home baking

The wind arrived in the night.  It was not a real howling, wondering if the roof is going to stay on wind, but strong enough when I got up for me to go down and move the chairs off the deck outside the conservatory, just in case they blew through the windows.  Once outside I thought the wind probably wasn't that fierce, but how strong does a chair-window smashing wind feel?  It only takes one unlucky gust.  As a chap once said on radio being interviewed about a particularly vicious storm in Scotland, he didn't have an anemometer with him, but if it was any help his Land rover had just blown over the cliff.

The old saying goes in umpteen variants, 'Wind before rain, tops'ls can remain, rain before wind, tops'ls you must mind'.  Apparently it is based on sound meteorological theory to do with where you are relative to the low pressure system that's causing the wind and rain, whether catching a passing squall on the fringe of it, or right in its path.  It did rain a lot yesterday, and today it was pretty windy for several hours.  On the other hand, I can think of lots of times when it has rained all day and the following day not been especially windy, so the saying doesn't work as a wind forecaster, maybe just a warning that if the wind starts to get up after a prolonged period of rain then you're likely to get a proper blow.  Anyway, I minded my garden chairs.

It seemed a good day for pottering around close to the Aga.  I made another bara brith, as the last one was nicer than I expected.  That makes it sound as though I made the first one expecting it to be nasty, which is not the case, but I did make it partly in a spirit of curiosity without really believing that a fat free cake would stay moist for more than about thirty-six hours.  In fact it kept very well for several days, and I can only think the reason for it lasting so much better than soda bread or scones was down to the effects of having soaked the dried fruit overnight.  If you want to try it yourself you need to soak four ounces of currants and two of raisins in cold tea.  The drained fruit is added to twelve ounces of self raising wholemeal flour, four of soft brown sugar, two of mixed peel (which I have just noticed in the recipe and forgot to put in), a teaspoon of mixed spice, a large egg, and enough of the tea (which you have kept having strained the fruit into a bowl and not down the sink) to make a dropping mixture.  The mixture fits nicely in a two pound loaf tin and takes about three quarters of an hour to cook at 180 C.  I used a loaf tin liner (John Lewis is excellent) out of habit though the book doesn't actually say to line the tin, the book being Julie Duff's Cakes regional and traditional, which I have found utterly reliable so far apart from the ruddy lemon drizzle cake on page 254.

After the bara brith I made a conventional loaf using Elizabeth David's recipe in the posthumous collection At Elizabeth David's Table, compiled by her editor Jill Norman.  I am instinctively cautious of collected works presented after an author's death, as some turn out to be rehashes of previously published work one already has in their earlier books plus previously unpublished articles that weren't honestly very good, leaving me darkly suspecting that the final book was produced entirely for commercial gain.  The same charge can be levelled at some posthumous album releases.  But At Elizabeth David's Table is a nice book, with some magazine articles I hadn't seen before and attractive photos, and it probably does help introduce a younger generation of cooks to her work who might not be inclined to pick up the densely written, photo-free originals without encouragement.  And Jill Norman has picked out recipes the modern cook is relatively likely to cook, not requiring impossible to obtain ingredients.  Opening my copy of French Provincial Cooking at random, the first fish recipe I saw instructed the reader to obtain slices of a fleshy fish making sure the fishmonger gave them the heads and carcasses.  And teal, thrushes and hares are unlikely to form part of the average shopping basket.

Elizabeth David does not sound particularly enthusiastic about home bread making, saying that it is not her intention to make even a slight attempt to persuade people into baking their own bread, simply to tell them how to set about it if they feel they must.  Despite that lukewarm introduction I have so far found her basic loaf entirely reliable.  She did write an entire book on the subject of English bread and yeast cookery so perhaps her comments written for the Queen magazine in 1968 were meant tongue in cheek.  Or she was writing for her audience and knew that many of the readers of Queen were not going to take up home baking.  As she warms to her subject she does say that home made bread will be better than much of what could be bought in 1968, she just doesn't want the reader to feel guilty if they stick with shop bread.