members recipes

a bread that looks and tastes like cherry chocolate and goes down well for art hall people

Ingredients
300 ml [Belgian] cherry beer
500 g organic rye flour
100 g rye bread starter
200 ml tepid water
1 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp malt syrup
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp malt flour
50 g dried cherries
cooking margarine

Method
mix the starter with beer and half of the flour, stir properly, sprinkle with flour and let stand for 8 hours. mix in half the remaining flour and some tepid water, if the dough is very thick, leave again for 8 hours. take out starter (150 g) for the next bread. Prepare a tin for a 1 kg loaf (26 x 10 cm) Mix salt, sugar, syrup and dried cherries in the dough and then as much flour as you need to get the dough to the right consistency. It shouldn´t be too heavy and thick, more like cookie batter, soft and shiny. Fill the tin to 2/3 , make holes into the loaf with a finger and leave to rise for 2 hours. Rising time being too long ends up with the bread looking fine on the top, but the bottom fill have fallen down leaving a hole in the middle. Bake for 35 minutes in 220 C, lower the heat to 200 / 180 C and bake another hour or so. To get a shiny crust, brush the loaf with milk twice during the baking process and with butter after taking it out. Leave to cool down in the tin, covered with a towel.
best with cream cheese and coffee.