wild yeast which helps a sourdough loaf to rise and gives it more flavour. Imbued with umami herbs and seeds, the GAIL’s Potato & Rosemary Sourdough can be topped with torn mozzarella and roast vegetables, or simply served alongside soup.

Split the dough in half down the middle with a bench scraper. Try to be careful not to break any of the bubbles. My version of potato bread is a spin on an Italian bread laden with mashed/pureed potatoes. In taking cues from my approach to making gnocchi, I like to roast the potatoes instead of boiling them. I find this gives the potatoes a nice color and texture; plus, it helps dry the flesh out, preventing unwanted water absorption that could later be released into the dough. We’re calling it Waste Bread which some people think might sound a bit odd but we think this is being honest and clear with our customers” says Roy Levy, Gail’s head baker and head of development. “It’s re-using leftover but edible bread from our own supply chain which means we know exactly what is in it and where it has come from.” One-third of the new sourdough is made of stale bread. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian Transfer to floured banneton or a bowl lined with a tea towel (I like to use rice flour). Another option is an oiled bowl (I usually use olive oil for this). Cover with plastic and proof for 12-15 hours in the refrigerator. This is the second rise. BakingI hope we continue to grow up and learn. We have almost one million transactions a month now. That’s a level of responsibility I never thought I would have. I have a glimpse from talking to world class bakers on what the next 10 to 15 years in baking could look like and it’s exciting. There’s some smart people wanting to make better bread. Behind closed doors, final production tests are underway on what Gail’s Bakery – an artisan sourdough specialist – considers to be one its most exciting and game-changing new products in its 27-year history. Transfer to flour banneton or bowl with tea towel and cover with plastic. Place in the refrigerator for 12-15 hours. The Next Day This almost paternal feeling is shared by many of the long-serving bakers. “Our head baker treats the doughs like his babies, when he’s on holiday he calls and asks how they’re doing.”