Bara brith is a fruit-bread from Wales, the name translating as ‘speckled bread’. Although it sounds distinctive, there are so many different versions that there is very little anyone can definitively say about it. Some make it with yeast, others treat it more like a cake and use baking powder. It may include eggs and read more…
The black-market is associated with many different products and materials, but high-end yeasted goods are not normally one of them. Time Magazine , however, reports that an illicit trade in the hybrid pastry known as the ‘cronut’ is thriving in New York, where the French patissier Dominique Ansel creates this unlikely combination of croissant and read more…
A few years ago I was researching the availability of organically certified baker’s yeast for the book. If I remember rightly, the only evidence I could find for such a thing was on a German manufacturer’s website; I was unable to find a supplier to the domestic market at all. Since then, however, several organically read more…
The poet Phillip Larkin wrote that ‘Sex was invented in 1963’, a wry nod to the lingering influence of Victorian morals on 20th century Britain. But earlier centuries were often much more licentious than we think. The seventeenth century writer John Aubrey compiled a series of accounts of English folk traditions under the title Remaines read more…
Here’s a thought-provoking article in the Washington Post, via my Palestinian sister-in-law, about a cookbook with a difference: The Gaza Kitchen. Most of us know Gaza only as a place that regularly crops up in news reports about violence between the Palestinian population and the state of Israel, but as this book (and blog) shows, read more…
Pita bread has to be one of the easiest and quickest yeasted breads to make. In terms of quality, the bar is set so low by commercially made pita that you can hardly fail to be satisfied with the results: the difference between a shop-bought and a home-made pita can be pretty dramatic. Furthermore, there read more…
There’s an interesting post over on Spitalfields Life about the writer Jocasta Innes, who has died aged 78. I always thought of her as an author of books espousing a very particular approach to interior design – one that, as a hair-shirt modernist, I personally can’t stand. What I hadn’t realised was that she started read more…
‘Man shall not live by bread alone’, which is why I like to go off-topic from time to time, and today I would like to offer you a paean to one of my favourite dishes: poached eggs. Unfortunately, poaching eggs is a tricky business. Of course, you can use any one of various implements designed read more…
Finally my phoneline has been installed and my broadband is up and running. Not only that, but spring has made a late appearance and I’ve spent considerably less time this last week trying to thaw out my extremities. I made a batch of rolls with Doves Farm‘s Malthouse flour one evening and really noticed the read more…
I spent a pleasant Easter weekend painting walls, but I still found time to make a batch of Easter biscuits (my only concession to the Paschal festival). I used a recipe from my old kitchen stalwart, the Reader’s Digest Book of the Cookery Year, converted from imperial units: 110g softened butter 110g caster sugar, plus read more…
