Baking Bread, and Household Hints

Bara Hafod

A lot of "my" writers bake their own bread. Here is Elizabeth West's recipe, from Garden in the Hills.

"Put into a jug: 4 rounded teaspoonfuls of dried yeast, 3 rounded teaspoonfuls of sugar and about 1/4 of lukewarm water. Give it a stir around, cover with a cloth, and put to one side. Whilst you are waiting for the yeast to get working, weigh up 2 lb of flour - either wholemeal or plain white, or a mixture (I usually mix 11/2 wholemeal with 1/2 white). Put this into a mixing bowl. Sprinkle into flour a teaspoonful of salt. Mix well. Grease and flour two 1-lb bread tins. 

Now go and look at your yeast in the jug. It should be at least a quarter way up the jug, frothing and bubbling.  If it's not, then it's probably due to the yeast being stale - not necessarily your fault, I have found stale yeast in a newly opened tin - so give it a bit longer. In fact, go and do something else for ten minutes. If it is still the same when you come back, never mind. Carry on and use it. It just means that your bread won't rise quite so well. 

Make up the contents of the jug to about one pint with lukewarm water, and pour this into your flour. Using the right hand only (it's just as well to keep one hand clean) work the mixture around, squeezing and kneading between your fingers. After a while it should be one moist, pliable lump in the middle of your bowl, with no flour sticking to the sides. If it feels to dry, add some more lukewarm water. If, on the other hand, it is all sticky and wet, add some more flour. Divide the dough into equal pieces and put into your tins. Put the tins to one side, cover with a cloth and leave for about one hour. The dough should rise to the top of the tins (leave for longer if necessary). Put bread into a moderately hot oven for about 40 minutes. By this time you should be able to "bounce" them out of their tins (if they won't come out easily, slip a knife around their sides). I then usually put the loaves back into the oven, upside down, in order to get them crisp all over.

Please note that none of these measurements is critical. I have written down what I do. Alan doesn't measure anything. He simply throws in what he thinks looks right. Don't take any notice of instructions to "put it in a warm place to rise". You are more likely to put it into too warm a place. The temperature of the room in which you are working is quite adequate."

I notice there is very little kneading and only one rise, making it a simple recipe. During lockdown I made a similar "no-knead bread", which was OK, but I had to have my oven on, on its highest setting, for an hour, which I felt was using way to much energy for one small loaf. Besides, unlike Elizabeth West, there are many shops where I can buy bread near my home. Her telling us to knead with one hand reminds me of a friend who went to domestic science school in the sixties. She used to say that the one thing she remembered being taught was: always knead with one hand only, because the telephone might ring.

Household hints

Louise Dickinson Rich (whose We took to the Woods will be covered in a future post) tells us exactly how she butchers and preserves deer meat, which I guess not many of us will get a chance to do.  But she has two tips which I thought worth sharing:

- .... a pane of window glass which I put over my open cook book. I'm a messy cook, splashing flour and milk and batter and egg yolk all over the table. If they splash on the book, the pages will stick together and you can't use that recipe again, as I have found to my sorrow. If they splash on the glass, that's all right. Glass washes. 

- .... a way to crumb fish or croquettes or cutlets or what-have-you easily and quickly. I put my crumbs or flour in a paper bag, drop in the object to be crumbed, close the bag and shake violently. This does not sound like much of an invention but it saves an awful lot of mess. When you're through you have nothing to clean up. You just shove the paper bag into the stove and burn up the scanty leavings.

I'm going to try the crumbing in a bag. I usually use a plate and end up with my fingers coated in egg and crumbs, looking like they are ready to be fried too.