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 and Exams

SC has his first A level exam (of sorts, it's a physics practical) today. As a concerned parent (far more nervous than he appears to be) I want to help in every way possible. Though his school is older, he doesn't go to one of those privileged establishments where rumour has it a certain amount of clandestine assistance is given to candidates, thus help here in large part means giving him a good breakfast.

So what is a good exam breakfast? Thinking it through I failed to come up with anything terribly revolutionary, but then most nutritional thought in the end seems to come down to common sense. He will benefit from slow release carbs, to give energy through a good part of the day, so a couple of slices of wholemeal bread (he isn't keen on toast). Protein with that to slow the digestion of the starch into sugar, spreading the energy longer (the exam late in the school day), so some low fat ham with his bread (and scrape of butter). Such protein is supposed to be good for concentration too. I sneaked some fish into yesterday's mezze for a similar reason, and because as a true believer in Wodehouse I hope that what Bertie felt made Jeeves so brainy will work on SC.

Fresh fruit and veg seems to help our moods, the vitamins perhaps giving us a boost, so a fruit platter - orange, apple, peach, blueberries - shared between us, and some cloudy apple juice to wash everything down. To finish a zero fat vanilla yoghurt not for any real scientific reason, but because it tastes like ice cream and makes one happy (longer term of course it's good for his bones, but the danger of osteoporosis is a few decades off for him yet).

In the end however balanced such a start may be, when the papers are opened it's down to other factors. But when the course of someone's life can vary because of just a single mark tipping them up or down a grade, you want to give them every chance.

Cheap Luxury Jacobean Style

My reading of the Jacobean lady housewife Elinor Fettiplace's receipt book sparked the idea for the starch accompaniment to yesterday's gammon. I had even thought this one through in advance, buying the sweet potatoes with such a dish in mind. I had not realised previously that the potatoes Raleigh brought over here were not the common spud, but said sweet potatoes.

Two huge tubers (cost 86p) were boiled whole for 15 minutes, then skinned - it just wrinkles off when pushed with the thumb. Sliced thickly they were put in a gratin dish into which was poured to come close to the top a mixture of hot ham stock, the juice of two oranges (rather sad overlooked specimens from the fruit-bowl), a tablespoon of rosewater, and a big lump of butter, all previously stirred together so the butter had time to melt. The surface was sprinkled with a little sugar, and the dish then cooked in the oven for about 45 minutes at 180C - until the top slices took a knife point easily, a question of judgement as they were slightly candied.

The colour was beautiful - I am not sure if the camera does it justice. The flavour too was excellent, a perfect match - contrast indeed - for the savoury-salty gammon.

A post some days back looked at the value in terms of nutrition and cheerfulness of colour in our food. This was the brightest thing we've eaten in weeks. And it had an almost restauranty touch of glamour and sophistication, the rosewater just a background hint to add extra interest.

Hilary Spurling suggested that modern American cooks do something not a million miles away from this at Thanksgiving Dinners, but never having attended one I cannot confirm that - if anyone reading this can offer confirmation and comment on that I'd be grateful.