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Last weekend N and I did some baking. We baked two loaves of white bread and a focaccia, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt crystals and chopped rosemary from the garden.
The dog tried to take a bite from each at different moments throughout the afternoon and evening. We only lost of tiny bit of crust – thankfully!
We used a white bread recipe from Darina Allen’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking and a focaccia recipe from River Cottage Everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
On Sunday, we enjoyed the sunshine, walked the dog, and pottered in the garden. I did a bit of weeding, and helped N make a run for Lovage and Daisy’s hutch – it’s so smart and they now have much more room. Happy bunnies.
Late afternoon we sat and watched the rugby and ate hunks of homebaked bread spread thickly with goat’s butter and raspberry jam.
It has been months since N baked homemade bread, but last night, prompted by a cube of fresh yeast, he got baking again. There was a near disaster at first, when the bread didn’t rise. We think it’s because the recipe we were following (find it here) called for dry yeast and we used fresh. On searching the internet I found out you need to use a lot more fresh yeast than dried…so while N started a fresh batch, I searched to find out if we could rescue the original batch. Turns out you can, thanks to those helpful people on the Jamie Oliver forums.
We ended up with two delicious loaves rather than one, neither of which were disastrous, and in fact were probably the best loaves we’ve made. We followed the recipe, misting the oven with water and the loaves before popping them in to bake. It produced the most fantastic crust, so we’ll definitely be using that technique again.
So, there you have it – my favourite meal…ever: still warm homemade bread smeared (generously, of course) with lightly salted farmhouse butter. Mmmmm mm.
*Note: we used white bread flour and didn’t follow the rye flour coating.
Eat the Earth 
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