I have been interested in making bread ever since the children ere small and we used to holiday in France. There the bread was so fresh and crusty! When we came home from one particular holiday to the ‘cardboard loaf’ I decided to buy no more and make my own bread. I used to buy sacks of flour and store it in our caravan and I fresh yeast was purchased by the kilo.

Since then, the supermarkets have improved breadmaking in this country, often having their own ‘instore bakeries’. Our children have flown the nest and I no longer bake bread. However I made one special loaf this weekend. I fulfilled an ambition. I’ve made a Harvest Sheaf using a recipe from a book I bought when I was about 35 years old. This ambition has taken a long time to come to fruition!!

The sheaf uses a very plain bread dough, which is low in fat. The basic shape of the sheaf is a keyhole measuring 14" x approximately 15". That was the first problem to overcome. What could I bake it in? I used my oven-wide sunken grill pan with the wire top taken out. The rolled keyhole-shaped dough is brushed liberally with egg wash to ‘stick’ the wheat ears and stalks to the base. There were 20 stalks rolled into long sausage shapes stuck to the bottom half. Then a plait was added to divide the stalks from the wheat ears with a bow in the middle. The wheat was very fiddly to make. The dough was rolled out and cut into diamond shapes with a knife about 1½" long and then several cuts were made into the dough with scissors to give inverted ‘v’ shapes, which stuck up a bit like small hedgehog quills. These were arranged above the plait so that they appeared as the wheat ears of the stalks below. The whole lot was egg washed a couple of times to give it a good colour and gloss. The process is quite lengthy and shouldn’t be done in a very hot room, as the dough would rise too much.

I baked the bread normally, but did add some aluminium foil to stop it burning. When it was finished I kept the oven on a low temperature and kept the foil on and just let it continue baking for hours and hours. I then finished it off in the dehumidifier in an attempt to thoroughly dry it out. This is written a few months earlier than Harvest and I am attempting to keep the sheaf to use then. I have found some silica gel crystals and will place them in the cardboard box surrounding the loaf. I know a lot about keeping food dry in this damp Lancashire climate of ours. I was a cake decorating teacher and in past years had a few panics keeping specially iced cakes damp free when humidity was high. Only breathable packaging should be used – cardboard is ideal. Polythene would cause sweating and increase the risk of moulds forming.

If the harvest sheaf appears at the Harvest Festival I have succeeded in keeping it long term, or I have made another one!!

I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of making this sheaf and perhaps it will set me off breadmaking again.

P.S. The harvest sheaf did go mouldy very quickly despite my efforts, but it is on record in the 2005 Church Calendar for the Harvest month of September. Some of the flower arrangers used it for a harvest display. Don’t forget to order your calendar copies soon!!