The image of fine Victorian ladies lounging around in a slight stupor after eating too much poppyseed cake has always tickled me, notwithstanding that some of them were surely on laudanum and had no need of cake. Not so funny the idea that you can be busted after eating a single poppyseed bagel or slice of poppyseed cake. At the very least, you can fail a drug test and have to fight to have that overturned.

Ingredients

2 eggs

150 gm white sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

125 ml oil (peanut, sunflower, whatever)

250 ml plain yoghurt

130 gm poppyseeds

70 gm plain white flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180° C (about Gas 5-6). Butter a round pie or cake tin, about 25 cm diameter.

Beat the eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil well together. Add the yoghurt and poppyseeds and beat them in too. Add the flour and baking powder and stir well to incorporate, ensuring there are no lumps of flour. Pour into the tin, place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for 40 minutes. Turn it around after 20 minutes to even exposure to heat in the oven. Test that a skewer or toothpick comes out clean, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.

My Mum’s recipe says to garnish with jam and chocolate, but she wouldn’t do that and neither would I. Serve with more yoghurt, mascarpone, or even plain whipped cream. Or without any garnish. A lemon drizzle could be good, but most of the ones I’ve seen out there look too sugary. There must be a lemon drizzle that isn’t just lemon-flavoured icing sugar.

I’d eat a slice every day, especially if I were in a job that subjected me to random drug tests.

Roscioli in Rome (the bakery, around the corner from the deli/restaurant) does a dark, almost burnt walnut loaf that many people swear by. A couple of years ago I tried to imagine a recipe. It wasn’t good. Then I found a link to an old recipe of Dan Lepard’s in The Independent. I just searched for the link, but it seems to be broken. No matter, though, because I did a full work-up — with pictorial goodness — on my other blog . The secret is the walnut paste in the dough. It gives a flavour boost and imparts a lovely purple colour to the loaf.

I’ve modified the recipe since then, going to a pure sourdough, no commercial yeast. Why? Because I can; nothing purist about it. Here are the details.

For the dough:

100 gm walnut paste (see below)
300 gm active starter at 100% hydration
125 gm water
200 gm strong white flour
100 gm wholemeal flour
50 gm rye flour
10 gm salt
50 gm honey
100 gm walnuts
Oil for kneading

For the walnut paste:

40 gm walnuts
20 gm soft butter
40 gm water
A pinch of salt

First make the paste. Put 40 gm of walnuts, water, butter and salt into a food processor and whizz until you have a soft, smooth paste.

Mix the water into starter (you did make enough to keep some for next time?), add the honey and mix to incorporate roughly. Now add the walnut paste, the flours and the salt and mix well until you have a shaggy mass of dough. Tip in the remaining 100 gm of walnuts and squidge them into the dough. Cover the bowl and leave to rest for 10 minutes or so.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead it quickly about 10 times. The faster you work, the less likely it is to stick to the surface and your hands. Return the dough to the bowl, cover, and leave for about an hour. Knead again 10 times quickly. You should notice a definite improvement in the structure, more elastic and less sticky. Return to the bowl, cover, and leave another hour or so.

Prepare your container, a banneton or a tea-towel in a deep bowl, well floured. Knead the dough once more and then shape and place the shaped loaf in the container to rise. This final proofing normally takes about two hours under my conditions.

Preheat the oven to 210℃ (410℉). Turn the loaf out and score a checkerboard pattern on the top with vertical cuts. Pop the loaf in the oven and bake “for about an hour or until the loaf is rich brown and, when tapped, sounds hollow”. Allow to cool on a rack.

One more thing; it makes great toast. If you don’t eat it all fresh. Seriously, this is a great bread. I should add that, glutton for punishment that I am, I have only ever made this bread with freshly shelled walnuts. I’ll bet it is every bit as good with ready-shelled ones, but I wouldn’t wait too long in the season because walnuts can go a bit rancid.

The slightly bitter taste of chestnut flour — along with the nuttiness — makes for an interesting loaf, but some of the recipes I’ve seen, with 50% chestnut flour or more, are a bit too heavy for my taste. I tried a couple at lower levels, around 10%, and they weren’t chestnutty enough. So eventually I settled on 20% chestnut flour. I’ve also taken to adding a little wholemeal (10%) to almost all my bread recipes as it seems to add so much depth of flavour. This is enough for two large loaves.

Ingredients:

740 gm active starter at 100% hydration
250 gm, chestnut flour (20%)
125 gm wholemeal flour (10%)
495 gm strong white flour (70%, with the 370 gm flour in the starter)
18 gm salt
440 gm water (65%, with the 370 gm water in the starter)

In a large bowl, add the water to the starter and mix roughly. Mix in the white flour and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Now add the salt, the chestnut flour and the wholemeal flour and mix well. Tip out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead to incorporate all the ingredients. Return to the bowl, cover, and leave for an hour.

Tip out the dough, knead quickly about 20 times and return to the bowl for a further hour. Knead once again and allow to rise again for an hour. The total bulk ferment is thus about three hours.

Prepare two or three containers; I used two well-floured bannetons, but the dough is firm enough that you can also make three longer loaves and do the final rise on a well-floured couche. Shape the dough, place in the containers, and allow to rise. I put them in the fridge, inside plastic bags, overnight.

Pre-heat the oven to 220°C (430°F), slash the loaves and bake for 25 minutes (20 minutes if you make smaller loaves). Turn the oven down to 205°C (400°F), rotate the loaves, and bake for a further 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

The bread keeps well, and is very good with savoury things like salami.