Recipe 11: Malted Loaf

What a total mess! I knew this recipe would be a nightmare from the start as I couldn't find the flour required ANYWHERE!! And I couldn't find anyone that knew what it was either...
Apparently malt flour is present in numerous baked goods where it imparts a natural sweetness. It tends to make baked goods browner and shinier.
In the end I found Malted Flour from Bakery Bits, the same website where I bought most of my bread tins and sourdough bits, it's a really good shop!

So, the flour arrived, I hoped it was the right one, I didn't know any different so I thought it was correct! But right from the start I had trouble with the flour, it was awful! As soon as you opened the packet it smelt, at first I thought someone was cooking tomato soup as that's what it reminded me of! The recipe's instructions are exactly the same as all of the other breads so even though it smelt I didn't think it would be that difficult!

So I added the water with all the other ingredients and the flour seemed to make itself very dry very quickly! Once you've put all the water in with the other ingredients, it just seemed to fall a part! Just completely useless, it felt like you were making clay rather than bread! I really must think I bought the wrong flour as everything else was the same!

Before and after, so it did rise a little...







So, I tried to knead but it was crumbling worse every time so in the end, I gave up and placed it in the bowl and left to rise. The dough (if you can call it that) did rise a little! Then, left it to prove, no better. You can see the below picture what it looked like just before going in the oven...

Finally, time to put it in the oven for the right amount of time, around 35 minutes. It just wasn't cooking!!!! I knew it was a disaster anyway but it was a complete nightmare! Decided to take it out of the oven and what did it do when I touched it? Crumbled to pieces!!

As you can see from the picture, the dough flattened itself too!

I really think that the blame was with the flour, I must have bought the wrong one as I did everything else like normal! I will investigate and see!



Never again though! And I thought the Cottage Loaf was bad!!



113 Recipes to go!!