Reading (and Viewing) and Cooking, and My Bread Recipe

Reading and cooking are two of my favourite things, so an informative and literate cookbook is always a joy. Like the wonderful Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe I can read such works as if they are thrillers. This Christmas The Dear Leader (lingering agony to her enemies) bought me Anna del Conte's tome on the cooking of Northern Italy, and it has duly been read cover to cover.


With that AdC book it has been the baking that has grabbed my attention the most. I've pretty much given up buying bread from the supermarket: sourdough that uses vinegar; leathery, pappy French sticks whose production should be punishable by death; Sainsbury's 101 ways to present tasteless white rubbish. Instead I bake batches two or three times a week, freezing the spare stuff for later. That fascination has now extended to other baked goods: yesterday I made some onion 'biscuits' from one of her recipes, and very good they were too. Biscuits, however, is a misnomer, as they are more like tiny scones, and only baked once to boot.


For many people these days I imagine TV is more likely to be the spark to ignite their culinary creativity. I've never watched GBBO, and probably never will, but I'm glad that for a very small percentage of its fans the programme has led to actual cooking at home. The shops have far more bakery equipment of a practical nature on sale; supermarkets are stocking a huge range of ingredients for fancy cake making etc. A quick scan of the shelves at one supermarket today suggests that the look of the thing, and sweet items, are what has grabbed the attention most - far more variety in cake decoration than in bread flour as a yardstick. But I really hope that, the bug having bitten, people who have not done so already will move on to making their own bread, pizzas, rolls... Sadly, however, it is probably not yet the moment to sell off your shares in Deliveroo.


For what it's worth, here's my infallible recipe for making two large loaves, or one large loaf and about 10 small rolls. It uses a lot of yeast, but as I buy mine from Aldi for 59p for 8 sachets, and it has yet to fail me, no matter.


Just in case this is needed: hot ovens can burn you; so can heated baking sheets. Use oven gloves (and common sense) to protect your hands from such hot surfaces.


1: In a large mixing bowl make a 'sponge' with 125g strong white flour (though plain would be ok), 150ml hand-hot water, and two sachets of dried yeast. Stir them together and leave for one to two hours, covered with a tea-towel, in the airing cupboard or another warm spot. The messy putty-looking mix you put in comes out more or less flat, pocked with bubble holes.


2: To that sponge add 300g of strong white flour, 300g of wholemeal or seeded granary or similar flavoursome flour, two more sachets of dried yeast, 2.5tbsp of olive oil, 2 tsp of fine salt, and 425ml of hand-hot water. Mix it, then plop it out on a floured work surface, flour your hands, and knead for about five minutes. If you knead too much the flavour suffers; too little and the texture is wrong. I go by the dough feeling 'silky' and stretching nicely to the hand - sorry there is no more scientific way of putting it.


3: When the dough is right, put it back in the mixing bowl, pour a tbsp of olive oil over it and turn so the surface gets a sheen, though there's no need to be too fussy, and then cover with the tea towel again and put it in the warm spot to rise for another hour to two hours. It has to double in size, more or less.


4: Dig your fingers into the risen dough to knock it back (get the air out of it), form into whatever loaf shape you want and put these on a floured baking sheet, or put some half way up a greased loaf tin, and again give it two hours to rise. Again the loaves or rolls should double in size.


5: Pre-heat the oven (here's where it gets difficult - everybody's oven is different, conditions and ingredients likewise), I bake at 210C, in a fan oven, it works for me. When I've gone hotter the bread's surface has been tougher but not crusty; cooler and the texture is denser. Slide the baking sheet with the loaves on onto another that has heated up in the oven (so you have one baking sheet on top of the other), and leave for 15 minutes for rolls, 25 to 40 minutes for loaves, depending on their size.


6: When they are done (looks, smell, their bottoms giving a nice hollow sound when tapped) put the bread/rolls on a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes (it helps the finished texture) before succumbing to temptation.


There are few culinary pleasures to match eating fresh, hot-to-warm bread spread with butter that melts into the crumb as you watch. I tend to use organic flour, no additives, so while the bread is good for a day or two, it doesn't keep like commercial stuff. But then it generally doesn't get the chance.

Food Bank Bankers

Every month I do a shopping run for our local food bank, two in December, August and July when the need is apparently at its greatest. I feel more involved actually buying three or four bags of shopping (at Aldi - not mean, I do half of our own shopping there, the core bits) and taking them in, rather than just giving a few quid. A load of thoughts pass through my tiny mind as I'm doing this - why in a world of billionaires such things need to exist; how it must feel to be a parent forced to resort to such support; what people would like to see, or need, in their lifeline bag of groceries.

As someone obsessed by food I reflect on the culinary aspects of this too, and what will stretch through the week. Thus I always buy some 500g bags of rice, and of penne, along with tinned toms or sauces that will help form the basis of several meals. I hope it's not too condescending that I worry some people needing these goods may prefer the canned stuff I include, as it can be cooked in seconds - just warmed through - or even eaten as it comes if they've been cut off, or have no working cooking facilities; and that some may not have the culinary knowledge to cook pasta so it's palatable, as successive governments have reduced cookery teaching to next to nothing in our schools, and fast food culture has done its worst too.

Monday's run included some pudding stuff - rice pudding, custard, tins of fruit - as food should be about lifting the spirits too, and a sweet treat is great at that. In case anyone is thinking ill of me, I don't do this for any feelings of innate superiority, or that it makes me feel good. It actually doesn't. Softie that I am, after every run I feel down that such places and services are necessary. But that's no reason to stop trying to help, even if it's only a tiny bit. Atheist that I am, I commend the Salvation Army to anyone reading this, and hope if you have the means you will make the occasional food bank donation to them, or their equivalents.

Not So Bare Bones

The aroma of ham stock pervades the house. A month to the day since I bought the Serrano ham from Aldi its remnants have this morning been hacked from the bone and frozen, to enrich stews and soups in months to come. In good Ba Ba Blacksheep style we got three bags full, plus the knuckle wrapped up separately.

The ham was advertised as 6.5kg, though I didn't weigh it, and cost £40. Those remains must total a good 750g, and even the main bone isn't going to waste, simmering with stock vegetables and herbs various in a pot with the capacity of a cricket club tea urn. When the stock is right - as soon as I finish this - I'll pour it through a sieve into a cold metal bowl to cool before skimming, which given there is a load of fat and skin in the makings may well account for 10 per cent of the volume. Some will go in the fridge for imminent use, some freeze for future value.

As I do whenever I see those annoying TV adverts for stupid piddly stock pots I'm tempted now to say balls to Marco Pierre White. That idea that a magic bought ingredient will make your cooking cheffily brilliant is just so wrong. Good ingredients can help, but a miniscule plastic pot of jellied goo probably doesn't qualify, and is not going to turn a thin ragout into a rich and fragrant feast. A properly - lovingly - made stock just may. Thus tomorrow's turkey risotto made with some of the ham stock has a decent chance of being really flavoursome, the meat and bones backed up by carrots, onions, garlic, bay, pepper, cassia bark, celery and thyme. 

On Friday I asked the Booth's butcher for some beef bones for another stock, and was surprised that he fished out two short bones from what may have been flat-rib, very meaty indeed. No charge - I heard someone say the other day that butchers pay to have the bones taken away, so welcome such requests. That price definitely fits the austerity remit. Again simmered (and carefully skimmed of gunk), but this time with lots of star anise and chillis along with the stock vegetables, they made the basis of a fine noodle soup (per SC damp noodles, though I notice that he had no problem downing plenty). Naturally both of these exercises took a lot longer than peeling the lid off a Knorr potlet, but it's worth it. One more chorus of balls to Mr W.

A Whole Ham for the Hambone?

Though Ruth said I was being foolish to do so, I went early to Aldi to buy - on the day they were to be in store - one of their Serrano hams advertised at £49.99 with knife, stand and sharpening steel. For some reason (it being sold cheaper on the internet apparently) it was actually £39.99. Not surprisingly perhaps the one I got at 8:30 was the last then in stock, the store having opened at 8:00.

The ham weighs 6.5kg, so quite a bit to go at over the Christmas break. It will make life easy when we have friends and neighbours (who generally are friends anyway) over. I'm looking forward to the meat, but having a hambone with which to make stock is a massive bonus. For the next few days I'll be thinking of recipes for the scraps and the mis-shapes too as we try to cut see-through slices. Omelette, pizza, risotto, tiny cubes in paella...

As per a previous post, however, the simplicity of the thing appeals hugely too. Any of us fancying a snack or a quick starter will be able - with a bit of practice - to dig in. It does take practice, as we found pre-Joe when I brought a whole cured ham back from France, nestled among the wine that filled the boot at the end of every continental business trip by car. We had no long thin knife then, and so every other slice was too thick, chewed determinedly or cut up and used in stews etc. 

Cooking with the stuff is not, though, the real point of it. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity again: ham, bread, wine, salad, talk. And more ham. That's the point.