Category: Fermentation

  • Milk kefir – some recipes and inspiration

    I made these loaves yesterday using kefir as a leaven. I received quite a few questions on Instagram about how I use the grains, so I thought I’d put up this post with some ideas. I’ll also include below the recipe for these particular loaves. What is kefir? Kefir is very interesting stuff and very…

  • Sourdough pain de campagne recipe

    Over on Instagram, my friend Carla has created something of a stir with her bread. As you can see below, Carla has made beautiful pain de campagne to a recipe I developed using some of the great bakers’ ideas as my inspiration.   The smell..the feel..the loud crackling..this is my BFF bread.. thanks @carl_legge 😙…

  • Mustard greens, fermented and more

    I wish I’d got to know mustard greens (and reds and goldens) much earlier in my growing adventure. They are such a tasty, versatile and good-hearted vegetable. And some of the varieties are great green manures, ground cover and biofumigants. Here at Legge Towers we sow them in mid to late summer so that we…

  • How to grow beer

    All you need is a few hop plants (humulus lupulus), some malt and sugar, water and the help of Andy Hamilton. At the end of the summer, we had loads of the female flowers which are the hops on our plants. So we stripped them and dried them on a rack on top of the…

  • Kombucha sourdough bread recipe

    This successful experiment could revolutionise my baking. It means that I can bake sourdough bread in 24 hours without the need to keep an active leaven refreshed. The bread is gloriously moist and chewy as sourdough should be. This has a big malty wholemeal taste with a rich, crisp crust. It’s not at all sharp…

  • Currant ‘champagne’ recipe – quick fizz

    If you want a fizz that tastes spectacular, this recipe is for you. In under a month you get the full bright fruity taste of currants with a mildly mouth puckering tart-tannin background. The aroma is the wonderful woodland smell of crushed currant leaves. All this surrounded with lively & youthful fizz. I’m delighted with…

  • Wine barm bread

    It’s funny how things spread. My twitter pal Jessica read the earlier post on how to use a cider barm to make sourdough bread. Serendipity is a wonderful thing as Jessica was racking wine that day. So Jessica contacted me on Twitter… And so Jessica did. I’m very grateful to Jessica who sent the pictures…

  • Sourdough cider

    When I saw on twitter that my Twitter chum Julia Moore had: Decided adding #sourdough culture to some of our freshly pressed apples would be one experiment too far I was intrigued and showed her my Bouza bread beer experiment post. Despite my references to ‘vomit’, Julia changed her mind and took up the challenge.…

  • Apple Day Recipes

    Today is the day to celebrate the wonderful variety and bounty that apples give us. To help us celebrate, here’s a list of some of my favourite recipes. Apple recipes Apple cider vinegar A doddle to make, very healthy for you and lots of fun. You can use damaged apples, or scraps. So this is…