Lockdown Day 10

My Mum used to make all our bread. That was quite a feat, when you add in the fact that there were six kids in the family. She would bake five loaves at a time and we had two big wheeled bins full of flour in our pantry, I think I remember that the orange one held brown flour and the yellow one held white. She would make a mix, maybe half and half, of brown and white flours, and quite a sloppy dough, so our bread was chewy and yummy.

This is my Mum and four of my siblings, my youngest full brother yet to be born (I have a half-brother too). Guess which one is me.

Of course, we didn't know how yummy it was. While our lunchboxes were filled with cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, all we wanted was jam on shop-bought white bread like other kids! And fairy bread (sigh) we never, ever, ever got fairy bread (coloured sprinkles on white bread) and for that, I thank you Mum, although I didn't at the time!

I don't have Mum's recipe. She never really had one, just worked from experience, and when she died, none of us thought to write it down - although correct me if I'm wrong sisters, do any of you have it?

Back to present day, flour and yeast were two of the items that sold like hotcakes before the lockdown. Heaven only knows why. Bread is still for sale in the grocery store. Maybe people just wanted to make bread to have something to do? And there are recipes flying around Facebook left and right, the people who missed out on yeast are trying sourdough, it's all quite intriguing.

But I've jumped on the bandwagon too. I realised that while I've made bread a bajillion times, my kids haven't. We don't eat a whole heap of bread as a family now, so it's not something I make much of anymore. But it's something to do, and something that the kids can learn from.

Here's my kids, messily learning how to knead bread dough.

A friend of mine shared a recipe that she makes and it sounded easy. I have yeast in the fridge that I use to make pizza bases occasionally, and we have plenty of flour because my daughter likes to bake biscuits and cakes so we're always well stocked.

It made plenty, a loaf with sesame seeds on top, a plait that we added spice and mixed fruit to, and a round plain loaf. I had to do a bit of adjustment to the proportions of ingredients and I don't feel like retyping her recipe, so if you're looking for a good recipe, here's a link to an earlier blog post of mine when I was making bread regularly: Spread the Butter Thick.

There is nothing quite as appealing as the smell of freshly baked bread. And it's very hard to resist cutting into it straight out of the oven. But wait 15 minutes and it will still be warm but it won't collapse and shred because it's too hot. Serve with lashings of butter (none of that margarine stuff) and enjoy.

Spread the butter thick.

My Mum baked all our bread when I was a kid.  She had five loaf tins and they were put into service about twice a week (maybe once, I can't remember).  I loved her bread, even though at the time I wished I had shop white bread like everyone else (blurk!!).

Now that I'm regularly making my own bread, I want it to be like hers.  But Mum died when I was 16 and her bread was one of those things she just kinda made and never really had a recipe.

So I've been working on it.  And I've almost got it sussed - it's really good, and it's close enough to what I remember.

Recipe:

3 cups warm water
1 tablespoon of Surebake Yeast - this is one with bread improvers added but you probably don't need it, just use a little less regular yeast.
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
Put these all in a bowl and leave for 15 minutes or so to activate the yeast (I added my rolled oats now to get a bit of soaking time - if I was a real Western A. Pricer, I would have soaked them overnight).
Add 1 egg, 3 tbsps oil and 1 tsp salt and mix.
Add 4 cups white flour (stoneground, highgrade - whatever takes your fancy).
Add 2 1/2 cups brown flour and then maybe some more.
Mix until a quite wet and sticky dough forms.  Mix really well (almost like kneading) with the wooden spoon, you wouldn't want to get your hands in there - too wet.
Cover and leave to rise until doubled.
Mix really well with wooden spoon again then divide into half and 'plop' into two well-greased loaf tins.
Leave to rise again until well risen in the tin and then bake for about 45 mins, the first 10 mins at 200 degrees Celsius, the last bit at about 160 degrees Celsius. 

The original recipe was Grandmother Bread from Chickens in the Road Blog, but I added and changed etc etc and this is about right.  You can add linseeds, rye flour, cold porridge, any science experiments in the fridge, but I find as long as I have about 4 cups of white flour and a sticky texture, it turns out well.

P.S.  I also baked about a gazillion chocolate chip cookies today....after I washed off the toothpaste that dear daughter had applied to the cubed butter sitting on the bench softening.  The minty taste was hardly noticeable at all.  Note to self:  DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON AN ALMOST-THREE YEAR OLD!

Satisfaction is......

A bottled brew of gingerbeer.

A perfectly baked loaf of bread (admittedly from the breadmaker, but hey!)

A big pile of chopped down gorse.

Realising that this beautiful flowering flax used to be a small division just a couple of years ago, planted by me (or hubby or one of my dear friends!), and look at it now! We are making progress.

Building a calf shelter for the little bobby calves that I'm going to raise. Hot news: I have resigned so now I'll have the time (I hope) to do this sort of thing.

A beautiful Sunday spent with the family.