Tomato and Chorizo Curl

Chorizo bread! If you love chorizo, you'll love this. I made it as an experiment, yesterday, and I wish I'd made more. We took it to share, at a barbecue, and everyone gobbled it up enthusiastically. I let my sister-in-law take the last bit home and I was a bit sad to see it go...

It's very easy to make (do I always say that?!) and definitely worth trying. I made it with a mixture of strong plain and wholemeal flours but it was a pretty arbitrary decision, so feel free to use whatever blend of flours you have to hand or prefer, totalling 500g flour.

Tomato and Chorizo Curl

150g/5 oz/1 cup wholemeal flour
350g/12 oz/2⅓ cups strong plain flour
1 tsp instant dried yeast
2 tsp salt
200g/7 oz/1 cup chopped tomatoes
150g/5 fl oz/⅔ cup water
100g/4 oz/¾ cup chorizo, cut into small chunks
2 tsp dried oregano

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. Squidge them together by hand to make a rough dough.

Knead the dough on a clean surface for about 10 minutes, until it is stretchy and smooth. Ok, having lumps of chorizo doesn't help with the 'smooth' part, but it still works out fine. My dough was quite breakable at first and kept tearing when I tried to stretch it out. Don't worry if that happens, just carry on, regardless, until you can form a more coherent piece of dough.

(See The Master Method for more details and video footage of the bread-making technique.)

Leave the dough to ferment for about 45 minutes, or until it has doubled in size. Mine, it has to be said, took AGES, to the point where I was wondering if I'd accidentally missed out the yeast(!) A I little prod told me that the dough was rising, albeit reluctantly, so I just had to be patient.

You can shape your dough any way you like. This amount of dough would make one standard loaf in a 2lb loaf tin. I divided my dough into two pieces to make curls.

Curls are shaped by first pre-shaping the dough by squashing it flat and rolling it up like a Swiss roll. You then leave it to rest for 15 minutes or so.

When you return to the rested dough, fold it into three, lengthways (I know, I know, we totally need a video here and I am working on it but, gosh! videoing oneself is fraught with hitherto unknown perils. Who knew I was so unphotogenic/vain?! And how much clutter suddenly makes itself visible in the background?! I oh how dark my house is!!! And this is all before I start editing... Yes, the dough shaping tutorials are in progress.)

So, yes, you fold your dough into three, lengthways and roll it over the worktop with your palms so it elongates into a sausage shape with one end thinner than the other, rather like a baseball bat.

Then you coil the dough round from the thick end, sticking the thin end in place with a little press.

Voila.

I finished mine off with a spray of water and a sprinkling of flour, which is entirely optional, of course.

Leave the curls to rise again, for about an hour (although mine were very unwilling and, for the first 45 minutes, rose like a brick. Eventually, they seemed to be growing and reached the point where they would spring back when prodded) The Prod Test video is here.

Preheat the oven to a very high temperature. Mine goes up to 240^oC/450F. Then turn the temperature down to about 180^oC/360F when you put the bread in. Bake the loaves for 20 minutes, or until they sound hollow when you knock on their bottoms.

In the background, you can see the Garden Mint and Courgette Batards that I created to go with spit-roasted lamb, yesterday. I'll be posting that recipe up soon, too.

This bread had an amazing colour, from the tomatoes and also the paprika in the chorizo. They smelled amazing too.

We took the bread to share at a barbecue. I was really pleased with the texture. The lovely tomatoey, chorizoy flavour came through nicely too. I'm not sure we could taste much oregano but it added to the appearance, at least.

There! Give it a go and let me know how the recipe works for you.

Bake Beautiful Bread Tutorials

If you'd like to know more about how to shape and finish your bread, so that it not only tastes and smells great, but also looks beautiful, check out my tutorial series, coming soon.

The course consists of step by step instructions, with video guides, so you can learn how to make professional looking bread.

Is there anything particular you would like me to include on the course? I'm open to suggestions, at this stage, to make it as useful as I can for you. Let me know!

And now...

If you'd like to bake bread right away, really quickly, download my guide to Fresh Bread In 20 Minutes now!

Don't Miss Out

For those of you who haven't got The Recipe Book yet, grab yourself a bargain while the price is still low. I'll be adding new recipes as we go along (which will be available to you for no further cost) and the price will increase as the content grows - don't delay :)