Lambs, logs and goats

Three local ventures have been exciting me this month.

The first is the local community farm, which is about to start selling its first lambs. I went along to a Saturday morning working party in the spring to help erect fencing for the arrival of the ewes, but I’ve been too stupidly busy over the summer to be able to go back again (or even to update this blog). Things are similarly hopeless until December, but I do plan to go back and help again. Honest.

The second is the delivery of several large sacks of firewood (ash logs, chopped, split and ready to burn) which the community farm are harvesting and selling as part of their clearance and conservation work. So together with all the kindling I cut this spring from the garden (lilac, hazel and hawthorn) my wood stove is stocked up for the winter. I’ve stacked it all under a tarpaulin outside. Ash is the so-called king of firewood and can be burned green, although this stuff was probably cut in the spring and looks pretty dry already.

Finally, a little advert went up in the local newsagent’s window for goats. A couple nearby has two herds of goats, in this village and in a neighbouring parish, and they are now offering goat meat for sale. I remembered the fabulous Jamaican goat curry I had when I was a student, and my sister the goat stews she enjoyed on holiday in Guadeloupe, so together with some local friends we may put in an order for a whole one. I wonder if they make goats’ milk cheese too?

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I thought I’d cracked it with this loaf. Texturally, it was closer to pumpernickel than a raised bread, but at least the crust stayed attached to the crumb!

However, it was a false dawn. Subsequent efforts failed in the same way as before.

I could go round in Beckett-like circles if I persist…

…celeriwhat?

I was at the farm shop last weekend, stocking up for a big batch of vegetable stew to serve me for the coming week. Most of the shop’s weekend staff are teenagers, local kids doing it for pocket money. They are unfailingly polite and helpful, including the new girl that served me this weekend. However, she had to ask me what some of my vegetables were – she failed to recognise spinach and celeriac and I felt like asking her whether she ate vegetables at home.

Frozen spinach is convenient and it looks much darker than the bright green of fresh spinach leaves. So confusing it with chard, say, is not hard to imagine. But celeriac is such an odd looking thing that surely it’s unmistakable. Maybe I was lucky enough to have been introduced to it early – and that my mother adores it (even if my father is indisposed to root vegetables generally).

I use celeriac often – it gives a lift to roasted parsnips and carrots, which I sometimes find too sweet on their own, and it lightens mashed potato. In summer a rémoulade de céleri is a treat. In winter, however, I recommend celeriac and porcini mushroom soup (the recipe is in the New Covent Garden Soup Company’s Soup and Beyond). It’s both hearty in flavour and easy on the waist…

Little by little

I’ve changed my rye flour source, in the hope of resolving the problems I was having with my sourdough loaves, which would come out of the oven with a big hollow between the thick crust and the sunken, compressed layer of dough. The new source is organic Wight Rye (from the Isle of Wight). I think it’s still stone-ground, but if so it looks more finely milled than the last batch.

The new flour seems to absorb much less water. I used the same quantities and found that the final dough was extremely slack – it was quite a job to scoop it up in my hands from mixing bowl to baking tin. It looked much smoother too – more like tahina than hummus.

I was fairly cautious on the proving times. It was a warm day and temperatures in the conservatory were in the mid 20′Cs. I left the production sourdough (about half the final quantity) for about 6 hours, at the end of which it was pretty frothy, and then let the loaf rise in the tin for barely two hours, after which it had risen by about a third.

The loaf came out of the oven with a crust which was much smoother, almost shiny on the underside, and slightly paler. I was excited to see that the crust had risen in the oven, rather than remaining horizontal as the previous loaves had done. The crust was starting to split along the sides and ends of the loaf.

However, on cutting it open, the improvement was only slight – there was still the hollow between crust and crumb. I am taking a little encouragement, as the crumb had risen a little too, and the hollow was smaller than before.

I’m a bit confused as to what exactly the problem is. The troubleshooting guide says that the splitting along the top is due to insufficient proof, but that the sinking dough is due to the rye starter having fermented too much!

Yummy, runny

The first batch of home-made yoghurt had thickened a bit after being left straining in the fridge all day long. It tastes delicious – cool, slightly creamy, slightly acid; refreshing and comforting at the same time.

However, it was still fairly runny: more for pouring than spooning. The local shop does sell milk powder (how could I have doubted it? one can find almost anything in this village) so I will abandon heroism and use the powder as a thickener next time.

I suppose it’s a semi-acceptable cheat. The live yoghurt I used as a starter for this batch has skimmed milk in the ingredients, anyway.

It must be a fair bit cheaper to make yoghurt than to buy it – a 500g pot costs at least a quid around here, whereas a pint of milk and a couple of spoons of milk powder would be only half that. Add in the cost of heating the milk first, and washing the muslin afterwards, and I suppose it might cost 60 pence at most.

Add to that the fact that I don’t have to buy the plastic pot the shop-bought yoghurt comes in, as I can use one of the many pots I have already. I expect I may tire of the washing up, especially the muslin, but it’s easy enough to make yoghurt.

How very smugly green and recession-proof I now feel.

New culture revolution

I’ve started making a rye sourdough starter using a different make of flour (organic stoneground Wight Rye – from the Isle of Wight) in case this is the answer to my collapsing loaves.

I used an initial starter from the freezer (started from the old flour) but it has now had 24 hours with the new flour and is starting to bubble up. It smells different, less fruitily acid and almost spicy – reminiscent of cloves, in fact.

By the weekend I should have a starter ready for making a loaf. And the weather is set fair, so rising should be quick.

Fingers crossed!

Home made yoghurt

I’ve followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe for DIY yoghurt, though have heroically ignored the skimmed milk powder which was meant to help thicken it, as I don’t have any and am not sure I could have found it at the local corner shop anyway. Less heroically, I used a thermometer instead of testing the temperature of the hot milk with my finger.

If I’d started first thing in the morning, it would have been ready by dinner time, but I began at 3pm on Sunday afternoon, on a mad impulse, having lacked any oomph for anything earlier in the day despite the welcome sunshine.

As ever, there is the issue of finding somewhere warm to leave the stuff to ferment. I put a large tea cosy over the porcelain bowl and left it on a serving mat on the dining table in the conservatory (it was a sunny day so the room was warm). It kept its heat well under the cosy. In the evening, I moved it to the kitchen. On the basis that I don’t have an airing cupboard I’m allowing it longer than suggested in the recipe.

Without thinking, I had automatically poured out a whole pint of milk (568ml) instead of 500ml, so what with not using the skimmed milk powder either, I was expecting it to come out on the wet side. By 6 a.m. it had thickened quite a lot but was still very runny – definitely a pouring, rather than a spooning, consistency. And since I like my yoghurt thick I’ve left it straining through a muslin cloth in the fridge while I’m at work, with some cling-film over the top to stop it drying out too much.

I’ve used the yoghurt culture from the low fat live yoghurt from the local Northiam Dairy. It’s one of my regular yoghurt pots (together with Yeo Valley Organic, whose creaminess I slightly prefer, but I’m not sure it’s ‘live’; and it may be higher fat). If the experiment is successful I might play around with different sources of culture ‘mothers’ in case different cultures create different textures and flavours.

If the strained yoghurt has gone too dry by the time I get home, at least I can try Hugh’s salty balls….

Still not quite right

Ho hum, back to square one. I followed all the trouble-shooting instructions. I allowed a scant 6 hours for the first proof, and about 3 for the second, and I had the same problem of sinking dough and separating crust.

Perhaps I let it rise too much in the second proof. After it had sat for two hours in the tin with no change in volume, I rather took my eye off its progress. When I came back an hour later it was fully risen. In my defence, I think I’m following the instructions meticulously: if the dough fills the tin to half way up at the start, it’s ready to bake when it’s almost at the top.

But it’s still coming out rather semi-detached. The only consolation was that the gap was (a bit) smaller this time. Frustrating!

The final suggestion in my book was to use a different make of rye flour. And since this loaf finished off the current bag, I shall try a different one next time (though there isn’t much choice). I’ve still got a couple of sourdough starters in the freezer which hopefully will kick back to life and save a week’s worth of nurturing.

I think I will have a go at making homemade yoghurt too, as the fermentation process is rather satisfying. Mr Yeast should be proud of me.

Sourdoh! (Part 2)

The second time, I erred on the side of caution and didn’t give nearly so long for rising – about 8 hours overnight, but in a cool house so possibly not long enough. I used two tins instead of one, forgetting that I’d used double quantities the time before, so the loaves came out only an inch high!

Perfect soldiers for soft-boiled eggs. However, the texture was much better: a little dense (not a fault, in my view), but neither gluey, gappy nor tough. Well, a little gluey at first, but I was warned that this would be the case – the bread is apparently best left for 24 hours before eating.

The third attempt resulted in the same problems as the first. I am tempted to throw the loaf away – but it’s not actually inedible, and it seems a waste if the birds aren’t going to eat it either. However, now they are nesting they may be less picky! It’s quite good toasted.

The troubleshooting section of my bread-making book says this problem is due to the yeasts having been too active: “excessive enzyme activity has softened gluten to the point where the pressure of fermentation gases is too great and the structure compacts”. The suggested solutions include having a shorter first stage (6-8 hours instead of 24 hours). So I shall try this next time.

The weather has turned much warmer recently and the under-floor heating in the conservatory is now off until late October (I hope). The room is a bit like a greenhouse. From April onwards, on a sunny day it gets pretty warm inside. Daytime temperatures have been about 5˚C higher than a couple of weeks ago, and now the conservatory’s warmer than the rest of the house instead of cooler (during the day, at least). All this has made the sourdough much more lively – the second proof only needed 3 hours instead of the 8 it had the previous time. So it makes sense that the first proof shouldn’t have had so long.

Sourdoh! (Part 1)

I decided to dispense with yeast entirely and make rye sourdough bread. I got the starter going successfully – after four days of adding doses of rye flour and warm water to my little covered plastic tub, which was resting on the heated conservatory floor tiles, I had created a frothy sludge with a good salty-sour sort of smell.

This is the ‘raising agent’ for the bread, of which I use 50g to make a large loaf and nurture the rest as a pet. For the first stage, you add 150g flour and quite a lot of water, and let the starter work away on the mixture. Then you add the rest of the flour (330g) and water, have a second proof, and then bung it in the oven – hey presto. It’s not been quite that simple for me yet!

To lazy me, the attraction of the rye sourdough bread was that it didn’t need kneading, only mixing (there isn’t the gluten in the flour that needs working in a regular loaf). For the final proof, you just dollop the mixture into a baking tin and wait for it to rise. It starts off looking like half a loaf tin of hummus, and ends up looking like – well, a whole loaf tin of hummus.

The first loaves were rather experimental, as I had no idea how long the proof stages would take. I had let the production sourdough work for 24 hours (which was by the book), and then put the mixture into loaf tins on a Thursday evening, kept in plastic bags to stop them drying out. The book said to allow 2-8 hours: even allowing for variations in house temperatures and liveliness or otherwise of the sourdough yeasts, that’s pretty vague…

After two hours I couldn’t see any change whatsoever, and didn’t fancy staying up all evening waiting for yeasts to work, so I left them to work overnight. Of course, by morning they were risen all the way up to the top of the tins and even bubbling a little – uh-oh, I thought, they’ve probably gone too far – so I put them in the fridge hoping to slow down any further activity until I got home from work, and hoping that the worst that would happen would be a sunken crust. I baked them when I got home that evening and this was the result:

The loaves had a nicely risen but impossibly tough, dark crust, and a thick stodge of sticky grey dough compressed at the bottom, with a pocket of air between the two so big I could slide in my fingers. The smell was lovely, the flavour was good (the doughy mess was just about edible toasted – to me, it was penance) but the texture was deplorable. I put out the crusts on the patio and even the birds rejected them.