Wednesday 1 May - Pesto Bread

I've decided to blog this one, as it didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped it would, so will use it to see how I can make improvements. I didn't use a recipe for this, it was a bit of a made up as I went along experiment.

Firstly, I activated some fresh yeast as I had some that needed using up - the block of yeast was creamed with some sugar.

Then some warm water was added and it was left until bubbly (about 10 minutes)

I used this added to 1lb of flour, some olive oil and salt - adding warm water to make a pretty wet dough.

The dough was left to rise, and then using semolina to stop it sticking formed into a flattish rectangle  - I didn't kneed it again at this point.

Left to rest again for about 10 minutes, and then I brushed it with pesto, which I diluted down with some olive oil to make it more brushable

 

 

I then make dimples all over the dough with my fingers  which I had oiled, and popped some pieces of sun dried tomatoes into some of them

 

 

 

It was then baked in a very hot oven, with a pan of water underneath to create steam

 

 

This was the finished result, and you can see the problem from the photo was that the Pesto cooked a bit more than I would have liked it to - it tasted OK, but not quite as nice as I'd hoped it would be - next time I need to find a way to get the pesto actually into the loaf I think.