MENU dorset issue 16 MENU16..dorset pdf issue 16 | Page 39

The Whole Hog
Dorset Bakers
Famous Hedgehog Bakery
Long Crichel, Wimborne, BH21 5JU
01258 830852
famoushedgehogbakery.co.uk
F
eatured on Radio 4 and the BBC, Famous Hedgehog Bakery
makes traditional sourdough, khorasan and yeasted breads in a
wood-fired oven. Founder Jamie Campbell also runs breadmaking
courses when not producing the famous Long Crichel bread.
What is the Famous Hedgehog story?
We started in 2000. We had a derelict stables building and no
experience of baking. I had always baked my own bread from a
young age, but from the terms of the business, we were looking for
something to do with a derelict barn. We were frustrated that we
couldn’t find any good bread nearby, but a lot has happened in 17
years. We made a few rules: organic, baking with a wood-fired oven,
and sourdough bread.
A wood fired oven is the key element. It retains the heat. Strictly
speaking it could be fired with anything. It’s a big masonry structure.
When you put in 100kg of bread, the temperature doesn’t drop or it
will bounce back very quickly.
What is special about sourdough?
Sourdough breads were not much talked about. It can be made with
commercial yeast or sourdough, which is a wild yeast. It’s all around
us. This has been going for millennia. It’s about naturally occurring
fermentation – the same as in beer, wine and sauerkraut.
You would think that bread is simple, just flour, leavening, salt
and water. But it’s quite complicated. The longer the bread has to
ferment, the better the flavour. The quicker the process, the more you
have to compensate with salt, for example. You can even leave it a
long time to develop more flavour by reducing the amount of yeast.
Every bread can go too far, though. It just stops performing.
One of the problems with sourdough culture, which is really just
flour and water, which has got this wild yeast within it, is that it can
develop acetic acid flavours so that it becomes vinegary. Thus the
name sourdough. But you don’t need that. You’re aiming for a slightly
sour, quite milky flavour.
39
www.menu-dorset.co.uk