Tonight Matthew.... I'll be making a Malt Loaf!

Last week a new cookery show started on the BBC. Paul Hollywood from the Great British Bake Off has a new Bread show. Awesome! So during the show he made loads of cool things, but the one that stuck out to me was Malt Loaf! A favourite from my childhood he made two loaves in last week's show and it looked loads more appetising than the standard Soreen style loaf that I know and love. Much lighter in colour and lighter in texture I thought this would do nicely for this weekends baking challenge.

The recipe is available on the BBC website here.

First of all I had to go out to buy Malt Extract, luckily they sell it in Holland and Barrett and other shops like this. You can also order it online, but I managed to find a nice jar just around the corner from work. Sorted! Then on to the recipe.

First of all I discovered you need two 1lb loaf tins, unfortunately I only have one 2lb tin. I decided that I might as well just make one big loaf, rather than try to split the mixture without the required tins! The recipe is reasonably easy to follow and it doesn't need a massive amount of kneading, just enough to bring the mixture together and get a smooth enough dough. I worked it using the method Paul used in the show of just folding up the dough until it was quite springy and appeared smooth. I then shaped it into a rectangle as best I could and popped it into the loaf tin. I pushed the dough down into the corners and flattened it out a bit by poking it with my fingers, and left it to rise for about an hour and a half in my kitchen. I was baking another cake whilst the malt loaf proved so I left it nearish the oven and it was reasonably warm in my kitchen!


After an hour and a half the dough had risen nicely! It had popped out of the tin until it was quite big actually and I decided it could go straight into the oven. I was a bit worried about how long to leave it in for given it was twice the size of the one on the tv, but I left it in for about 40 mins, checked it and left it for 5 more minutes then decided it was done! Here's my finished cake and a slice! It doesn't look that big in the picture, but actually its about the size of a small loaf of bread, which I don't think is quite right. But I quite liked it! Just means you only have to one slice instead of two! ;)

 
Having tried the loaf it was really nice, especially warm fresh out of the oven with a bit of butter. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough to try the malt loaf bread and butter pudding as that looked even nicer! Its a much lighter bread than the malt loaf you buy in the supermarket but still had the malty flavour and the slightly dense chewiness I normally like!

  Here you can see a slice and the sultana's (and currants) I used. They didn't sink down to the bottom which was good! I had to use some currants in it as well as I didn't have quite the required weight in sultana's, but it still worked nicely!