Sourdough Spelt Baguettes

Crispy crust, chewy sourdough middle, delicious! (Though I say so myself).

Ingredients:

7g salt
125g strong white bread flour
250g spelt flour
250g sourdough starter
180-220ml water
Olive oil, for kneading

1. Mix salt, flours and starter together in a large bowl.
2. Slowly add water - starting with 180ml, and gradually kneading in additional water until you have a slack dough - it will be quite sticky.
3. Turn dough out onto an oiled surface (do not add extra flour, it will make the dough act most peculiarly) or into the oiled bowl of a freestanding mixer.
4. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic.
5. Cover the dough and leave in a warm place to prove for 5 to 6 hours, until the dough is doubled in size.
6. Shape the loaves - on an oiled surface divide the dough into 3 parts. Each should weigh about 275g (more important than the exact weight is similar size). Roll the dough gently into sausage shapes.
7. Transfer the loaves carefully to a floured, linen, tea-towel or baker's couche, pleating the cloth to stop the baguettes touching.
8. Leave the loaves to prove for 12-18 hour. A longer, slower rise (ie in a cooler place) will give a more sour dough. Beware of leaving the loaves too long at a warmer temperature as they may rise well and then collapse on themselves.
9. Preheat oven to 190C. Spray the inside and bottom of the oven with water to generate steam.
10. Transfer the loaves to baking sheets lined by non-stick baking paper. Apply more water around the loaves (but not touching the loaves) to generate further steam.
11. Bake the loaves for 15-25 minutes until the bases sound hollow when tapped.

Serving suggestion: Alongside some rich tomato and chorizo tapas (recipe to follow), or just slathered with creamy British butter.

Edited to add: Never done this before, but I am entering this in: Bake Your Own Bread
And: YeastSpotting
(I hope I did that right!)

When life gives you guavas...

make guava sorbet!

I inherited an old tin of guava halves. Feeling the need for sweet, fruity goodness, my mind turned to sorbet. Unfortunately, however, Google was less than forthcoming on a recipe for guava sorbet involving the tinned kind. Seeing as I have never even seen a fresh guava, let alone tasted on, fresh guava sorbet was not going to be an option (quite aside from the fact that the tinned guavas were already staring at me)

So, as per usual This Is Not My Home protocol, I maded it up.

Ingredients:

1 tin guava halves (the 400g+ size tin - guava "shells" are probably better as they are seedless, but that's not what I had)
125ml water
62.5g granulated sugar (sorry if your scales can't weigh to 0.5 of a gram, round in whichever direction pleases you)

1. Put guava halves into a food processor (Magimix) and puree into oblivion. Set aside
2. Put sugar and water into a small but substantial pan. Bring to the boil, stiring constantly until the sugar has dissolved, then stop. Boil the sugar syrup for 5 minutes - do not leave it unsupervised and keep pets and children away. Leave the syrup to cool.
3. Sieve the pips out of the guava puree - really push it through the sieve with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula. You want as much puree as you can without actually grating the seeds through.
4. Mix the puree with the cooled sugar syrup.
5. Pour the guava puree into an ice-cream maker and churn until softly frozen.
6. Turn the sorbet out into a freezer-suitable container and freeze until properly frozen/required.

(In a correction to a previous statement, this is in fact the 100th post - the one before took into account unpublished posts - I read the wrong number!)

Devil's food cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago, I went to stay with Lady Pink and Lord Fisherman. Since I was brought up never to arrive empty handed, I thought a home-baked gift would be in order.
 

My local Sainsbury's sells these rather nice gift boxes, which make the whole transporting and giving of cupcakes that little bit easier.

The recipe (below) is a modernised and metricated (is that a word?) version of a 1920s recipe. I originally found the recipe online sometime ago, but cannot find any longer. They were iced with chocolate fudge icing from Mr Oliver Peyton, using an icing gun supplied by the Mission Doctor as she headed off. It is my new favourite baking thing. Pretty icing swirls, minimal mess, and very quick.

Recipe
In three parts.

Ingredients for each part are listed under each part.  

Part One
220g dark brown sugar
115g butter
3 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Cream the sugar, butter and the soda together. Beat in the egg yolks. Set aside. 


Part Two
220g dark brown sugar
240ml milk (the original recipe specifies sweet milk, just so you know)
100g dark chocolate (here the original said 2/3 cup grated chocolate. I approximated)

Put the sugar, chocolate and half of the milk in a saucepan, set over a medium heat and bring to the boil. Take from the heat and add the rest of the milk.

Mix Part One and Part Two together and set aside.  

Part Three
255g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together three times.

Add Part Three to Part One and Part Two. Mix well.

Bake at 160C for 20 minutes or until well risen and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (The original recipe just said "bake in a medium oven")

Leave to cool, then ice. And eat.

Plums

I am sure at some point I had a plum cake recipe to share with you. However, I seem to have mislaid both the recipe and the picture.

Therefore, I leave you with a picture of frozen plums in a vintage dish.

New Beginnings

 The hyacinths are blooming (and releasing a fragrance that can be detected 3 rooms away!)

 A quilt has been begun.

 An apple tree is growing.

And a new sourdough starter is breeding (oh, yes, it's time for Return of the Sourdough.)

In other news, this is the one hundreth post.

Hiatus

Beckie is revising.

That is all.

Normal service may be resumed shortly.

The Latest In A Long Line of Eccentrics

I was thinking today about how I am the latest in a long family line of eccentrics. My grandfather, for example, used to think that a double-barrelled shotgun down a mole-hill was a good mole-control technique. My grandmother sent my brother and I out with pickled onions to put down mole-hills, also to deter them. She also used to share around the chocolates whilst we watched television by clutching the box and throwing them at you like grenades during advert breaks. My parents are still alive so I shall not embarrass them by any details.

Today I had a half holiday. Instead of lounging around watching television (which would be tricky since I have no (working) television,) I picked rosehips to make rosehip syrup. Blame Wartime Farm for making me think of this!

I used the recipe from Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables, first published 1929, the copy I was using is the second impression of the thirteenth edition, from 1979.

I like how rose hips look. Like red jewels.
The recipe below is half of what is actually documented in the book, as I only managed 1 lb of rose hips after 1 hours picking!

"Ingredients:
1 lb ripe rose hips
1/2 lb sugar
2+1/4 pints water

The following method is recommended if a syrup with a high vitamin C content is required.

 Extracting the juice
Have ready 1+1/2 pt boiling water, preferably in an aluminium (I wouldn't use aluminium pans personally due to possible health scares around these) or unchipped enamel pan. Mince the rose hips in a coarse mincer (I used a food processor/magimix),

 place them immediately in boiling water and bring this again to the boil. As soon as it re-boils remove the pan from the heat and leave it for 15 min, then pour into a scalded jelly bag and allow the bulk of the juice to drip through. Return the pulp to the saucepan, add 3/4 pt boiling water, re-boil and allow it to stand without further heating for another 10 min, then strain as before.

Adding the Sugar
Pour the juice into a clean saucepan, and boil it down until it measures about 3/4 pt, then add 1/2 lb sugar and boil for a further 5 min.

Bottling and Processing the Syrup
Pour the syrup while it is hot into clean, hot bottles and seal at once. (I put it into yogurt pots and freeze it and defrost what I need each time - once opened it only keeps for a week or two in the fridge)

Why don't you join me in my Land-Girl eccentricity?

Two weekends inspired by Mr Peyton

The first: chocolate swirl buns. Mr Peyton's sweet bun dough, with the addition of 25g of dark cocoa powder (and 25% less yeast, as I use fast action dried, and he uses regular dried). Rolled out flat, spread with Mr Peyton's pastry cream recipe (surprisingly easy) and chopped chocolate. Rolled up like a swiss roll, cut into slices. Baked.

The second: English muffins. These are three batches in the making. The first had WAY too much yeast (sorry Mr Peyton, but they were disgustingly bitter) - the second had the perfect quantity of yeast, but I hadn't quite got the hang of cooking on a cast iron skillet. This, the third batch are mine. All mine. Sorry!

So thank you Mr Peyton!

The Privilege We Have

For a seasoned (sinful) worrier, such as me, this hymn holds great balm and sober reminders laced into its lines.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge;
take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield thee;
thou wilt find a solace there.

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised
Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing
all to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright unclouded
there will be no need for prayer
Rapture, praise and endless worship
will be our sweet portion there.

Joseph Medlicott Scriven


Oh may we bring all to Him in prayer.

A New Name (book review)

Dedicated readers of my blog (all four of you) have probably noticed "A New Name" in my blog reel/side-bar. I forget how I came to be a regular reader, but I am so grateful that I did. Emma writes honestly about her own struggles yet still points faithfully to Jesus. She is one of the best Christian writers I have ever (not quite yet) met.

Emma has written a book by the same title. It is subtitled "grace and healing for anorexia," which substantially underestimates it. Emma boldly and bravely explains her own struggle with anorexia, walking us through her testimony, through her childhood in a non-Christian family, battling with anorexia and OCD as a teenager, then through a relative honeymoon period to her second struggle with anorexia as an adult. We see snippets of her life, enough to understands the depths of her brokenness, but not so much that it feels intrusive or voyeuristic. More than this, woven delicately and beautifully through are the lessons she has learned, the wisdom she has gleaned, and the encouragement to find our own grace and healing.

Mental health problems (not just anorexia) will affect 1 in 3 of us personally. Contrary to the damaging things I have heard, Christians are not exempt from this. Both in the church and out of it, mental health is still a massive taboo. Emma boldly steps out and raises her hand to say, "twice in my life I've had anorexia that nearly killed me." And it is her willingness to tell her story and to be real in such a public way that makes her book so powerful. You see, it's not just her story, it's all part of the story that Jesus is writing. As she explains, "Jesus Christ calls himself a Doctor for sick sinners. And I am both. I'm sick - helpless in the face of a condition that overpowers me. I'm also a sinner - deliberately choosing my way over his. Despite this, he loves me just the same. So this is not just 'my' story. It's the story of his work in my life" (p15-16 A New Name, Emma Scrivener, IVP, 2012.)

It is precisely because it is more than just her story that I would so heartily recommend this book. Her description of her character with its foibles and flaws laid bare, her gentle tone, her advice and reflections will ring bells with all of us. Her appeal to us to put aside our shame, to be real, is a challenge to our hearts. If more of us take her lead, and own up to being the wounded, vulnerable, damaged sinners that we all are, I feel certain the church will be the body that the Lord intended it to be. Whether or not you have experience of anorexia, or mental health problems, Emma's book is an excellent read, well-written, with appropriate moments of humour and sobriety. Read it!