Bread

Shaggy inkcaps and garlic, fried in butter, on a bed of fresh olive bread with cream cheese and chives.

Slice and freeze!

Bread recipe. Ingredients: 400 gms Sainsbury wholegrain seeded flour. 100 gms Canadian Strong white flour. 1.5 tsps salt 1.5 tsps Allinsons easy bake yeast 2 tsps poppy seeds 1.5 tsps of garlic granules A handful of Pine nuts A handful of pecan nuts Fresh rosemary 20-25 Kalamata pitted black olives 2 tablespoons of olive oil/walnut oil 280 ml of warm/tepid water. Mix all above together for ten minutes in a large bowl, initially with a spatula, and then by hand. Keep a small bowl with white flour in it to dust your hands to prevent the dough sticking to them too much. Eventually it will become more and more elastic and less sticky. Flatten into the bottom of the bowl and cover top of bowl with cling film. Either put in an oven at 40°C for an hour after which it will have doubled in size, or leave in a warm room for several hours. (I sometimes leave it overnight) After that have an oven heated to 225/230°C and after kneading the raised dough for no more than a minute or so, place on a slightly oiled baking tray, into whatever shape you want your loaf - circular, French loaf shape, or oblong etc., having cut with a wet knife no more than a centimetre into the top in any pattern you like to give some design to the crust. Leave in oven for 30-35 minutes. Remove, place on a rack and cover in a clean tea towel until cool. Slice with a bread knife, butter, and eat: but not all at once..

First attempt at Gluten-free bread for a Coeliac. It tasted better than it looked - if I hadn't added pecans and kalamata olives to it, I am not sure what it would have turned out like. As it is it came out of the oven looking like a mud brick. The "dough" had the consistency of thick wallpaper paste, and although it rose to double in size, when put in the bread tin, it was still a sticky gooey mess, and I was quite surprised it browned to form a tasty crust!

First attempt at Gluten-free bread for a Coeliac. It tasted better than it looked - if I hadn't added pecans and kalamata olives to it, I am not sure what it would have turned out like. As it is it came out of the oven looking like a mud brick. The "dough" had the consistency of thick wallpaper paste, and although it rose to double in size, when put in the bread tin, it was still a sticky gooey mess, and I was quite surprised it browned to form a tasty crust!

Wholemeal mulit-seeded bread

First Successful sourdough wholemeal loaf today - the previous one had been rushed and failed as a consequence. Sourdough bread-making is a bit of a palaver, but with all the time in the world to footle about in the kitchen, what better time if you have the patience than to try this form of baking, particularly as the shops are all out of Baker's Yeast?