J has two volumes of a cookery book published in 1901 that belonged to her grandmother. Fascinating reading - “The past is a foreign country” really takes on meaning looking through this. So - suggestions for your next dinner party of family meal menu. Three courses, of course: Fish - Cold salmon [...]
Several weeks ago I shared a recipe for making tasty basic sourdough bread. Over Christmas and the New Year I have been experimenting and have amended the recipe with a few minor tweaks and suggestions. The revised method can be found at the following link: https://sparroworks.ca/sourdough-bread-basics/
Friends have asked and I have been working hard on the methodology as well as doing a course at a pro-bakery. As a result I have revised some old material about making basic and tasty sourdough bread at home. If a simple way to make tasty sourdough breads interests you then you can find [...]
Recipe Recipes are not the usual focus (dare I say bread and butter?) of this journal, and when they do appear they are almost always something to do with breads. This is a new one that is so successful I thought others might like to try it. The basic recipe came from the [...]
Really good fruit bread Time for another bread recipe. Some while back I shared a recipe for sourdough Cranbuck Bread ... but it's now got even better after some modifications to the recipe. This bread was created to minimise the FODMAP content of the loaf for people with a wheat intolerance. It's not gluten [...]
A quite delicious “new” bread for eating with cheese and toasted for breakfast with honey and fruit jams. Also excellent with plenty of butter for tea. A couple of months ago I posted some notes on an excellent bread recipe I had worked out that tastes very nice and complex, is easy to make [...]
We are in the depths of winter hereabouts so we are wandering off on a parallel path this week to talk about bread instead of gardens. The garden is under a couple of feet of snow and ice and there’s only so much you can say about feeder-birds to engage one’s audience. When I [...]
A Seasonal Service for our Friends That title is perhaps not entirely honest as the shrubs in question are not quite what you were expecting if you come here for gardening news. However, the Winter Solstice approaches, followed by Christmas and the New Year with all the jollifications those three dates imply … and [...]
In England last week I happened across a book for sourdough bread bakers ("Do Sourdough - Slow Bread for Busy Lives" by Andrew Whitley who runs, quote, one of Britain's leading organic bakeries). What's nice about it is that the methods are born of real life commercial practice with a healthy leavening of serious science [...]
I read in the (Observer on-line) newspaper that "Sourdough-production is one of those kitchen routines that's somehow life-affirming and transformative" and also that, compared to mass-produced pap, "Sourdough, by contrast, is bread with immense character, with presence – bread with a point. And that's why I think you might want to have a go at [...]