Barley oat and Wensleydale bread

My lovely-gorgeous-and-better half and I had a wonderful weekend away in the Yorkshire Dales quite soon after we met. Of all the things we saw there - the rolling hills and dales, the friendly people, the extensive availability of technical walking gear, the sheep, the cows - the highlight was visiting the Wensleydale creamery at Hawes. Sort of like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but with cheese.

It is hard to define what the character of Wensleydale was before Wallace and Gromit made it their Cheese of Choice. Apparently the Wensleydale creamery was struggling before the plastacine pair from Wigan came along. Perhaps their apricot-impregnated version of the cheese had been consigned to the same category as babycham, frozen black forest gateau and cheese+pineapple hedgehogs. But, if you are up close and personal with Wensleydale you will find it to be the most versatile and friendly cheese. A bit salty, mild, good for crackers with a pungent pickle, for crumbling over pasta, and plenty more.

So, this morning I decided to bake a barley oat loaf and include some Wensleydale. The flour is a combination of wheat flour, barley flakes and flour, and some linseeds. In the UK you can get it under the Doves Farm brand. This bread ended up tasting delicious but you could barely identify the wensleydale, so do be robust and put some good old chunks of it in there, say the size of a die (as in, plural, dice).

Ingredients:
500g barleycorn flour
1 tsp easy yeast
a little salt and sugar
9 fl oz water. Well that's what the pack said, but this turned out to be too much so add 7 floz first and work your way up.
Some olive oil
Wensleydale!!!!

instructions:
1. mix it all together and knead for as long as you can be bothered (if for some reason you are feeling cross with someone, ten min of kneading should have you restored to a pleasant new happy mood).
2. leave it in the bowl to rise for about an hour
3. the most satisfying bit. punch it! If you want to give someone a small gift, invite them to punch it. It's really very satisfying. The air will all fall out of it and it is ready to knead for another ten minutes. Then place it in the receptacle that you are going to bake it in. I have no loaf tin and so went for a silicon brioche mould. Leave it in the new receptacle until it has started to rise again, say quarter of an hour.
4. Bake at 200 degrees C for about 30-40 minutes. It's ready when if you knock it on the outside, it sounds firm and hollow.
5. Eat and Enjoy!

We served it with some octopus (not Paul) and smoked salmon: