Sourdough loaf with Sussex Magister Wheat

I tried a different variety of wheat in my sourdough loaf yesterday and it made a surprising difference to the crumb and lightness of the loaf. I usually buy wheat grain from the local windmill at Heage but the milling had to stop due to wet rot in the main beam thingy so I lost my grain supply. The good news is that after much fundraising the windmill now has it's sails back on and is back in action. In the meantime I bought wheat grain from Imbhams when I ordered spelt grain and maize so have a different variety to bake from. I'm not sure where Heage windmill source their grain from but it is definitely not the Sussex Magister wheat that I used yesterday. This has a much darker reddish colour and the dough was more springy and stretchy, whereas the Heage grain made a more rustic loaf with a greater depth of flavour. That is not to say that my new grain has no flavour, it is just lighter and more subtle (and just as delicious).

If only a photo could convey the heavenly smell and taste of a sourdough loaf

Whilst researching Heage Windmill for this post I saw that there was a classic motor bike event today so we picked an interlude between the showers and went for a look. It was a small but friendly show with much shiny chrome and classic bikes coming and going and roaring up and down the lane.  It was marvellous to see the windmill sails whipping round in the wind and of course it was quite essential to buy a bag of flour :)

Baby hats and bootees

More hats and bootees.........I'm on a roll. More babies are due and I'm really getting the hang of baby bits and pieces and am trying a few variations. This time I've used 'Vintage Pearl Baby Hat' pattern found on www.hopefulhoney.com. I looked at adding pearls, but I wasn't sure that it would be worth the effort as the hats have a vintage charm without.

Crochet flower brooch

Another quick holiday crochet effort. This time it's a flowery brooch. Inspired from 'Crocheted Flowers' by Jan Ollis, I adapted the antique rose pattern to match the yarn and fabric available (yarn left over from a hat, and organza from a bunch of flowers) to make this pretty brooch. It was a bit fiddly, but I was pleased with the final result.

Baby crochet

Crochet is such a portable craft and baby items are perfect for being small and achievable things to complete on a holiday. Combine this with a plethora of babies and it makes a homemade gift for a new baby very do-able. Hence the following array of hats, bootees and bear. 

Credit where credit is due; the lilac hat and all bootees were based on a pattern from loopy love. The delightful boy hat is from LisaAuch.com. The bear from Crochet Now issue 2  and is the kit from the magazine.

More speed baking and a cake disaster

It's a beautiful day so am trying to get the baking out of the way so that I can go out to play in the sunshine. The sourdough loaf was started last night and left in the fridge overnight to continue to prove slowly. It's starting to get a little too warm to leave it out in the kitchen overnight, although it might have been ok last night as there was quite a hard frost this morning. Anyway, the bread has been baked and is cooling nicely in a bread bag. Sadly, my cake hasn't been quite so successful and might be a complete disaster. We were eating breakfast whilst it was cooking and I could see a bit of a bluish haze in the room; a CAKE BURNING sort of blue haze. The problem is that I decided to use the microwave as a convection oven and it has a bit of a fierce heat from the top of the oven and I didn't think to put some foil over the cake until it was too late *sigh*. The marzipan and mincemeat cake has finished cooking and it is not looking at all appetizing. I'm not giving up on it yet - the top can be sliced off and the whole cake turned upside down. If it tastes burned it will go in the bin and I'll make another, but not yet......

Mincemeat and marzipan cake in the recipe book

My sorry effort......

After surgery 😀

Speed baking

I've not been at all organised today. We have family tea and the bread isn't going to be ready on time and the cake looks like it will be a bit warm. It's cooling by an open window in the hope that it will be set and edible by tea time. As for the bread, plan B was required. Fortunately I have some sourdough fruit bread in the freezer, very much in the Blue Peter style of "Here's one I prepared earlier". This is undergoing some defrosting on the warm oven. Whatever happens with tea, it certainly smells really nice in here. 

orange raisin flapjack

*Family tea update* The cake should have been lemon raisin flapjack but I didn't have any lemons so it became orange instead. It has a flapjack base which is cooked for 3 mins in the microwave. you leave this to cool while you make the cakey topping from eggs, sugar, raisins, melted butter and orange juice and zest. This is spread over the flapjack base then baked for about 20 mins. It was a bit soft and wobbly when it came out of the oven  but it set when it cooled. And it tasted fab😀. The bread came out nicely, but has been divided up and taken away by the kids so I'm afraid there's no photographic evidence.

The FINAL poncho push

At last it's the end of the poncho story. We have a poncho Ta da! to end all ta da's. I'm not sure I'll ever let myself be talked into making a poncho again, but they are statement items of style and beauty (even though I say this myself) and the quality of the wool really shines out. I really am quite determined that I will use good quality yarn for as many projects as possible (funds not withstanding) because it just makes the most enormous difference to the finished item. And I have two happy daughters, which is never a bad thing to say. I'm only wondering now what the other two children will request for me to make. Please, oh please, not more poncho's.

I have another tick on the things to complete list; this time it's the hat started only last week. Oh the speed I can drum up when there is a bank holiday, a lovely sunny day, a warm spot shaded from the the chilly wind and a complete disinclination to do anything other than sit and crochet in the sun. Such decadent idleness :)

A break in the torrential rain of Easter Monday tempted us out to our most local National Trust house - Hardwick Hall (more glass than wall). It's a lovely hall built in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. We had a stroll around the gardens which are just coming to life with spring flowers. It has beautiful gardens which are not enormous but are cleverly planted. I love the herb garden with it's wavy box hedges.

The homemade flour cook book

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images News / Getty Images

Blog posts seem to be a bit like buses; you don't see one for weeks and then there are half a dozen. Well, it's not quite that bad, but I've had a bit of a lull in imagination and inclination due I suspect from a rather hectic time on the barn conversion front than from any other palpable reason. Anyway, I have my baking and making mojo back, in part thanks to a new book 'The Homemade Flour Cookbook' by Erin Alderson of 'Naturally Ella' blog fame. I found a recipe for sweet potato and red lentil gnocchi on the internet which led me to this book and this evening we entertained family for tea and they were unwitting guinea pigs to a new culinary experiment of gnocchi in pesto sauce. The gnocchi are made with baked and mashed sweet potato, egg yolks, seasoning and red lentil flour. I used a mixture of red and green lentils due to a failure on the shopping front, and it made no difference except to the colour of gnocchi which should have been a bright orange colour and instead were speckled with green. The gnocchi were really quick to assemble even though I quadrupled the recipe in order to have plenty of spares to freeze for another day. I cheated with the pesto sauce and used a bought jar of pesto, although making pesto is really easy if you a) have the ingredients and b) have a food processor/blender. I really miss my  herb garden (along with a proper kitchen, most of my kitchen gadgets, a decent oven....the list goes on). Anyway, to cut a warbling story shorter, the gnocchi were very tasty and enjoyed by all. For dessert I announced that we were having 'Floating Islands'  which I made up to sound a lot more impressive than it actually was; it comprised some unsweetened lightly cooked (frozen) mixed berries with a coconut macaroon 'floating' on the top in each dish and liberally swirled with cream. The sweetness of the macaroons nicely counteracted the tartness of the berries, topped with the decadent loveliness of the thick cream. The coconut macaroons were an impromptu bake because when friend leave you home grown eggs you really don't want to waste any of it and I used 4 egg yolks for the gnocchi so a meringue type dessert was essential.  

The weekly family Sunday tea usually provides an impetus to do some baking. I don't always feel like baking and it would be really easy to buy something for tea, especially since we have a Co-op next door. However, the thought of eating (and feeding the family) on bought baked goods full of processed sugar and flour and lots of additives usually galvanises me into action.  This weekend I'm trying a sourdough fruit loaf recipe from Vanessa Kimbell  at Bakerybits. This really is a long slow fermentation as it begins with a starter levain (a small amount of sourdough, flour and water) at lunchtime on the day before you bake it and then continues with the addition of the rest of the ingredients in the evening to make the dough, and is then not baked until the following morning. I can attest to the deliciousness of the fruit loaf, toasted and buttered......mmmmm.

Well that's the 'baking' taken care of, now for some 'making'. A couple of weeks ago I was suffering from extreme poncho fatigue. The poncho was getting bigger and the rows were getting longer. Basically I was bored with it, but it needed to be finished so that I could move on to something else so I had a weeks worth of 'push' to get it done. The final flourish was a fringe for the bottom, for which I had some help. It worked so much better as a two man team, one separating the strands into bunches of 5 and the other crocheting them onto the bottom of the poncho. In no time it was done, and since it was a very late birthday present I despatched it the following day so no photo as yet. The fringe was such a success that I've now had a request to put a fringe onto the first poncho. Will they ever go away? (poncho's, not children). Of course I now have something else under way. I decided to revisit a pattern for a crocheted beret which I'd used one year for the family home made Christmas presents - girls only of course. I need a couple of quick gifts and these beret's usually turn out quite nice. The wool is a lovely Drops yarn called 'Big Delight'. It is 100% wool yet feels really soft.