Category: bread

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Meanderings

It’s raining as I write. A grey, incessant rain that takes hold and makes you feel glad that you’re not out in it. The house is enveloped in water.

I’m having a low, quiet day. I get them every now and then – no energy to do anything and a feeling of wanting to hide from the world. These days come, and they go. I feel increasingly anxious about being out there, with people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?

I baked another sourdough boule this morning. I’m slowly getting back into it and the newly developed starter (Feisty Fran II) is now maturing nicely. She’s a home-bred local girl from natural Skye yeasts, so is well used to our weather.

Feisty Fran our Skye rye sourdough starter

A few loaves a week will soon get me back into the swing of things. I’m trying an 85% hydration recipe with rye that tastes great but spreads like a big-bottomed girl and doesn’t give me the crusty “ear” that I like, so I need to work on that.

Earless wonder

It’s a very loose dough so needs better tension to hold the slash and to be able to create an “ear”. It’ll get there. I’ll eventually work it out. Bread-making is just alchemy.

“Earless” sourdough

Husband has done a great job with the hedging around the deer-fenced orchard and vegetable area of the croft, which is all now in, and mulched. Some of the seedlings and twigs are in bud already so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.

Husband has now returned to indoor jobs, building shelves and working on our big bookcase in the sitting room area.

Our carpenter Ben had to leave unexpectedly and didn’t get time to install the big bookcases as planned so husband has been left to finish them. It’s been weeks of cutting, osmo oiling and assembly. It’s coming together now at last. I know it’s all been meticulously measured but I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw it, thinking that it wouldn’t fit on the wall under that roofline. Husband assures me that we have 2cm of clearance..

We can’t wait to get the book boxes unpacked.

There are four of these to go on that base

The seedlings are coming along well and I’ve moved the hardier of them, the lettuce, beans and kale, out into the polycrub. The cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines and more heat-loving tender plants remain indoors for now, the green wall of food lined up against the big south-facing windows.

Cucumber babies doing their thing

Whilst I was in the polycrub the other day clearing old grow tubs, I found a surprise stash of carrots! All good, perfectly firm and sweet. These are a batch of St. Valery carrots, a heritage variety sowed last year from Real Seeds that I’d forgotten. We’ve been snacking on them raw with homemade humous and olives and I’ve been so impressed with the taste that I’ve bought more seeds for sowing this year.

Nature is just amazing. We’ve managed to eat kale, purple sprouting broccoli, tatsoi and carrots throughout the hungry gap.

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Baking baguettes

As my baking things are still in boxes, and making sourdough without a Dutch oven, baneton and all the faffy but essential equipment seems a step too far, I’ve started experimenting with baking baguettes.

Inspired by Mairi at Highland Seedlings, who makes baguettes a few times a week, I decided to give it a go.

I’ve been using this recipe from Taste of Artisan https://tasteofartisan.com/french-baguette-recipe/ which is simple to follow and produces good results, even for a novice baguette baker like me.

The dough proves for a few hours in a warm place in a covered bowl to get the yeast active then sits overnight in the fridge for a further 12 hours of “cold proving”. There’s no kneading, just a few stretches and flips, which definitely gets my vote.

It’s a very high hydration dough, nearly 70%, so it’s wet and quite tricky to work with. Luckily there’s not much fiddling beyond shaping to do.

The crust is good and the flavour is exceptional.

I’ve even been up early to switch the oven on and shape and bake the loaves first thing so that we can enjoy them for breakfast.

I’m not sure whether that’s true love or greed, but whatever it is it means that we have warm, freshly baked bread with our coffee, which is a joy.

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Stormy days

Rain is lashing down in torrents from a leaden grey sky as I write. There’s ice in it too, and a stiff north westerly wind to drive it home.

From the caravan

The badly fitting, single glazed windows of the caravan don’t seem to provide much protection against this weather as I peer out into the gloom. I’m well wrapped up with three layers, including thermals, and I’m still chilly.

We’ve had an incredible run of storms so far this year, one right upon the coat tails of the previous one. Storms Corrie, Dudley, Eunice and Franklin have rolled over the island in the last six weeks in rapid succession, bringing 80 mph winds, hail and snow with little respite in between.

We’ve had very disturbed sleep this past month as the worst of the winds seem to come after dark. When they start, the caravan rocks and shudders as if it’s alive, straining against the lorry straps that lash it down like a wounded animal.

The noise of the hailstorms is deafening. It’s impossible to sleep through. It’s as if someone is emptying buckets of marbles into a tin bath on your head. Even burrowing further under the warmth of the duvet doesn’t dull the noise.

Image Francis Yeats

I bake. I make bread and cakes to warm and sustain us. I make soups and stews and sweet, eggy puddings and crumbles.

Brioche buns. Just because.

I venture out in the small, quiet pockets of calm between the storms and wonder at the crofts capacity to hold water. Everything is sodden, soaked.

I wear many layers. Recently I’ve taken to wearing my fingerless gloves in the caravan during the day to keep my hands warm. Tea has become an important, warming ritual in the afternoons, hands wrapped around the comforting heat of the mug.

Spring is coming, I tell myself. It’s coming.

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Bread of the Gods

We are very blessed on this part of the island that despite there being no bread bakery within many miles we have two wonderful assets that between them keep us supplied with the Bread of the Gods.

Mallaig Bakehouse bread

The first is the Mallaig Bakehouse on the mainland. The ferry brings its fabulous sourdough loaves over with it three days a week on the morning sailing, and we can buy them at the local community store. You have to be quick though, as they invariably sell out within the first hour of delivery.

I love that the normally sociable neighbours who stop for a chat at the shop tend to make a very determined beeline for the bread baskets to ensure that they’ve scored their purchase before any kind of relaxed blether. Surely the mark of a divine bake..

The second source of our bread gratitude is that of our lovely neighbours Jonny and Beth. Jonny bakes a fabulous sourdough, deeply crusty and satisfying.

Delectably wrapped bread from Jonny

We’ve been fortunate enough to be the recipients of a couple of his bread bakes. They arrive as unannounced gifts, beautifully wrapped in layers of greaseproof paper, neatly secured with twine and rustling with anticipation.

Our latest surprise was a toasted oat loaf, and it was simply delicious. The crust is deeply baked, crackling and savoury, just as we like it best, and the bread is chewy, yeasty and satisfying.

Unwrapped toasted oat sourdough

There is something so warming and fundamental about the gift of home baked bread. As a baker myself I know how much time and love goes into the creation of a sourdough loaf, which makes it all the more wondrous. Its doubly appreciated as I’m unable to bake bread in the caravan.

Great Bread!

Thank you, Jonny and Beth, for being such kind neighbours and for the gift of this most delicious of breads.

I think I’ve found potential use number 456 for the little barn on the croft after restoration. A village bakehouse! What do you think, guys? 😊

Potential bakehouse/coffee/reading/craft room…
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Easter Bread – Tsoureki

Tsoureki is a sweet, soft, fragrant Greek Easter bread which I first made last year in lockdown, having been unable to get Easter Eggs delivered.

We loved it, and it seems to have stuck as a tradition.

Of course, last year I had a proper kitchen, and a kitchen machine with a dough hook to take the strain. It needs a good fifteen minutes of kneading! This year was rather different.

I think that this was the most challenging thing I’ve tried to make in our tiny caravan kitchen so far, but it worked well, and we feasted on it for breakfast yesterday morning with enough left over for today too.

Rich with eggs, orange zest and mahlep, a spice made from ground cherry stones, it’s sweet, fragrant, soft and delicious. And all the more enjoyable for being a time consuming thing to make, and a once-a-year-treat.

Husband enjoyed his straight with no embellishments, washed down with a cup of coffee. I decided to Northern Up my slice with butter and rhubarb jam, Yorkshire style. Which was unutterably delicious. No judgements, now!

Here’s a link to the recipe I used if anyone wants to try it.
Tsoureki https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/tsoureki-recipe-traditional-greek-easter-bread/

Happy Easter to you all!

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Snow on the croft

We awoke this morning to a white blanket of snow over everything again. The temperatures had fallen overnight and it had snowed for several hours.

Getting up and started is the hardest thing when it’s cold like this.

Breakfast was taken by the fire with both of us wrapped up in a blanket, bobble hats and fingerless gloves until the fire gradually warmed the room.

We watched as the light changed constantly around us, the skies moving from thunderous grey to bright blue and back again as the storm fronts raced across the sky.

The snow is properly deep now, and the access track to the croft is icy and compacted and probably impassable for the moment, unless it was an emergency.

This would of course happen as I was about to replenish food stores with my regular shop, but we have plenty of stores, and bread flour and yeast to make rolls. The small oven here would struggle with a big loaf but it manages rolls and smaller breads just fine.

I’ve been baking every day, and making soup, curries and stews to make sure that we stay warm.

I know that this would send some people absolutely stir crazy, but I quite like it. It’s quiet and cosy. We have the work on the house, our books, cooking and seed planning and planting to keep us busy.

Contentment.

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Irres Cran

We love good bread. We eat a lot of it, especially seeded, malted grain bread.

So it was with great excitement that whilst shopping in our local Co Op on the island I spotted that they’d just put out a selection of speciality breads.

I read the ingredients. Irres Cran, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. What the heck was irres cran?

Intrigued, but assuming that it was some sort of ancient Scottish grain, like Emmer wheat, I popped it in the trolley and brought it home.

I tried googling irres cran but nothing came up. There was nothing left but to try it.

It was cranberry bread.. 😂.

The bread range is called Irresistible and they’d clearly abbreviated the label to fit all the ingredients on.

Irresistible Cranberry. Irres Cran.

Priceless.

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Easter bread and no eggs

The chocolate eggs I ordered two weeks ago for the family didn’t arrive in time for the Easter weekend. This feels like a bit of a first world problem, to be honest, so we’ve all agreed that we’ll enjoy them if and when they arrive later this week, and in the meantime to mark the day, I made Tsoureki.

Hugh remembers this from his days in Istanbul. I’d never tasted it before, but was up for a voyage of discovery, and bizarrely I had most of the ingredients needed in the cupboard.

This is a special Greek Easter bread sweetened with sugar, enriched with egg yolks and made fragrant with orange zest and mahlep, a curious spice made from cherry kernels. I had a packet of mahlep powder gifted from a visit from relatives a year ago and had never used it, not really understanding what it was or what it added.

The bread was soft and doughy, a cross between cake and bread in texture, and sweetly fragrant. We nibbled some as it came out of the oven yesterday, and will eat the rest with honey for breakfast with our coffee this morning.

Thinking about it, if the chocolate eggs had arrived in time I wouldn’t have searched for a celebratory alternative. A perfect example of creativity blossoming in adversity in our current captivity! And a delicious one that will form a part of our Easter celebrations from now onwards, I think.

New beginnings.

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Using up the fridge first

Suddenly we’re all much more conscious that food is a precious commodity as the London supermarket shelves empty and the online delivery slots shrivel up.

I’ve always hated wasting food, but now more than ever I’m making a concerted attempt to use up what we have and make the most of it.

There was a pack of pastry reaching its use-by date and some rather dried up spring onions lurking at the back of the fridge that probably would have been thrown out. Instead I thought that if I mashed a potato, grated a handful of mature cheddar, added the spring onions and some seasoning and mixed the lot up as a filling, that we had the makings of cheesy potato pasties.

Just what was needed to keep us going for a late lunch after a morning of remote working from home.

Dinner tonight is more leftovers. I’ve chopped the cold roast pork remains from the weekend with a few remaining cold roast potatoes (I know! Who knew it was possible to leave roast potatoes 😊) along with chopped onion, garlic, greens and chillies to make a fried hash which we’ll eat with runny eggs and some crusty bread.

Not at all what I would have served up for supper a few weeks ago, but the best use of food that would otherwise go off or be wasted.

Because who knows when there will be more coming…

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Nuts, seeds and malted grains

Whilst we wait for the architects to draw up house plans in readiness for the planning permission application, life goes on.

It’s a blustery, cold March Saturday in London and I am experimenting with my sourdough baking.

I love the crunch of nuts and seeds in my bread, so I’ve added hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds and a few handfuls of malted grains to my dough this morning.

I’m tending towards the “stretch and fold” method of making sourdough rather than regular heavy pummelling of the dough. It seems to trap more air and gives a better crumb texture. I could probably do with the workout, but I’ll sacrifice my fitness for a great loaf…

There’s something very satisfying about a long, slow dough proving. Every time I pass the bowl I can’t help taking a quick peek under the tea towel, and I confess that it’s really gratifying to watch it double in size in a matter of a few hours.

But the real joy is eating big, crusty slabs of warm, freshly baked bread with salted butter, and the satisfaction of knowing that you made this with your own hands. And that you know exactly what has gone into it.

Bread is a very life-affirming thing.