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.