Dewi Sant

As you all know yesterday was 01 March and 01 March is St. David’s Day and St David (Dewi Sant) is the patron saint of Wales and I have lived in Wales for 30 years any day now.

Ergo I had to invent a new “traditional” bread for the occasion or my customers might think I’m getting senile. I might be getting senile but you have to fight it (drink like an adolescent).

I thought I’d base it on one of Gert’s Weird Dutch Sourdoughs and, having done Dutch Potato Bread recently and having found it pretty impressive, it seemed like a good starting point. In reality it’s a cheese bread but it says “potato” on the label so potato it is.

I decided on Leek and Caerphilly until I researched the availabilty (and price) of Caerphilly after which it became Leek and Welsh Caerphilly & Cheddar (specially offer at M&S).

The other main ingredients: potato, onion and buttermilk.

Of course Gert had other ideas. He was doing a Welsh menu for his pop-up but he wanted a seaweed bread. So we went back to Warburton’s Grand Slam. You will also remember that Wales won the Six Nations Grand Slam in 2012 and I created Warburton’s Grand Slam in honour of this great event. It involved seaweed, butter milk and oats amongst other things. This was based on the idea of a naturally yeasted soda bread (hence the big, deep cross). It was fine but I was probably a little cautious with the seaweed.

So this time I doubled the seaweed and it is now quite up-front. You wouldn’t have it for breakfast but with seafood?
The leek and cheese was pretty phenominal. BLTs were impressive after the bake, but the following day the leek was coming through really well.