My New Year Bread Confession

I don't do New Year, as previous rants will demonstrate, but advancing age is perhaps mellowing me. I do understand the benefit of having a time for taking stock and reflecting. 

So what of my own stock-taking? 

Well, I have a confession: since November I have not only failed to make bread, I have on at least a few occasions bought bread from a supermarket. Moreover I have wasted part-loaves when they have collapsed in heaps of cotton wool crumbs beneath my bread knife, and I have then complained bitterly about it. 

So why this hypocritical bread-buying from the man who rails against the quality and nutritional value of factory made loaves?

In short, I have been guilty of not taking my own advice. Life's events since November meant that our routines were turned upside down and we were left trotting along in their wake trying to keep up. Rather than adapt my breadmaking routine to suit (which is what I tell people is the simple thing to do) I got cross with life and allowed sourdough cultures languish and gave Tesco my hard earned money in exchange for the crap they purport to be bread. 

Getting back to reflection and lines-in-the-sand, last week was mine. I stood staring down at the collapsed remains of a loaf that refused to be sliced owing to the almost complete absence of any gluten structure and proclaimed enough is enough. As a friend of mine likes to say, I gave my head a wobble and got baking. 

So these two small loaves - baked using the simple sponge and dough method - are my way of saying just because you can't bake the best of breads (and sourdough is definitely the best), you can always bake bread that is better than that which you buy in the supermaket. 

And this is also my way of saying, if you do go in for New Year as a time of reflection, give your own head a wobble and make 2015 a good year with great bread in it. 

The Family Holiday: A Rite of Passage for New Grandparents

When our twin boys were babies we were struggling for money and sanity; so our parents took us for a break  to North Wales. Their parents had done it for them when they needed it. This last week we passed on the same gift and had a week together in a beautiful Welsh cottage.

We are fairly new grandparents with a baby granddaughter and a five-years old grandson who came with his mum into our lives a few years ago.

Since our own sons became adults we've moved on a bit. We like our home when there's only us and the dogs in it. The funny thing is we've never really thought about how they live: that's their world and we only glimpse it when we help out. But being cheek by jowl with each other thrust their lives right in front of us in a way I wasn't quite ready for.

I'm a reasonable man, but how hard is it to move a nappy after you've changed it, or pick up the towels, or wash the baby's used bottle after a feed?

Then there' s breakfast.  I get up early, have a quiet breakfast with a fresh coffee and a read. So at 7.00 am when five-years-old Austin bowls into the kitchen full of fizz that by rights should have taken hours to build up I can be forgiven for it grating a little. Can't I?

'Grandad, do you know?...' He says. There follows a richly detailed description of which Power Ranger is best and why. Then the telly goes on - seriously, at that time in the morning!

Just as my umbrage is gathering steam and I'm building up to a righteously indignant but pointless inner  rant, another voice, one with an accusing tone, whispers unbidden in my ear:

'Have you really forgotten? Can you not remember how glad of the telly you were to occupy the boys when they were little? Can you not remember how grateful you were to your parents for that trip to Wales that you would otherwise not have had? Did you ever wonder how chaotic your own struggles to manage twin babies might have looked to other people?'

I had forgotten some things: how much fun cricket on the beach is, or splashing in the waves, or just listening to the innocence of children's chatter. So at 7.45 am each day I sat and watched Milkshake, and had it all explained to me in great detail. And it was great.

Arriving home at weekend it all seemed very quiet, or was it peaceful? I was exhausted but very happy to have been able to do it, and looking forward to when the grandkids have their next sleepover.  

 

 

Blog

In January 2007 I had my heel removed, realigned and reattached with a Titanium screw. It was encased in plaster and I was left with almost four months to discover what life was like for people who are housebound. My hospitalisation and encarcerationgave me a rich seam of experience that itched for want of someone to share my thoughts with. 

I started this blog and inadvertently, and by increments, became an avid user and consumer of a range of social media. 

Reading back over my posts now is like finding an old diary or sketch book. I smiled at memories of funny and interesting things that populated my life for the years I blogged regularly. Yes, years. My blogging continued well after my recovery, and actually for a while became part of my job. I wrote my boss's blog and advised others on blogging. 

The nature of social media is that it never rests - constantly churning and evolving to meet the changing whims of an audience addicted to easy fixes of information (or does that framing betray my getting older and ever so slightly out-of-touch?). I lost interest in my blog - it took time to craft a piece of writing and seconds to Tweet.

Social media is now an integral part of the communications industry, every business or organisation must be accessible by a range of channels. 

So where does that slick professionalisation leave my little blog? Does it matter that sometimes only half-a-dozen people read what I had written - was it worth all that effort?

Even now, years after I shared my various and sundry experiences, someone living 10 or 10, 000 miles away will occasionally pop a comment on one of my posts to say they had stumbled across it in a Google search and my experience resonated with their own. 

Hooray for the Internet that gives us the freedom to express ourselves, like any heart wrenching, hand written journal entry, yet allows each of us to reach out to, who knows where, and who knows who.

With possibly more time on my hands to come perhaps the time is right to reacquaint myself with Crofty's Blog. 

Sourdough at the Handmade Bakery

I don't mind admitting I'm a bread geek. Baking bread, for me, is far more than the simple combination of ingredients to form what, on the face of it, is a basic foodstuff

So you will understand why I was looking forward to my course with Dan and Johanna McTiernan at The Handmade Bakery in West Yorkshire. The course set out to dispel the myths that surround sourdough baking and that make it sound so difficult. If you've read my blog before you will know that sourdough is easy.

What I was hoping from the course was more about the pleasure of baking in a commercially run bakery with a really passionate expert. I wasn't disappointed.

Dan and Johanna weave practical baking craft with, what for me, is the heart of bread making, the social challenge of producing sustainable, local food. I couldn't help thinking though that in the case of our course he was preaching to the converted. Most of us arrived at Dan's back door because we already knew that his and Johanna's views resonated with our own. And yes, it was great to be among fellow geeks sharing pleasure in the deck ovens and the baking rotas on the walls, And it was great to ask bread-head questions and not be thought nerdy, but the challenge for all of us who feel this way about bread is to show people who probably would not usually access Dan's excellent courses that good food is a right, not a privilege.

The second challenge is to show people that they can afford really good bread by making it themselves - it's easy. 

I think though that our evangelising about real bread does not help. My colleagues sum it up when they say: 

'Crofty's bread's lovely, but I wish he wouldn't go on about it so much.' 

That then, is the answer. Let the bread do the talking. 

I heartily recommend anyone who is interested in bread to consider a course at The Handmade Bakery with Dan and Johanna - you will not be disappointed. If you do not want to become a bread geek like me, and aren't, for example,interested in where Dan got his ovens (a Greggs bakery, second hand, I loved his comment - 'it was like rescuing a battery hen'), you will come away with armfuls of absolutely delicious bread, and the means to make it for yourself.

Here's what I made. 

If you want to know more about real bread and why it is important check the Real Bread Campaign website here. 



Sourdough - The (not so) Secret

Culturing sourdough is easy, so why does much of the advice about it sound like a cross between necromancy and alchemy?

Why does sourdough seem so difficult?

Most amateur bakers have their own bread-bible for guidance, mine is Andrew Whiteley's Bread Matters, Dan Leopard's True Loaf is another, the sourdough starter recipes are consistently simple, here's one:

Some organic wholemeal Rye Flour
Some water
Nature (or science if you prefer)

If you think I'm being flippant I apologise. In truth I struggled to get a starter going at first but the reasons were simple.

Let's go back to the recipe and consider each ingredient:

Organic wholemeal rye flour -sourdough relies on natural yeasts in the air and flour to give it life. Therefore the freer your flour is from artificial messing about the better chance you have of seeing some life from it.

Water - again the cleaner and purer the better, if your tap water doesn't have chlorine in it all the better (chlorine's there to kill bugs, we want to encourage them). Our water is chlorinated - it still works ok.

Nature (or science) - yeasts multiply best between 28-32 degrees centigrade (apparently).

This was where my error lay. Time after time I'd mix a gloopy slop and wait for bubbles to form, sniffing tentatively and hoping for that tell-tale fruity tang that let's you know the yeasty blighters are reproducing.

Again and again it either dried up or went mouldy.

I returned to bread- guru Whiteley's advice and it struck me: consistent temperature.

I set about searching for a consistently warm place, but with no hot water tank, drew a blank.

Then I had a eureka moment: this was very similar to brewing. I investigated a variety of brewer's heat pads, which all looked promising. Then I remembered my mum-in-law's arthritis. All that remained was to whip the fleecy heating pad from her feeble grip and we were set.

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c54102/x2_1c9bf1d

It works a treat.

What? Her arthritis?... Err...

Anyway I have had a sourdough going for months now. So long as I use it and refresh it once a week, replacing old with new each time, it delivers vigorous, bubbly life to my loaves every time.

(The only secret is to make sure the Moon is in Gemini when you start your culture; that and the naked goat-dance in the garden.)
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Easter Stained Glass

The stained glass in our church was created by the renowned Brussels glass painter Carpronnier. Our church must have attracted some wealthy Victorian patrons - there is a wealth of high-quality art like this that we certainly couldn't afford today! The detail on these pictures is from three windows in the same triptych in the East wall depicting Christ carrying his cross, crucified and his body being removed.

I always wonder whose faces the artust chose for the figures. Would have been quite something to think your face would be gazed upon almost 150 years later. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Snow and the British Motorist - A Rant By Crofty

Click here to download:

car in snow (44 KB)

The thing I like about posting blog stuff by Posterous is that you can pretend you are simply sending an e-mail to a good friend, the sort of friend who wouldn't mind if you had a good old whine and, you know, let rip about something that was really getting on your tits.

Take, for instance the snow. This is not a snow-moan - there has been enough of those. My message to anyone who moans out loud about the snow is this: WE ALL HAVE THE SAME WHITE STUFF. IT BUGS THE SHIT OUT OF ALL OF US, NOW GET ON WITH LIFE DESPITE THE SNOW LIKE THE REST OF US.

That wasn't my rant.

My rant is about car drivers, sorry, that's not fair. Some of you (I include myself in this category) are quite good. You slow down or move aside for a pedestrian who, due to three feet of snow on the footpath, finds it safer to walk at the edge of the clearer road. No, this rant is about the rest of you idiots who seem to think that once you climb inside your metal cocoon you are only governed by the bits of the Highway Code you can remember from when you passed your test, probably thirty of forty years ago, oh except of course you didn't read the bit about pedestrians having right of way and being rather more vulnerable - due to their lack of a metal box protecting them.

These motorists seem to have separated their behaviour from things like 'good manners' or 'common decency' to a kind of arrogance that transcends gender, race, sexuality and binds them together in a one-worldliness based around a common value of behaving like an arsehole.

So, if you were the man whose wing mirror clipped me as I trudged wearily through the snow to work the other morning and thought that shouting at me in a loud voice questioning why I was walking in the road (duh!), and who I shamefacedly admit got the brunt of some rather ungentlemanly ripostes on my part, if you are that man, this is for you.
I appeal to the British public at large to seek new role models of motoring that are not modelled on Mr Toad in Tales Of The Riverbank and whose response to pedestrians was to bawl "Get out of my way!", or role models that don't aspire to the epitome of masculine arrogance Jeremy Clarkson who seems to be breeding arrogance of a scale that rides roughshod (or should that be drives in some sort of four wheel drive monster truck) over any semblance of an idea that the idea of the internal combustion engine doesn't equate somehow to a deity, preventing us from considering that life might, some day, actually continue without motor cars.

There now, that's better, thanks Posterous.

PS The superb image is from Flickr, here's the link:

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