I left the previous post at lunchtime of the Phoenix Bakery’s excellent Monday Baking School, with Jean and me enjoying our pizzas.
Much refreshed, we rejoined Aidan Chapman in the bakery, where our beetroot and spring onion loaves had now proved. Here Aidan is demonstrating how they should feel when they’re ready for the oven:
Posted in Cooking
Tagged Aidan Chapman, beetroot bread, focaccia, grignette, grissini, lame, Monday Baking School, Phoenix Bakery, soda bread, sourdough, Sourdough bread, Weymouth
Ever since the Cake and Bake Show, when we saw Aidan Chapman demonstrating his sourdough techniques, we’ve been looking forward to attending one of his courses.
Monday Baking School is held on the last Monday of every month. We had high hopes, but Aidan exceeded all our expectations. It was superb. Twenty four hours later, we’re still both buzzing.
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Posted in Cooking
Tagged Aidan Chapman, Breadmaking, focaccia, Monday Baking School, Phoenix Bakery, sourdough, sourdough pizza
The rain was lashing down this morning, so the chickens got to stay in their covered run until the day cheered up a bit. But we fulfilled a long-held plan, and visited St Albans Farmers Market, where we sought out Messrs Samphire, who specialise in rare breed free-range pork.
A very wet but welcoming St Albans Farmers Market
Samphire not only make delectable pork pies and sausages (which I have ambitions to emulate), but they also run a scheme called My Little Porkie whereby you adopt a piglet and commit to buy the meat once it’s fully grown.
So in around 6 months we’ll be taking delivery of forty kilos or more of rare breed pork. Meanwhile we’ll be able to follow the progress of our own pig as it grows to maturity. I’d love to rear a pig myself, but I have a suspicion that the council allotments officer would take serious exception.
Posted in Allotments, Cooking
Tagged adopt a pig, My Little Porkie, pork pies, rare breed pork, Samphire Shop, sausages
My previous post told the story of how much we enjoyed the demonstrations at the Cake and Bake Show, to which we’d won tickets via lovefood.com.
This post is more of a miscellany of things that caught our eye as we went round. Although we’re not skilled cakemakers, the really beautiful stands displayed the high skills of the cake decorating world.
We won a pair of tickets to the Cake and Bake Show at Earls Court, courtesy of Andrew Webb, editor of the very wonderful lovefood.com.
We weren’t at all sure of what the show would be like. We’re enthusiastic breadmakers and I’m (perhaps too) fond of pies, but cakes aren’t our forte. We needn’t have worried. It was great. In fact, one day wasn’t nearly enough to see all that we wanted and to attend all of the demonstrations that we would have liked.
Plus, to add a dash of celebrity to the proceedings, the contestants from The Great British Bake Off were there.
Well, probably not Cornish Pasties, merely Pasties, now that they have European PGI status. But you know what I mean.
First, an admission. I’ve never been able to make a palatable Cornish Pasty by following the traditional recipes. That’s partly because I’m a poor pastry cook. Maybe I just don’t have the touch; my pastry always larks sparkle. But I now realise that it’s partly because the recipes just don’t work. But this was a success:
Posted in Cooking
Tagged Cornish pasty, pasty, pasty recipe that works, The Rev Counter
What with the bacon curing and branching out into salt beef, a new gadget was called for!
… is, of course, good bacon. We’re now curing our third piece, and it’s been a big success.
Posted in Cooking
Tagged cured silverside, home cured bacon, salt beef, streaky bacon
The next experiment is making some home-cured bacon. I’ve sent away for some dry cure and wet cure salts. I bought a nice piece of belly pork, removed the few little ribs from it, and trimmed the skin, then rubbed it with a dry cure formulation. Here it is, newly salted.
In about a week, we should have a nice piece of streaky bacon, ready for Sunday brunch with our own fresh eggs. Or not. Watch this space!
Over the Christmas hols, we watched The Great British Bake-Off on iPlayer and were very charmed by it. Having no television, we rarely watch anything retrospectively, and certainly not a whole series. But something about this appealed. So (of course) I bought the book – Mary Berry’s Baking Bible.
I make good bread, but, as I’ve remarked before, my cake and pastry making is normally dismal. Maybe things will now take a turn for the better. Jean is very fond of seed cake, so I made one, although not before checking that it was a really simple recipe:
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