our daily bread

I made another loaf of bread this morning.  It seemed a useful thing to do, given that I was trying to nip my nascent cold in the bud, so was hunting around for an activity that didn't involve going outside.  The way to get good at making bread, and work out how to incorporate it into my daily routine was, I thought, to practice.

The previous loaf I made last Sunday was genuinely very nice.  In the interests of balance I should add that the chickpea stew it was made to be eaten with was really rather horrible, but the bread was a success.  Real bread is never as light and fluffy as the loaves you buy in the supermarkets that were made using the Chorleywood bread process, but my last loaf had a nice crumb, not the brick-like consistency that marked some of my early efforts.  And it tasted convincingly of bread. The Systems Administrator pronounced it excellent, and I ate the last piece toasted for breakfast this morning (so it kept for five days without going mouldy, despite the lack of additives).

The SA, finding that home made bread was in the offing, said that we could have some of it for lunch.  I warned that it might be a late lunch, since I wasn't sure the timing was going to work, and can confirm that one of the principles of incorporating home made bread into your daily routine is that if you want a traditional loaf for lunch, you need to start making it before half past nine that same morning.  In fact, you need to start no later than half past eight, and eight would be more relaxing.  A watched lump of dough never rises.

I used an Elizabeth David recipe, 500 grammes of strong white flour and 125 grammes of brown. Then I managed to switch to fluid ounces for the water, for no good reason except that having been at primary school during the decimal switch over period, I still operate in a confused jumble of metric and Imperial measurements.  I don't think it made much difference, since 12 fluid ounces equals 354 millilitres, versus the 350 given in the recipe.  Which is odd, given that when it comes to flour the book says 500 grammes or one pound, and a pound is only 454 grammes.  I have long suspected that baking and bread recipes allow a lot more flexibility than some of the modern (male) bread experts tell you, with their strict instructions to weigh water because measuring volume in a jug is too imprecise.  The water content of flour varies, anyway.

I couldn't remember how to translate 10 grammes of dried yeast into teaspoons, and my scales aren't that accurate, so I followed the advice on the tin of yeast, and used one tablespoonful (fifteen millilitres using a proper steel measure and not just a largish spoon out of the kitchen drawer).  Twenty grammes of salt sounded loads for just one loaf, so I used a teaspoonful, since neither of have particularly salty tongues (funny how there's no such expression, when you can say 'sweet tongue').

So as you can see it was not really an Elizabeth David recipe at all, but a sort of adapted, personalised, make it up as you go along one.  Which must be the way bread has been made through the ages.  It took longer to rise than last time, which might be because I didn't warm the flour for quite as long, or maybe last time I only used half a teaspoon of salt.  It was cooked for three quarters of an hour, fifteen minutes in a hot oven, fifteen in a less hot oven, and a final fifteen in the less hot oven tipped out of the tin and turned upside down.  And we disobeyed the book and started to eat it as soon as it was done, instead of waiting for it to cool and its flavour to develop.  And it looked and tasted just like real bread.