Last year I was looking for a knife that I could use for cooking on camping trips: something fairly small that would nonetheless tackle most jobs without too much difficulty. By chance I found this paring knife from the Swiss company Kuhn Rikon. It’s compact, inexpensive and comes with a useful blade guard. It’s also read more…
I made a batch of muffins for breakfast at the weekend. I think the secret to making successful muffins is to get them the right thickness. It’s hard to make them too thin, but very easy to make them too thick. If that happens, it can be difficult to cook them right through without burning read more…
Ahh, ciabatta – the parvenu cousin of the French baguette. My first encounter with ciabatta, back when I was still a novice baker, was something of a revelation. Not just the wild, open texture, but also the distinctive mouthfeel of a crumb made with a highly hydrated dough was quite new to me. It really read more…
Having made a preliminary inspection of my new oven’s innards, I had to remove the outer casing completely to actually get at the wiring. It turned out that disconnecting the top elements was relatively straightforward. I hasten to add that I had the assistance of a qualified electrician in doing this. The hardest part was read more…
I’ve been cursed for the last decade with a decrepit electric oven that is pretty poor at everything, but is particularly dismal for baking. In order to overcome this, I normally use a large steel stockpot to cover my bread whilst it bakes, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post. It works, but it isn’t read more…
When I was growing up, I thought of bread bins (when I thought of them at all, which wasn’t often) in much the same way as George Orwell thought of aspidistra. Along with a number of other innocuous domestic objects, I associated the bread bin with the stifling atmosphere of small houses in a small read more…
It’s not April 1st, so I guess this article from The Guardian isn’t a practical joke after all: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/may/30/the-sourdough-hotel-cultural-centre As any sourdough devotee will doubtless know, starters don’t really need the cossetting that the ‘hotel’ doubtless provides. Unsurprisingly, the owner admits that “the hotel hasn’t been a commercial success”. Nice try, though.
Suffolk is liberally studded with commons, where Gypsies often graze their ponies and horses. Commons were once widespread all over Britain: areas of land where rights to pasture animals, grow crops, gather firewood and even build houses were held ‘in common’. The common at Mellis, where my in-laws live and which is only a few read more…
Jonathan Kent has been presenting a series of short programmes on BBC Radio 4 this week called Our Daily Bread. Each programme looks at a different aspect of the way bread is entwined with human history and culture. Full of interesting observations, I particularly liked Thursday’s instalment, which examined the role of bread in the national identities of read more…
The weather has suddenly improved, flowers are coming into bloom, and the swifts have made their first appearance of the season. So obviously I turned the oven up to 11 and made a slab of focaccia.Of course, you can enjoy focaccia any time of the year, but I associate it with good weather and eating read more…
