Monday's viewing

An Evening of Watching the Box

There didn't seem to be much on the television tonight apart from Pointless, The Chase and Paul Hollywood's bread baking lesson. The man himself is a charmer, and his enthusiasm for baking is catching and hopefully he is inspiring a whole new  generation of artisan bakers. When I first got married I always baked my own bread, and I remember a week in 1976 when bakers were on strike, most of our street turned to me to supply them with their daily bread. I think that the baking bread aroma gives a house a homely feel. When we moved into this house however, the kitchen was quite cold and all my bread recipes insisted that the bread must be kept in warm place to rise, Since the yeast mixture didn't seem to do much in the hour to hour and a half that it was supposed to double in, I assumed I could no longer make bread and so started buying it from the supermarket instead. 
But Paul Hollywood has changed all that he does not use warm water or keep his mixture in a warm cupboard, he just covers it up and keeps it out of the draught, and leaves it for however long it takes to double in size. I started baking morning rolls and everyone enjoyed them, my son even informed me they tasted like the special artisan rolls that Tesco had just started selling. I stopped making bread however when my main oven broke last month, but after baking some Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, in the smaller top oven, where they turned out very well I have decided to return to the practice of making my own bread.

A lot of people that I have met have complained that home made bread goes stale very quickly, so it can be very wasteful. I always manage to use up any stale bread in various other dishes, so none gets thrown away. It can be used for toast in the morning, or be incorporated into a pudding with the main meal. Last night Paul made a summer pudding with different berries, that had me drooling. It is a very easy pudding that doesn't require any cooking.
In this house, I normally make a bread and butter pudding (my favourite) if I have a lot of leftover bread. 

Breadcrumbs

Another thing I do with leftover fresh bread is to blitz it in a processor and freeze it to use in sauces and stuffing. If it is starting to go stale I either break it up and put it at the bottom of the oven to crisp up and when it becomes a nice golden colour I blitz in a processor and use the golden breadcrumbs for coating fish etc. I always place hem at the bottom of the oven while I the oven is on for dinner, so saving fuel as well. The other way I use the stale bread is that if I am making soup I simply chop the bread into small cubes, place in a bowl and add olive oil, toss to coat them, then place them on a baking tray and bake them at 375 degrees until crisp and golden (about15-20 minutes).