Nigel Slater’s recipes for fresh bread and poached pears

Early morning, it is not yet light. I open the fridge door to find a tray of bread dough, soft, white and dimpled like a mattress. Made yesterday with the usual flour, yeast and water, it has been sleeping quietly overnight, allowing the yeast to work slowly. The simple dough is one I have sweetened with a little honey and today it will be kneaded once more, this time with dried fruits – cherries, figs and golden raisins – and spiked with chopped rosemary.

The bread is to be eaten with cheese in much the same way you might serve a rich fruit cake with a lump of Cheshire, or Eccles cakes with fat crumbs of a crumbly Lancashire. This one will be lighter and I shall toast it with slices cut from a downy log of goat’s cheese. The bread is for a weekend lunch with some poached pears that I’ll grill with fruit jelly and serve warm with dollops of thick crème fraîche.

The overnight doughs, left to prove in the fridge, have become the norm in this kitchen. It takes so little time to prepare them in the evening and their slow rise in the fridge means I am not tied to them as I would be to a quickly risen dough. The constant checking on their progress can be a distraction, but this feels more in tune with how I work. The second proving, done the following day in the warmth of the kitchen, is quicker as the dough has done most of the work during the night. Either way, there will be freshly baked bread and cheese for lunch today – and that is what matters.

Overnight honey and rosemary bread with goat’s cheese

The dough needs about 8 hours in the fridge. You can speed things up by proving it in a warm room for about 2 hours, though it may not quite have the same airy texture as that left overnight. Use a strong white bread flour for the best crust and wrap the dough up before you put it in the fridge. As much as I hate to say it, the bread does seem to rise best tucked inside a plastic bag, but a night under a clean drying cloth will work, too. Makes 1 large loaf

warm water 400ml
easy-bake dried yeast 2 tsp
sea salt 1 tsp
honey 1 tbsp, plus a little for drizzling
strong white bread flour 500g
olive oil 4 tbsp
dried figs 75g
rosemary 1 tbsp, plus a little to finish
dried cherries 50g
golden raisins 50g
olive oil and sea salt flakes a little to finish
goat’s cheese 250g

You will also need a shallow baking tin, approximately 30cm x 20cm, lightly oiled.

In a large bowl mix together the water and yeast, salt and honey. Stir in the flour either by hand or with a wooden spoon. Pour in 2 tbsp of the olive oil, then mix to a soft dough. Cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth and refrigerate overnight.

Next day, when the dough has risen somewhat, finely chop the rosemary leaves. Slice the figs thinly – I cut each into about 4 slices – then mix with the rosemary, cherries and raisins and the remaining oil. Knead the fruit and rosemary into the dough, then transfer to the baking tin, pushing it out towards the edges with your fist. It will swell to fit during proving. Cover the tin with a cloth and place in a warm place for a good hour, until it has risen to twice its size. Somewhere near a radiator is good.

Preheat the oven to 220C/gas mark 8. Using your finger, push several hollows deep into the dough and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven, trickle with olive oil and scatter with sea salt.

To make the toasts cut 4 thick slices from the loaf. Get an overhead (oven) grill hot. Thickly slice 250g of goat’s cheese log into rounds. Divide the cheese on top of the 4 slices of bread. Roughly chop a little rosemary and scatter over the cheese. Trickle some honey over each one and then place under the grill until the cheese has softened.

Pears with fruit jelly

Apples and pears are in good nick right now. I prefer a chubby comice if possible, but long, thin conference pears are good, too. You need to rub them generously with lemon juice after peeling, to stop them going brown, and I add a little lemon juice to the cooking syrup, too. It helps. Use whichever fruit jelly you can get hold of. I have been using the blackcurrant I made last summer, but apple and redcurrant are also good candidates. Although the cooking syrup will have done its work, it is useful to keep in the fridge for moistening sponge cake or trifle. Serves 3

caster sugar 100g, plus a little for later
water 1 litre
pears 3
lemon juice of 1
fruit jelly or jam 6 tbsp

To serve:
crème fraîche 6 tbsp

Bring the sugar and water to the boil in a large, deep-sided pan – I use one about 28cm in diameter. Peel the pears and cut them in half, rubbing them with a little of lemon juice as you go. Using a teaspoon, remove the pips and core. Squeeze the remaining lemon juice into the sugar syrup, add the pears and lower the temperature to a simmer.

Let the pears cook for 15-20 minutes or so until they are tender to the point of a knife and almost translucent. Check their progress regularly – they should be soft but still retain their shape.

Heat an overhead (oven) grill. Remove the pears with a draining spoon and let them dry for a few minutes. Transfer to a grill pan, cut side uppermost. Dust each with a little caster sugar. Place under the heat, watching carefully, and let the pears brown a little.

Serve the pear halves in shallow dishes, 2 per person with spoonfuls of fruit jelly and crème fraîche.

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