Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A plug for Sidmouth
Entirely by accident we paid a visit to Sidmouth today. Which turned out to be spot on for a lunch time visit on a bright, breezy day. Apart from being a very decent resort, very understanding about older people, I was able to buy the first proper white bread I have had for some time.
And next door to the baker there was a grand old grocer, still complete with fancy mahogany shop furnishings, where I was able to buy some emmenthal cheese which they were quite happy to slice up for me (I had left my knife in the car), thus making up my lunch box. I was also able to buy some bread flour, stone, wheel & water ground in some local mill. The lady of the house warned me that it makes rather heavy bread and was best cut with some regular steel & roller ground flour. Given that my bread is already on the heavy side, certainly compared with the luncheon bread, the next bake promises to be interesting.
After luncheon we proceeded in a westerly direction and ascended the cliffs to the Connaught Gardens. Just the place for a snooze on a sunny afternoon with plenty of flowers to take in in between times. This included both a thin hot house with a variety of cacti & pitcher plants and a rather squarer tea house with a variety of tea & cakes. Not to mention the bandstand.
Maybe one day we will take a week out in one of the grand looking hotels.
More seriously, maybe one day I will sign up for an NVQ Part I in bakery and learn how they do it. My home efforts, while entirely eatable, good even, are not like the stuff that good English bakers make and are not getting any more like it. Various theories have been advanced - for example, the injection of steam into the dough, the injection of steam into the oven and the use of high powered dough mixers - but these are not theories which I can easily test. Will I be able to find a course which focusses on white bread and which does not spend most of its time on the construction of the fancy bread which to my mind is an excuse for not being able to make simple bread properly? Will the course be full of bored young offenders being re-educated? Or bored housewives?
A casual peek at NESCOT - my most local further education joint, which did a good job on getting me my only and rather lowly IT qualifications and which boasts something called a senior management team headed by a highly paid lady (with portraits on display in the entrance hall) - offers nothing under bakery and just two courses under catering. Both to do with food hygeine. Clearly far more important than food, let alone bakery.
And next door to the baker there was a grand old grocer, still complete with fancy mahogany shop furnishings, where I was able to buy some emmenthal cheese which they were quite happy to slice up for me (I had left my knife in the car), thus making up my lunch box. I was also able to buy some bread flour, stone, wheel & water ground in some local mill. The lady of the house warned me that it makes rather heavy bread and was best cut with some regular steel & roller ground flour. Given that my bread is already on the heavy side, certainly compared with the luncheon bread, the next bake promises to be interesting.
After luncheon we proceeded in a westerly direction and ascended the cliffs to the Connaught Gardens. Just the place for a snooze on a sunny afternoon with plenty of flowers to take in in between times. This included both a thin hot house with a variety of cacti & pitcher plants and a rather squarer tea house with a variety of tea & cakes. Not to mention the bandstand.
Maybe one day we will take a week out in one of the grand looking hotels.
More seriously, maybe one day I will sign up for an NVQ Part I in bakery and learn how they do it. My home efforts, while entirely eatable, good even, are not like the stuff that good English bakers make and are not getting any more like it. Various theories have been advanced - for example, the injection of steam into the dough, the injection of steam into the oven and the use of high powered dough mixers - but these are not theories which I can easily test. Will I be able to find a course which focusses on white bread and which does not spend most of its time on the construction of the fancy bread which to my mind is an excuse for not being able to make simple bread properly? Will the course be full of bored young offenders being re-educated? Or bored housewives?
A casual peek at NESCOT - my most local further education joint, which did a good job on getting me my only and rather lowly IT qualifications and which boasts something called a senior management team headed by a highly paid lady (with portraits on display in the entrance hall) - offers nothing under bakery and just two courses under catering. Both to do with food hygeine. Clearly far more important than food, let alone bakery.
# posted by Jim @ 6:38 AM 
