He is the new god of baking and his first book Brilliant Bread is my bible: http://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Bread-James-Morton/dp/0091955602
This recipe is almost but not quite no-knead. I made the recipe using white flour and heaps of seeds and a few pecans. A bit odd, not using wholemeal flour, I know, but I kind of like this combination. You could of course use wholemeal flour, or 300g wholemeal and 200g white, which James uses in his original recipe. See here for the original.
Ingredients
500g strong white flour
A good handful of mixed seeds. I don’t measure, I put in as many or as little as I feel like of sesame, poppy, linseed, chia and pepita seeds. Nuts are good too. I threw in a few pecans
10g salt
7g sachet dried instant yeast
350g water
Some sourdough starter, about 100g (optional). If you don’t have a starter on hand, the recipe still works well.
Method
Rub dry ingredients together, keeping salt and yeast separate. Add water and starter, then use your dough scraper to combine into a loose dough. Once combined, use your scraper to pull the dough from the edge of the bowl into the middle. You should then work your way around the bowl several times, about 15-20 scrapes.
Rest the dough, covered, for 30 minutes. Repeat the action with the scraper, knocking the air out of the dough and returning it to its original size as you do so.
Rest the dough for a further 30 minutes, then repeat scraping action one last time.
Rest the dough a final 40-50 minutes, then shape and place on a floured board or baking sheet.
Preheat the oven to 240 degrees C.
Prove until done (springs back when poked), about 50 minutes to 1 hour. Flour any baking tin you like; a loaf tin or even a square cake tin as I used this time. Carefully transfer the proved loaf to the tin.
Score the loaf and place the tin in the oven, turning the oven down to 210 degrees C. Place another shallow baking tin with cold water in it at the very bottom of the oven to create steam (This gives your bread a lovely crust.)
Bake for about 40 minutes or until the loaf is really brown and done.
Great with any spread, I love cumquat jam on this bread. https://thequirkandthecool.com/2013/09/15/jams-marmalades-and-conserves-2013/
PS I forgot to flour my tin, and the bread stuck in places, hence the photos show where I had to cut the bread to get it out of the tin… There’s a lesson in there somewhere!
The Quirk and the Cool 