Bara, rhan dau

Well, the bread was sort of a succcessful failure...  The crumb, as you can seen in the above photo, is lovely, and the texture is lovely, and the flavour (sorry, no photo of that) is lovely, but the dough was way too wet, and I couldn't really shape it properly for the final proof (not to mention that it was oozing off the edge of the counter before that) and when I finally did give up and chuck it in the oven, something odd happened to the bottom crust -- see next picture...

 

Yes, that's the bottom crust as it was when I took it out of the oven.  No, I didn't slice it in half.  So one of two things: Either too much water -- I have never worked with a dough this wet before -- or, I didn't knead it enough to start with.  When I first started kneading, it wasn't really even kneading.  I had this gloopy mess on the counter, and I sort of scooped up handfuls and folded them back into the gloop...  After about 25 minutes, it had developed some sort of tension, and was sticking to my hands less, so I decided it was ready to rise.  Perhaps I stopped kneading too soon?  Anybody have any experience they want to share?  For the record, the recipe is from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley...  But it was delicious, so if I can just make it a bit more handleable and sort that bottom crust, I'll be all sorted...

Bara

So one of my many jobs at the moment is working up on a farm by Llyn y Fan Fach, and the farmer's wife runs a cafe in the farmyard.  She's after baps for making filled rolls, so I offered to make her some.  Made her some lovely rolls last week, and she said she loved them, but they were too much like the rolls she makes, and she wants something "lighter" -- in texture, not colour.  What she means is she wants something that tastes more commercial, without having to actually buy commercial rolls.  I am now trying a new recipe for ciabatta-type rolls, so I'll let you know tomorrow how it works out (sponge above) but it raises the question about how we have to adapt/modify what we eat to what we can make without resort to flour treatment agent, enzymes, etc...

I don't think I have a deprived diet at all -- I eat lots of fresh vegetables, local (delicious) cheeses, local meat produced by farmers I know, homemade bread -- but I do think about food in a different way than one does if one just goes into the supermarket and picks things off the shelf.  I have to think about what time of year it is -- in the summer I eat more salads and in the winter I eat mainly stews.  If you currently eat a supermarket ready-meal diet, it's not possible to simply switch to making things from scratch and have the end result be the same.  Personally, I think the end result is better, but I think that the farmer's wife is concerned that her customers want the bread to taste the way they are used to -- and I can see her rationale, and this is what stops me from opening my own restaurant -- because I would be too stubborn and I would lose customers -- but ultimately we do need to change the way we eat.  Is there an easier way to get there?

Dw i wedi dod yn ol...

After much deliberation, I've decided to start blogging again...  Several reasons:  1.  A neighbour said to me last week that I was the greenest person he know -- I don't particularly think my life is that extraordinary, but if he does, maybe it is?  2.  By complete chance, I met a couple of people last weekend who I'd never met in real life before but who had been regular readers of my blog and found it very useful -- so perhaps I do have something to say?  3.  One comment/criticism I used to receive a lot was that it was great that I was doing all this, but not everybody has four acres, etc.  Well, now I live in a very small house on the edge of a small village with a very small garden, so perhaps more people will be able to find that there could be a similarity between my life and theirs now?

In any case, as always, I'm going to start with food.  The above photo is a lovely bowl of chicken soup I made with a chicken kindly given to me in exchange for helping my friend Gerry learn how to slaughter his own chickens yesterday.  The carrots and greens are from my veg box delivery (I have no garden this year as it's presently a building site!).  So that's a whole bowl of soup that's never seen the inside of a supermarket, and it was delicious!

More to come -- watch this space -- I'm not really sure how long it will take people to discover that the blog is live again...  But your thoughts and suggestions for future posts are always welcome.