Monday 6 February 2012

A Bread Making Beginning

When I started this blog I had high hopes of a flurry of breadmaking. But the reality of the entity that is yeast proved to be harder than I had imagined.

Even my first attempts at a basic white loaf failed. Looking back I was, as ever, too impatient. I jumped straight to using a dough hook on my mum's vintage Kenwood. My dough smelt good, rose dutifully, but failed to hold it's shape at the 'shaping' stage. I made a number of tasty cowpats that erred on the side of being chewy, and avoided by my kids.

Despite these failures I ventured on to sourdough. As any sourdough bread maker will know, sourdough is a looser dough. So the fact I couldn't shape a basic dough didn't bode well for sourdough.

Then at Christmas I asked for 'Bread: The River Cottage Handbook No.3' and decided to take myself back to basics and learn to make a loaf by hand.

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