Leek And Garlic Twist Bread Recipe (for the British Leek Growers Association)

I was sent the ingredients to recreate a Leek Recipe by the British Leek Growers Association in time for St. David's Day this weekend. This is a rare occasion where a recipe post doesn't feel like work, because Leeks really are one of my all-time favourite vegetables and they are very under-used in the modern day UK.

I particularly like the look of the Leek and Garlic Twist Bread and I was sent everything I'd need to create the recipe. My 11 year old son was chef and I just gave him a little advice (and kneeded the dough, and did the sticky bits, and the oven).

This is a vegan recipe created by Lucy Parker which uses oat milk, but you can substitute any milk (it will have a slight effect on flavour). I was sent Stork, which is now vegetarian, but not vegan. You can find this recipe and loads more on the British Leek Growers Association website. 

Ingredients:

For the dough:
3 cups plain flour (400g)
Fast action yeast
¾ cup any milk (210ml) at room temperature
¼ cup olive oil (70ml)

For the filling:
¼ cup butter or margarine (60g)
1 large leek
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried parsley
Pinch salt

Method:

1.Add the warm milk, sugar and yeast into a bowl and leave for around 5 minutes to froth. As sugar wasn't included in the recipe, I went for a teaspoon, roughly 5g, and I used a heaped teaspoon of yeast, roughly 7g. I have also added translations for 'cups' to gms for a UK audience.

2.Add the flour and salt to a large mixing bowl, then once the milk and yeast have reacted, pour those into the mixing bowl with the olive oil and bring together with a spoon or your hands. (It's a really oily mix at first, don't panic.)

3.Move to a floured work surface and knead by hand for 10 minutes. You can also add the dough to a machine and knead for the same amount of time. Despite all of the oil it should be a nice soft dough which isn't especially sticky. (My 11 year old assistant here testing the dough.)

4.Clean out the mixing bowl, add a few drops of olive oil, place the kneaded dough within the bowl, cover and leave in a warm place for around 1 ½ hours. Our dough easily rose to twice it's size in this time.

5.Prepare the filling by finely chopping the leek then beating into the butter. Add the salt, pepper, parsley and garlic powder and mix until combined, then leave aside. We chopped leeks to roughly 1cm, which worked well in the end dish, but you can go finer.

6.After the dough has risen, knock it back and place on a floured surface. Roll the dough out into a rectangle shape around 2-3cm thick

7.Spread the leek filling onto the surface of the dough leaving just a thin border at the edges, so that it doesn't squidge out.

8.Roll the dough up lengthways, to make a long sausage shape.

9. Using a sharp knife carefully slice down the middle (also lengthways) to it should leave you with two long strands.

10. Overlap the two strands, keeping the exposed filling facing towards you (this will help the butter ooze out and bake). We found this instruction a bit confusing, but hopefully the photos show what we did. And hopefully we got it right.

11. Place in a large loaf tin, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for a further 30 minutes. We couldn't find a suitably large loaf tin in our cupboard, so left our loaf to spread out a little on a flat tray instead.

12. Preheat the oven to 190°C, place the risen dough in for 25 minutes, then cover with baking foil and bake for a further 20-25 minutes. I pre-heated my fan oven to 180 and still found some of the leeks were a little scorched because we'd not used a loaf tin - I'd advise anyone to check after 20 minutes in case you need to cover with foil 5 minutes early.

Allow to cool and enjoy! Or wait merely 2 minutes and start tearing it apart to test it, like we did. Perfect with pasta, and a tomato and vegetable sauce....

Our finished product was gorgeous! My 11 year old couldn't get enough of this bread and probably would have eaten it all. The leeks give a lovely flavour and the texture goes incredibly well with the bread. The bread itself rose okay and was lovely and soft.

This is definitely a recipe I'll be trying again. I'll add a little extra garlic next time because it suits my family's preferences, but it's a fabulous way to really make proper use of leeks and allow them to shine for once. You can find this recipe and another 100 leek recipes to try on the British Leek Growers Association website.

I was sent the ingredients necessary for my meal (and shown above) in return for the time taken. I'm a big fan of Leeks.