Sunday, January 15, 2006

MAKING BREAD

The edible kind, not money.

Barbara moved over and let me use our joint present from Si this weekend. Piece of cake - so to speak. Load up the ingredients, yeast first, and then masculine skills come to the fore with selection of options by various button presses, wait four hours, and then hey presto it is ready.

Oh dear, in flipping between pages started loading up the ingredients for a Basic white instead of a Banana and muesli loaf. Don't panic, consult the oracle and she says there is a way round it so it gets raisins and hazelnuts instead of banana chips and muesli. Then the technical bit and take a breather while the machine does it stuff.

Meanwhile our oracle visits the kitchen and notes that, owing to a clumsy layout of the instructions, a Bake option has been selected instead of Bake raisin. More consultation. She decides to listen out for a pause in the kneading phase and tip in the nuts and raisins at a, probably, sub optimal moment. The opportunity arises, nuts etc go in and a lovely baking smells come out of the kitchen a few hours later.

Now dear reader, do I detect some scepticism about the result?? Disaster in your mind? Shame on you!





Just look at it. It has a nice crust, slightly sweet taste, dense texture. Just right for breakfast. Can you smell it?

Piece of cake...er ... bread.

2 comments:

Simon Baty said...

Looks lovely! You've even managed to avoid the nuts and raisins all sinking to the bottom - they look very nice and evenly spread. What sort of loaf will you be doing next (could be a whole genre of posts in its own right!)? I'm looking forward to trying one for myself when we come back to the UK in June...

Anonymous said...

Well, I have had trouble muscling in as you know, but Mum has made a basic white, a wholemeal loaf and what they call a Ciabata, at the rate of one a week. Mine was a sort of Raisin and hazlenut loaf. They have all been very nice, large and chewy. Using the instructions carefully is an advantage!