Obsessive? moi?
When we first got back to the UK I had great difficulty getting used to the bread. It never seemed to taste of anything. Even the Old Town bakery Judges didn't really seem to hit the spot (I've had to change my views since - I was feeling pretty negative at the start about a lot of things.) This is no good, I thought. I'll have to get back to baking it myself.
The joiner working on our windows, Ollie Adams, turned out to be a baker's son. He recommended Dan Lepard's recent book Short and Sweet, subtitled "The Best of Home Baking", and I set to. My mission was interrupted after a week or two when Paul visited a Chinese doctor in Hastings and was told to stop eating any yeast. My subsequent attempts at soda bread were far from brilliant: even following Dan Lepard's recipes it turned out a bit too heavy for comfort. Undeterred, I looked at the other bit of Dan Lepard's book and discovered the joys of biscuits, both savoury and sweet. These things have a way of taking hold, as you can see from the picture above: ginger biscuits and macaroons for tea and elevenses, and savoury ones with blue cheese and oatmeal, or chilli flakes and almonds, for that glass of wine in the evening. Although there are only two of us in the house, when you take visitors and our dogs into account as additional consumers we seem to get through a fair quantity each week!
What I'm a little anxious about is that I've only begun to deal with the contents of this book, by tackling the "Bread" and "Biscuits and cookies" sections. However, there are six other sections, ranging from cakes (don't even go there) through "sugar sugar", covering sweets and fudges (go there even less) to pies and tarts for supper (mm, may be better). Now I just have to hope that the Chinese doctor doesn't extend the restrictions...
Antony Mair
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