Bread
#100DaysToOffload – Day 16
With the obligatory meta-posting that goes with blogs I'd like to say I can't believe that so far I've made it to day 16.
Anyhow down to business. There were all the jokey comments and recipes posted at the start of lockdown for people keeping a sourdough culture but I've been backing bread at home for years. When they first become popular (maybe 25 years ago?) someone bought me a breadmaker as a gift. I loved it and used it regularly until it died about 10 years later. Then after that I did have a sourdough culture but worked out pretty soon that essentially I'm quite a lazy baker. That and my wife not being able to resist eating all the bread as soon as it is out of oven (which OBVIOUSLY made it my fault she put on weight) soon put an end to that. What changed it for me was the no-knead recipe that was published about 6 years ago in the New York Times. Bread-making where you do pretty much nothing and still get an amazing loaf? Yes please, sign me up! Since then I've had bursts of regularly baking versus periods of only occasionally. Recently however my go-to for bread recipes is Trine Hahnemann's Scandinavian Baking.
It also introduced me to using fresh yeast when baking. Fresh yeast is odd and squidgy and smells like a brewery. First of all I could only source it in poncy health shops where it cost a fortune then I discovered it was available in all the local Polski skleps (Polish grocery shops) at about half the price. Result. So whilst I've not seen any yeast or flour in a supermarket since the end of March I've been going to the Polish shop and picking yeast up regularly. The local independent bakery sells flour on a Friday so I've been down to stock up.
Reason I'm waffling all this? Today I made 2 rustic* baguettes we used for sandwiches at lunchtime and I was really proud of them. (*Rustic as they were quite misshapen and lumpy but still tasty.). I didn't even think about getting a photo until they all gone, sorry.
This is one of my 100 Days to Offload posts. It is a blogging challenge started by Kev Quirk. Check https://100daystooffload.com for tasty recipes and see if they fancy cooking up a blog yourself.