Saturday, February 12, 2011
Its that bread again
Conferred with two serious amateur cooks about the trials and tribulations of bread making last night, both of whom had gone through the bread making fad some time in the past and who were surprised that it has taken me so long to get around to it. I explained that the bread I was getting was quite eatable but did not taste of anything much and not much like baker bread. We agreed that making plain white bread was difficult and this was probably the reason that in-house recipe books and in-store bakeries are full of flavoured bread. The flavour obscuring the underlying truth that the basic bread is not very good. Both thought it unlikely that the flour was the problem. One thought that the oven might be the problem, possibly an inaccurate temperature gauge, with bread being sensitive to cooking temperature. Also that the finish of white bloomers was achieved by brushing some milk onto the loaves before putting them into the oven. And finally that the solution was to be found with one http://www.danlepard.com/ - this being the site of the bread correspondent for the 'Guardian'. The other thought that adding some vitamin C might help. And that swapping cooking oil for lard was unlikely to help.
Today went for bread 9. No change apart from increasing the amount of flour slightly and omitting the salt. Thought about using cooking oil but didn't. Thought about putting our fine jam thermometer from Zeal's of Wimpole Street in the oven to check the temperature but found that it only went up to around 200C do decided not to risk it. Took a peek at the leopard but have not got through to the bread bit yet so help from that front yet to come. Results at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8152054/Bread-20110120.xls as usual.
We then moved onto the question of educating our young people in the uses of the English language. It appears that a correspondent of the 'Independent' was disgusted that his daughter was invited by her English teacher to write an essay on the use made of English in 'East Enders' - the popular television show. My argument was that one could indeed write an essay of this sort, although one might have to watch a fair amount of the stuff first and it would help to have a script. One could drone on about the impoverished vocabulary and the simple sentence structure. About the use of regional accents to signal personal qualities like trustworthiness or friendlessness. About the use of slang and expletives. Was it really necessary? About how the portrayal of popular speech in east London was rather inaccurate. Certainly out of date. Plastic cockneys. The opposing argument was that young people should be exposed to good English not to bad English. To expose them to the classics. To which I reply, a point, but it all depends on context. Maybe 'East Enders' is a place to start. Or maybe the young people will think the teacher is a twat for trying to be trendy. Maybe more properly an undergraduate rather than a school thing, with the greater maturity being brought to bear by the undergraduates making the essays fly. Who knows?
Back at the TB, a discussion of the proper arrangements for young people who need serious care. One point being that the bottom can drop out of support arrangements when a child reaches 16. Another being that work of this sort can be tremendously rewarding - provided you are the sort of person with the special qualities needed for it. Another hypothesis, it being by now quite late, was that a good proportion of the children with problems were the children of the unfortunate young women who were banged up in the mental hospitals of Epsom (and other similar places), having demonstrated their moral turpitude by getting themselves pregnant.
Wound up proceedings by the first Bolivar No. 1 for quite a while; a Christmas present which I thought the time had come for. A good smoke. I was lucky in that it was not one of those Bolivars with lumps of stalk blocking the air flow so it drew properly and one could savour the flavour in comfort.
# posted by Jim @ 8:37 AM 
