Friday, January 13, 2017

A fresh start


My weekend starts on Friday afternoon and this week it starts with fresh bread.  I topped it with butter (as it was a new loaf I wanted the maximum treat value) and tangy pink grapefruit marmalade, which I made last December.  (I made the butter dish too, but not the butter.)

It's also a fresh start for me in baking bread.  I used to bake most of our bread and then for some reason it started to be less successful and M didn't like it much so I gave up.  I was rigorous and although it went against the grain (mine), threw all my old bread flour into the compost and started with new.  Moved over to instant ready-mix yeast, as so many recipes call for it.  Used half white and half granary flour, a tad more yeast than the recipe for white bread called for and included 1 tsp vitamin C powder.  Result!  Oh, sorry, that should really say "Result, one lovely, light, tasty loaf."  Not too sticky, not yeasty in flavour, even and light texture and lovely crunch on the crust.  I'm hoping this will mean a return to making much of my own bread.

And finally ...  a fresh start with the blog.  Writing about what's on my mind, or in my life, even if not at length.

Happy New Year.  I've avoided flu so far so already it's been a much better start to 2017 than it was at this point in 2016.