Bread

Without really realising it, I have got to the point where I am baking almost all the bread that our family eats, which, for a gluten intolerant girl, is rather a feat!

I originally came to the process of kneading the dough from a potter's point of view - to mix the clay and to remove air bubbles. In more recent times I have used my beloved bright red Kitchenaid mixer to do the kneading as it helped to save time.

So it was a very different experience for me when, on Sunday night due to a power outage, I hand kneaded the dough using the technique described in the River Cottage Handbook No.3 Bread, by Daniel Stevens.

It's brilliant. And, after leaving the dough in the fridge for the night as well which helped to develop a more mature flavour (and also helps break down the gluten to make it easier to digest), I found the resulting texture of the flatbread to be far superior to the bread I have made in the past.

Ah, yes, flatbread. My family's new passion. It is definitely a more time intensive process but the resulting bread gets quickly gobbled up. And, even though my oven is now working again thanks to two new elements, I will be continuing the flatbread baking for some time to come.

Yum!

Sam xx

No more buns for this oven!

On afternoon Friday I was super organised - fruity beef casserole prepared and in the oven, three lots of bread ingredients measured and ready to go, one already mixed, kneaded and rising, and the potatoes for the mash washed and ready to cook.

Right. It's just after 5, the casserole should be bubbling away nicely. Let's just check it to see how it's doing.......except, it's not. Doing anything. It's just sitting there and hasn't cooked!

Hmmmmm. Don't panic. Yet. Check the dials. No, they are set to the right positions. Has there been a power failure? Of course not - the clock is still working.

Oh.

My oven is dead!

Okay. Decant casserole into slow cooker for dinner tomorrow night (it was yummo, by the way!). Rustle up carbonara for tonight. But what about the bread?

Wait a minute! Why not flatbread, a la River Cottage bread man? Remember that little book I referred to in this post? It's the River Cottage Bread Handbook which I have lovingly read. It's very thorough and I have been using some of his techniques but not yet his recipes. Time for more technique - flatbread technique!

And the technique, you can see, is rather simple. We set up a production line and, in the end, Miss M was running the show (with supervision on the side from me, of course. She is only 5, after all!).

We had hot flatbread for breakfast - with butter and honey. Yum! Flatbread for lunch - did you know it turns into pockets like pita bread? Ours did, anyway.

Double Yum!

I'll be making more flatbread tomorrow morning, too, while I prepare for discussions with Mr Ovenfixitman. However, while we may have stove-top bread, it seems unlikely that there are any more buns for this oven! Ha!

Sam xx

P.S. I hope, if you are from WA, that you had a great Western Australia Day holiday today, and a fabulous long weekend. We went camping. More on that tomorrow. After I get some sleep!!