Waste not, want not…
I had quite a bit of pickling liquid left over from our last batch of cucumber pickles, and I was loathe to just throw it out (after all, it was good white wine vinegar and brown sugar).
Thankfully, Dan Lepard dislikes wasting things as much as I do. In The Handmade Loaf, he offers a selection of recipes for reusing leftovers in various loaves. Dan has breads which use the whey from cheese making, excess cooked rice, the glass of wine left in the bottle, and best of all on this occasion, leftover pickling liquid.
Dan’s original recipe isn’t really for a sweet pickling solution like the one we used, but I decided to try the loaf anyway. Here’s the formula I used:
- 200g dark organic rye flour
- 300g white bakers/bread flour
- 350g pickling liquid (strained)
- ¾ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 10g dried yeast
The resultant bread is a sweet, tangy, very dense rye loaf, reminiscent in flavour of the pumpernickel rounds my mum used to serve hors d’œuvres on when I was a child. It was delicious with butter and, not surprisingly, our cucumber pickles. Pete also thought it would be excellent with cream cheese.
I had it toasted for breakfast with Linda’s recipe for button squash egg-in-the-nest. The pickle bread made very tasty but unusual dipping soldiers!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 