Australian · Bread
Damper
- Easy
- 15 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 450 g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1 tsp fine salt
- 80 g cold butter, diced
- 250 ml full cream milk, cold
- 60 ml cold water
- 1 tbsp milk, for brushing
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Resting dough: the pause that does the workRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Heat the oven to 220C (430F) with a heavy tray inside. The leavening starts the second liquid meets the flour, so the oven must be at temperature before you mix.
- Rub the cold butter into the flour and salt until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with a few flatter flakes left; stop while the bowl still feels cool.
- Pour in the milk and water and cut it together with a butter knife until no dry flour remains, then bring it into a round with two or three folds only. It should feel tacky, not smooth.
- Sit the round on the hot tray, slash a cross 2 cm deep across the top, brush with milk and dust with flour.
- Bake 25 to 30 minutes until the crust is deep gold and the base sounds hollow on a knuckle rap; a skewer through the cross comes out dry. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Resting dough: the pause that does the work 71 recipes
- It actually rested, covered, for the time stated, not cut short because the rest of the schedule was tight.
- It rolls and shapes without fighting: it stays where it is put, and it does not spring back or shrink on the bench between passes.
- The surface is smooth and supple rather than dry, cracked, or skinned over.
- It is at the temperature the next step needs: cold where the fat must stay solid, cool and relaxed where it must be rolled thin.
- Baked, it holds the dimensions it was shaped to rather than shrinking back from the edges of the tin or the rim of the dish.
Where it goes wrong The rest was skipped or shortened, so the gluten was still tight: the dough fought the pin and sprang back thick and uneven, then shrank down the sides of the tin in the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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