Aotearoa & Maori · Bread
Rēwena Paraoa
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 1 floury potato, about 150 g, peeled and diced
- 250 ml water, for the bug
- 150 g plain flour, for the bug
- 1 tsp sugar
- 500 g high grade (strong) flour
- 10 g salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 250 ml warm water, for the dough
- butter, for the tin
The skills inside
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
- Simmer the potato in the 250 ml water until it collapses, mash it into its own cooking water and let it cool to blood heat; above 40C (104F) you kill the wild yeast you are trying to catch.
- Beat in the bug flour and the sugar, cover loosely and leave in a warm corner for two to four days, stirring once daily, until it domes with bubbles and smells sharply of cider rather than of paste.
- Mix the whole bug into the high grade flour, salt and warm water, then knead about ten minutes until the dough is slack, tacky and smooth.
- Sprinkle over the baking soda and knead it through until you cannot see a streak of it; streaks bake out as grey soapy patches.
- Prove in a buttered tin until a fingertip dent fills back slowly, then bake at 200C (390F) until deep brown and hollow when knuckled underneath, about 40 minutes. 40 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
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- Also Right
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- From the Taps
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- 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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