Friday, April 15th, 2011
The traditional thing to do with bread
If you really want to make your street party (or garden party) go better than the rest, then you need to roll up your sleaves and get cooking – buying a pile of manufactured rubbish from supermarket is just not good enough!
To get you going, if people like nothing else, they love great bread and I suggest you get a whole pile of volunteers ready to cook every type of bread they can think of first thing in the morning so that it is as fresh as possible.
Here is a basic bread mix which you can mess around with to get some variations:
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Saturday, February 26th, 2011
The actual loaf - photographed with a peg on my nose.
I am on a bit of a diet at the moment, one of the sad side effects of being rather too interested in food. It is one of those low carb affairs; though I don’t know why they give them such wonderful names – basically it is steak and salad.
However, only half the household is dieting, the other half carries on as normal and requires proper feeding. This is messing up my shopping, this split in the ways, and I find I am always forgetting something important for one side or the other. Today, as I looked at the last mouldy slice in the bread basket, I realised that I had forgotten to buy bread. Fear not, I have the technology and the practice and even my new Kenwood Major KM020 to make life easier.
So, 625 grams of flour, tablespoon of dried yeast and 400mil of warm milk/water later, I had a nice batch of dough doing its business on the top of the cupboard (heat rises remember.) And that was fine. The loaf was duly knocked back after a couple of hours and left to prove in its tin for and hour and then treated to the confines of the oven for 45 minutes ish. And that is about where it went wrong.
Oh, there is nothing wrong with the bread! It has a nice crunchy crust, a slightly open and soft texture (thanks to the milk) and a beautiful golden colour. But oh! The Smell!
Great wafts of yeasty wonderfulness, ebbing and flowing around the kitchen, gathering pace to coalesce and inflict its intoxication on my nose.
AND I CANT HAVE ANY!!!
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Hand made, fresh Tortillas
I feel a bit like the Indian girl who is nagged by her mother to make her chapatis round. Let’s face it, for several reasons, I would make a very bad Indian bride. However, when it comes to tortillas, I really don’t care; I just want to be able to wrap things up in them or tear bits off them and for them to look really appetising. In Mexico they make their tortillas quite small, where as in the USA they tend to make them, well, American size. I tend to aim for the latter simply because they look more impressive on the table. But if you want to keep your girth manageable, the Mexicans have probably got this basic bread right.
For this you will need a good size pan – preferably a heavy iron one or a large round flat griddle. Oh, and don’t oil it – these are meant to be heated, not fried! These are MUCH better than shop bought ones and dead easy.
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