Artisan bread

Artisan bread is, apparently, bread with big holes in it. Those holes in the middle of the loaf, which are formed by the irregular fermentation and rising which happens when dough is kneaded and stretched by hand. The right kind of holes are the mark of good bread. Or so my bread baking teacher says. I've been learning more about bread making from an online course on Craftsy, which was an inspired birthday present from Lorna. (If you're craftily inclined, by the way, Craftsy has online classes on everything from hand painting cakes to couture sewing techniques to rigid heddle weaving - guess you'd have to do the course to find out about that one...)

I've been trying to make better bread for about a year and a half now. I started off, ambitiously, with sourdough, which I realise now is way harder than yeasted bread to make well. My sourdough is nice toasted, but nowhere near perfect. Now I have a really good standby recipe for a no-knead yeasted bread, which Jess in Canada passed on, that produces a pretty decent loaf full of tasty seeds and nuts, and most importantly is easy make on an office day, as you can mix the dough in the morning, leave it to rise all day, and bake it after work. 

But I know that to make really good bread you have to put a lot more work in. So I spent a morning trying out the first class of my Craftsy class: basic French bread. The teacher is very enthusiastic and sometimes annoyingly American, but full of useful information. I mixed to the right proportions (68% moisture), kneaded and stretched at 20 minute intervals, shaped loaves and left them to prove in satisfyingly traditional looking bowls and linens, made a mess of transferring them to the baking tray (a bread peel is clearly an invaluable tool, although a quickly washed piece of wooden shelf board is a reasonable substitute), and finally baked them in a hot oven with the requisite amount of steam. And the results? Well, they're definitely not perfect - not enough holes. But the crust was pretty good and the crumb wasn't too bad at all, and it tasted fantastic still warm with a thick spread of butter (but then what bread doesn't!). I think I just need more practice...

la rhubarbe and other allotment news

I finally got down to the allotment today after three weeks of having no time to attend to it - two weekends away, in London and the Lakes, and lots of things to do on weekday evenings. It looked surprisingly good, not too many weeds in the beds at all - only thigh-high grass and comfrey bordering most of the plot, which is a necessary evil given how little time I spend down there. I don't really mind the grass - although I do feel bad about the way it's choking off the fruit bushes - and the comfrey isn't a weed at all, making itself useful as a mulch (comfrey tea smells so bad I don't bother anymore). Every so often I make a token effort at ripping the grass up, but it's much more industrious than me and just keeps coming back.

That aside, the plot actually looks fairly presentable - which is also thanks to Orsi's hard work weeding and stocking it with Hungarian plants! Most things have been saved from the slugs and snails - although quite a few French beans, red cabbages and cavolo nero have been munched. I made myself busy between the rain showers weeding, putting in pea sticks and tying in the broad beans. And at last starting to collect the first of the early summer harvest! Tonight's tea included green onions, fennel stalks, and broad bean tops - a seasonal delicacy. And the last of the rhubarb, which went to top up the pickled rhubarb I made a few weeks ago, because it's utterly delicious. The recipe is from Diana Henry's 'Salt, Sugar, Smoke', my go to book for preserves this year. But why is it that 'pickled rhubarb' sounds so much better in French?

Wild swimming

I've always loved swimming in the sea, although because most of my life I've lived close to the coast of Scotland, Ireland or Wales, I don't do it very often. One of my favourite holiday things in the world has been swimming in Greece, diving in off a smooth, sun warmed rock, or a yacht, and cutting through clear blue cool waters, welcome in the heat of the day.

But I've decided that you can't live your life longing for perfection and something that comes along every five or ten years, and so a couple of weeks ago I bought a sleek, snug, swimming wetsuit. Yes, it's Scotland. Yes, it's the North Sea. But give a girl a few millimetres of neoprene and the ocean is my oyster. I tried it out first at a reservoir in the Pentlands, with 120 mostly keen triathletes - fun, but a bit serious. And then I found the Wild Ones, a relaxed and welcoming bunch of people who swim every Sunday, and after work on summer evenings, at Edinburgh's own beach, Portobello, just for the enjoyment of being in the water. And most of them without wetsuits! I was impressed.

Someone from the Wild Ones posted this wonderful video of a Faroese lady - the swimming granny. Forget wearing purple, I think this is what I aspire to in my old age. Crazy in many people's eyes, but happy!