One of Dan Lepardss recipes I thought I would never try, until I had some wine to use up and realised all I needed was figs. Dan says it is an amalgamation of two recipes from colleagues. My dough turned out significantly darker than the book. Seing as most of my banneton raised breads end up flat I felt no need to flatten the dough as he recommends. This could only partly explain my problem with slashing. He has a neat chess board check, I have a spikey hedgehog effect, despite my best efforts.
Below are the tools at the ready for what I call the "leap of faith". The dough has risen in the muslin lined basket. The baking tray is well sprinkled with rice flour ready for the loaf to be tipped out. Then the excess flour from the muslin lining is brushed off with a pastry brush. A spray of olive oil and then slashing. The craft knife loses out to the razor stuck onto the end of a wooden coffee stirrer. But neither works that well if truth be told
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| The tools of the tray |
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| Part way through slashing |
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| End result |
The bread makes good eating with any sort of cheese. The fig seeds give that characteristic crunch no matter how disintegrated the figs become. They are like the the millet in the 5 grain bread. A bit disconcerting if you are not expecting it, like a spoonful of sand.
It looks very pretty from here and I confess I've never made this one, him indoors always says no figs in the bread, hates them. It is really hard to slash a dough so many times and not have it pull on the blade as you go. I tend to dust with flour before I slash and I sometimes dip the blade in water between slashes, I've never tried oil for some reason. The other thing is to shorten the final proof time from the ones suggested in the book; if your levain is very active the dough might well be ready quicker and if it is slightly under proved it is easier to slash.
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