Tuesday 27 November 2012

Back on the bread

Hopefully I can kiss goodbye to Waitrose brown bread for a while as I am now back in production with my own bread. Waitrose brown bread flour fine; Waitrose brown bread not fine at all. Haven't lost my touch and a third of a loaf went down well for tea today with some of the Dolomitian (not to be confused with Domitian) cheese bought in Leatherhead the other day.

Important though to let the bread cool before eating it. A bit bland, rather a waste, eaten while still cooling. One of the various baking tomes I skimmed said something about how cooked bread needing a little time for the flavour to develop.

But I am starting to worry about the non stick coating on my two loaf tins (from House of Fraser), about 10% of which is now inside me. I was a bit annoyed when I bought the things, but it seems that these days you cannot buy a domestic baking tin without the non-stick, which for all I know is crammed full of all  kinds of rare earth metals from the Congo which do shocking things to my endocrine balance, never mind that of the poor saps who have to mine the stuff in the first place. And it is all quite unnecessary, at least in my limited experience. Grease and flour an old-style baking tin and nothing much sticks anyway. Plus you know where the grease and flour has come from.

I wonder if commercial bakers have access to baking tins without the non-stick? I would not be that surprised to learn that the stuff is banned in that context.

On the up side, the banners have gotten around to grapefruit which has suddenly popped up on the quite short list of things to be avoided when on the warfarin. And, coincidentally, the DT runs a piece today about how grapefruit interacts in a most unpleasant way with all kinds of prescription medicines for all kinds of unpleasant diseases. Oranges and lemons escape the net for the moment at least, despite having much in common with the other citrus, which is just as well, as while I do not do much grapefruit, I do do quite a bit of oranges and lemons. Presumably I had better lay off the pomelos just to be on the safe side (see, for example, November 29th 2010 in the other place).

On the down side, I failed yesterday at my first Soduko for what must be months, if not years, perhaps as long ago as 2009 (the record in the other place being suspiciously thin). Got off to a flying start to this one from the Guardian, then got stuck. So gambled on guessing which of two squares was a '4' and the flying continued. Until I landed in a cul-de-sac from which backing out did not appear to be an option. All of which goes to validate my folk theory that a valid Soduko contains just enough information to let you get on. If you have more information and you are getting on nice and fast, something is probably wrong

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