Smug baker

A bit anemic but still yummy

Double inspiration from my mother and my friend led to me buying yeast and bread flour earlier this week and this evening I finally pulled up my sleeves and attempted to make my first loaf of bread in 20 years.

Fresh!

Following (mostly) Jamie Olivers recipe for basic bread mix I ended up with a mass of dough which I turned into one bread loaf, one cottage loaf and a dozen dough sticks.  (A confession: I wasn’t meant to have dough sticks but some much more pukka bread snaps.  It transpires however, that Jamie and I have very different views on what 1cm thick actually is.  He gets trendy twisted breadsticks and I get squidgy, warm dough sticks which I promptly dipped in philly.  Scrumptious).

Obviously, my bread doesn’t look like any of the beautiful loaves in the recipe book or even on the front of the flour packet, nor indeed any bread I’ve ever seen before but ugly bread is a family trait and I like to think that I’ve keeping up tradition. 

Clearly, I’m not pretending to have mastered the art of baking in one evening, but tonight’s efforts have certainly given me the confidence to try again.  Yes, yes, I completely lost my head at the beginning over when to mix the yeast or pour in the water (conscious that this makes me sound like my grandmother, the first time my mum taught me to bake bread we spent the morning waiting for the yeast to froth up.  Being able to simply pour in the yeast and mix it up a bit confused me no end).  However, against the odds my house not only smells like a bakery but I’ve got some really tasty bread ready to tuck into in the morning.

Tucking into scone pizza

Similar to many I always thought of bread baking as some arduous task and that the results didn’t necessarily justify the end but here I am having been proven quite wrong.

 

Sweet and savoury with cookies and cheese straws

Filling the kitchen with floured surfaces and dirty baking trays doesn’t end here.  Continuing another family tradition, when life gets a bit stressful and the to do list seems insanely long, I head to the kitchen and see how much mess I can make.  Since Mark returned to Afghanistan Alby has enjoyed scone pizza, cornflake chicken and cheese twists which his nursery staff have been on the receiving end of my mega chocolate chip cookies.

Cornflake chicken - like dippers but so much better

With the exception of my cookies I don’t claim to be a great chef but I do love a bit of baking and trying new recipes.  There is something very therapeutic about it.  No doubt psychologists would site all sorts of Neolithic stirrings caused by playing with flour. Who knows.  It makes me feel good and my house smells of fresh bread.  Happy days.