Monday

Hi de hi, gentle readers.  Apologies for being a bit later.  I rather slept in and then needed to get the bread on the make for my customers.  Since I started the bread it's been - er - interesting.

Today's dough proved (no pun intended) to be a lively little number, rising very quickly, so quickly that it was trying to escape from Thermione's bowl before I went back into the kitchen.

I love the way the measuring cup looks like a hat!

Once in the proper rising bowl, it came up really quickly.  I think it was due to a warm kitchen which is not usual at this time of the day.

It also proved speedily and the wee loaves were quickly ready to go in the oven.  Sadly, the dough has risen so fast that the tops of two of the loaves have gone rather rough and 'broken open'.  The rustic look, you know!

While all that was going on, I decided to test something I read about being able to rise dough in a halogen oven.  Now, I'm not a great believer in rushing the rising process as a longer, slower rise makes for a better flavour, which is why I stopped using my breadmaker, but it was an interesting idea so . . .

Made the dough - just a small amount, right for a 1lb loaf tin, placed it in a greased Pyrex (fortunately) bowl, covered it with cling film (less fortunately) and set it off on the thaw setting.  Except that it wasn't the thaw setting, it was the other side, about 230C.  So when I came back ten minutes later, the unrisen, unproven dough was well on the way to being baked while the cling film had concreted itself to the sides of the bowl.  Argh!!!

I decided to carry on . . .

Out it came, I got the bread out of the bowl and decided I may as well carry on and finish the cooking, so I did.  The loaf it made looked rather nice but the texture inside wasn't wonderful, as one would expect.  It had risen a bit, but not much, as one would expect.

Nicer on the outside than on the inside!

So right now I have four loaves a-baking, one doughy, solid loaf  and another little batch of dough sitting in a carefully set halogen oven, gently rising (I hope, fingers crossed).

And it's only just past ten o'clock.  Phew!

Today's food:
B:  a slice of rather doughy, warm bread.  Ah, well . . .
L:  Soup and more doughy bread.  Can't waste it.
D:  Leftovers from yesterday so a chickpea and vegetable mixture, assorted veg and a roastie (from the freezer), yogurt.