I’ll post any photos from our cottage loaf bake-off here, as they come in.
Heidi’s latest loaf! Rye with caraway seeds, and perfectly formed..
Here’s Gill’s pretty loaf with its gorgeously light crumb, made as follows:
120g white 100% hydration leaven, 600g bread flour, 320g room temp water, salt, and always a glug of olive oil
– out, rested for 3 hours
– shaped 2/3 the base 1/3 the topping
This loaf was made by Bruno, who also wrote a blog post about it…
Fellow Aussie Craig has been baking as well – he baked this loaf using his standard 5-seed dough. For the bakers, Craig sent these details:
Ingredients: 300g organic wholemeal, 250g unbleached white, 125g stiff wholemeal levain, 370g water
Pulled together and rested. Kneaded in 10g salt and rested. Kneaded in soaked seeds (20g each pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds, 15g linseeds, 1 tsp wattleseed ground) and rested. Kneaded again and rounded up and into fridge. Later removed and after about 1 hour, divided into about 770g and 350g portions (I think). Shaped and left for about an hour. Baked for 48 min.
Heidiannie has been baking too – look at this gorgeous rustic loaf! I love the scattered seeds all over it. Her blog post is here – check out her seriously cute three-tiered cottage loaf while you’re there!
Even Princess Anne is getting into cottage loaves! Though probably not, as her hairstyle was compared unfavourably to one – here’s the article…
Sally from Bewitching Kitchen baked this fabulous loaf – read all about how she made it here!
Here’s one from my sweet friend Maude…
Odette’s cottage loaf, made with this Dan Lepard white bread recipe. She also provided this slideshow of the dough rising!
More from Joanna – meet Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They’re made to an old Elizabeth David yeasted bread recipe, which involved baking them in a cold oven! Jo has very kindly provided her recipe in the comments section of the original bake-off post.
Some photos of Joanna’s mini cobnut cottage loaf rolls – they’re so cute!
C from Cakes, Crumbs and Cooking baked this gorgeous cottage loaf using a yeasted white dough. Isn’t she clever?
This one from the Spice Girl. She describes it as either a strange underwater creature or a flower. I love the Muppet-like quality of cottage loaves – this one looks like it’s ready to start singing at any moment…
To start things off, here are my sourdough loaves, made with a 60% hydration white sourdough. This one wasn’t too bad…
…but its twin was a little wonky. Mind you, I quite like them like that – I think they have more personality!
And here’s my attempt with a yeasted loaf, using the pain de campagne formula from Peter Reinhart’s The Breadmaker’s Apprentice. I wrote up the recipe here if you’d like to try it…
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
It WAS singing! The kids thought it was very cute and laughed themselves silly once they saw it in the oven…they were hoping for the top to pop right off!
Thanks for your lovely comments Celia. I had meant to email you and tell you that I was participating, but ran out of time last night. Bed beckoned, but you found my post anyway!
The texture isn’t perfect though – perhaps I’ll have to try again…. I can see this might be addictive!
Sooo addictive, but yours looks so good, C! Did you use a 2/3 base: 1/3 top ratio? It looks a bit smaller on top – maybe that’s the way to go. I love the way yours looks like a hair knot! :D
Please do let me know if you try again, and I’ll upload any more photos you have..
I probably used nearer to 3/4 base to 1/4 top, so the top probably is a little smaller. As it was prooving I could see it spreading outwards rather than upwards, so reshaping just before baking was the only way to maintain the shape. I think I need to try a different dough. I’ll let you know if I try again. Trouble is, it’s only me to eat it, I don’t have obliging family ;-)
They look lovely……I haven’t caught up with myself this past week……hmmmm. In Nigeria, we say ‘God dey!’ (As in, it is well.) Take care dear
[…] Fig Jam and Lime Cordial is another blog I read from Australia and they are having a cottage loaf baking page featuring many different loaves of this style. […]