AS: Tea and biscuits and GIN, the British thread

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Comments

  • You don't add as much of it as you need, like you do baking powder. You add a trace and then it grows in the mixture. And it likes some conditions more than others, like it hates salt and loves sugar. So if your dough is salty or has lots of fat in it (which weakens the gluten and therefore the capacity of the dough to hold the CO2 created), you would need more yeast to get the same final result. Or you could just wait a very long time....
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    Ah, that's interesting about salt v sugar. Does the same apply to self raising flour, as my blackberry flatbread was much fluffier than my usual flatbreads, so now I'm thinking that could be from the sweetness of the blackberries, if self raising flour reacts to sugar.
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    When you use whole-wheat flour rather than white, it's a good idea to add vital gluten.

    You can buy it in many supermarkets or health food stores
  • fineline wrote: »
    Ah, that's interesting about salt v sugar. Does the same apply to self raising flour, as my blackberry flatbread was much fluffier than my usual flatbreads, so now I'm thinking that could be from the sweetness of the blackberries, if self raising flour reacts to sugar.

    That's a chemical reaction but nothing is growing. The blackberry juice was acidic, so there was probably a stronger reaction and more co2 released.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    The loaves came out OK - just a bit smaller and heavier than usual, but the taste is fine - we had some when it was still warm with butter and honey, and it was really quite nice.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    I use a bread maker which makes a one pound loaf. I make one loaf every day and freeze any left over.

    I love it as I know exactly what goes into the bread, commercial bread upsets my tum.

    It’s not always foolproof, yesterday the loaf fell flat and I had to start again, I think the water I put in was too hot.

    The bread maker cost me £20 on eBay so it has already paid for itself. Now each loaf costs 20p to make :)
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Your breadmaker demands warm water? Fussy beast.

    I’ll admit mine has been idle this last while - possibly connected to the ceiling above it being held up with masking tape.

    In fact the whole kitchen is a Worry. Not just leaking roof but crumbling tilework, collapsing drawers, wrongly placed power points.

    Houses, eh?
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    Firenze wrote: »
    Your breadmaker demands warm water? Fussy beast.

    Not just warm, but the perfect shade of warm! But it does make delicious bread :mrgreen:

  • Wesley J wrote: »
    daisydaisy wrote: »
    [...] So, I’m back on board after a brief break away, trying to remember my password!
    Welcome back, daisydaisy! And, did you remember your password?
    Thank you! Well, I half remembered it - why does the Ship password have to be the longest of all the many, many passwords that I have? So many opportunities of wrong remembering, and challenging to reset it. I had to wait until I got home to my prompt sheet - not the actual passwords but enough to make me think “oh yeah, obvious”.
    Spent yesterday starting to tackle the jungle in my tiny front garden. Daylight now gets in, but there is plenty there to keep me occupied for a while yet, but I’m waiting to get my trailer back from a friend so I can load it up to take to the tip. The back garden can wait - it’s busy with bluetits, finches and bees and, I’m hoping, baby hedgehogs and froglets.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    I hope I'm not making a load of bricks ... :neutral:

    You'll be glad when the Big Bad Wolf comes and the other Piglets weren't so wise.
    :wink:
  • Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    Piglet wrote: »
    I hope I'm not making a load of bricks ... :neutral:

    You'll be glad when the Big Bad Wolf comes and the other Piglets weren't so wise.
    :wink:

    :killingme:
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    I have a bread machine, and I have noticed that the bread rises higher if I put the ingredients in the pan at least two hours before I start it.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    daisydaisy wrote: »
    The back garden can wait - it’s busy with bluetits, finches and bees and, I’m hoping, baby hedgehogs and froglets.

    Don't you dare disturb them! May the hedgepig-lets and frog-lets flourish!

    How lovely to have a wild life nature reserve to close to home...
    :grin:

    I noticed today that the grassy patch (it's hardly good enough to be called a lawn) to the south of Our Place is once more home to 1000s of little Ivy Mining Bees, all busily buzzing around, and waiting for the females to emerge:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colletes_hederae

    We are Very Proud of our Bees, and love showing them to children (who are not at all fazed by them).
    :grin:

    IJ

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Boogie wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Your breadmaker demands warm water? Fussy beast.
    Not just warm, but the perfect shade of warm! But it does make delicious bread :mrgreen:
    I can't remember the exact temperature the recipe specified (but I always assumed it was vital); I achieve it by heating the 2 cups of water in the microwave for a minute and 50 seconds.
    Moo wrote: »
    I have a bread machine, and I have noticed that the bread rises higher if I put the ingredients in the pan at least two hours before I start it.
    Really? Doesn't it matter that the water will have gone cold?

    In other news, we're bracing ourselves for another heatwave - it's forecast to go up to 30° today but feeling like 39. Not piglet-friendly. :sweat:
  • Blackberry and oat flatbread sounds delicious. I used to bake my own bread but have spent most of the last year on a low carb diet for health reasons (I lost 20% of my body weight in about 6 months).
    Greenbelt was good, fewer bands than usual it seemed but I enjoy the arts and drama more. Went to several museum/identity themed talks and a death cafe.
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    Moo wrote: »
    I have a bread machine, and I have noticed that the bread rises higher if I put the ingredients in the pan at least two hours before I start it.
    Really? Doesn't it matter that the water will have gone cold?

    I use cold water anyway. I think maybe the reason the bread rises higher is that all the ingredients are the same temperature when the machine starts.

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    It might not make any difference to my recipe anyway, as the machine just makes the dough, and the loaves are baked in the oven.

    ION, although it was 26° and feeling like 36, I went for an amble just before sunset. There was just the merest sniff of a breeze from the river, which moderated the heat a bit, so I'm glad I did.
  • All this talk of bread making makes me hungry! I used to make bread but now only if I have visitors to eat it because once I crack open a loaf the deliciousness just gets hold of me and it vanishes too quickly.

    The front garden revamp continues... yesterday I removed a shrub that doesn’t do much and discovered a rambling rose that has probably got too leggy to ramble much more. So I’ll look out for a shrub that provides bees and birds with food - probably a cotoneaster that can become a hedge. There is no planning here - just inch by inch removal of really old stuff and waiting for inspiration - a neighbouring leylandiiiiiiaaaargh hedge limits what can go there.
  • I need to attack some newly sprouting brambles, having cleared the wilderness at the end of my garden a few months ago. The drought kept regrowth at bay but it is a constant battle.
    We are having a huge overhaul of our garden, our terraced house once overlooked farmer’s fields for miles and we never needed a proper fence but in the last few years a new estate of thousands of houses has been built behind us, literally metres away with a new footpath and road directly behind our garden. So once we regained the back access this spring we started clearing the end so we can get a solid seven foot fence and gate and we’re planning new sheds and decking down there.
  • From past and painful experience, brambles need digging out too, to get rid of their creeping roots underground, unpleasant as they are often thorny subterranean stems.

    I went to see Bat out of Hell last night, with an erstwhile work colleague. The original album was part of the soundtrack of my teenage and student years: so much so that the title track was regularly played very loudly in the mornings after parties to raise comatose bodies from the floors to enable the cleaning. And I used to play the album motorway driving so my daughter bought it for herself as a teenager (as the third album came out). I was a shoo in. Fortunately, my companion, who only really knew a couple of tracks also loved it and the staging. There was a slight frisson at the beginning when we were invited to sing along, because we were going to anyway, so they may as well make it easy with lyrics, but mostly you couldn't hear the audience participation. Yes, I was wearing ear plugs.
  • I have just returned from doing my weekly grocery shop at a local supermarket and I jest you not in the one hour I was out I encountered three different micro-climates for want of a better word.
    The summer/ autumn interface is always interesting.
    And challenging on the what to wear front!
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    That sounds like fun, CK. Bat out of Hell was part of the soundtrack of my youth too.

    Talking of gardening (which I don't very often), we've got something - not sure what - growing below our deck where the birds have spilled the seed from the feeder. D. refers to it affectionately as our cannabis plant (which it isn't - the leaves are the wrong shape) but we really haven't a notion what it is.

    Quite big sort of heart-shaped leaves - maybe sunflowers, as there's sunflower seeds in the feed mix - although no flowers ... yet!
  • I’ve had a cannabis plant sprout up beneath my feeder before! Currently I appear to have a crop of wheat. Sunflower sounds likely though anything with heart shaped leaves in my garden tends to be bindweed.
  • We had to stop feeding the birds, sadly. The leftover seed was attracting rats.
  • You had leftover seed??? My greedy little beaks get through masses of it, and I am forever filling the feeder! What drops on the ground is quickly hoovered up by two wood pigeons who potter around all day under the feeder. That is, when the male is not chasing the female after a bit of hanky panky!
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Hello everyone. We got back to Paris yesterday after three weeks in a very toasty foie gras land. Exciting fauna in our Southern garden included lizards and bats (which are very useful and friendly little beasts which eat the omnipresent evil mosquitoes).

    Baby en rouge mostly behaved himself on the train. Howling was limited to the last few minutes when he took great exception to being strapped into his car seat.
    Fortunately my fellow passengers were mostly sympathetic older ladies. I swear he did it on purpose to show me up...
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Glad to hear he's got a good pair of lungs, La Vie! I'd been thinking of you and wondering when you'd be back from your holidays. Hope you're all well-rested and had a good time!

    Our bird-feeder is being besieged by pigeons, who are about three times the size of our friends the mourning-doves, although the latter don't seem too fazed by them: as I type this, they're all flocking to it together, and even seem to be taking turns.

    What they don't know is that once it's empty, that's it until Friday when we can get another bag of seed ...

    They also have to share it with Tufty*, our friendly neighbourhood squirrel, who comes along most days for his breakfast, and you wouldn't believe how much he can put away!

    * I may be showing my age by assuming that squirrels are all called Tufty. :blush:
  • Piglet wrote: »
    * I may be showing my age by assuming that squirrels are all called Tufty. :blush:

    Another member of the Tufty club here :smiley:
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited August 2018
    I once had a pair of blue trousers like Tufty's...
    :sunglasses:

    IJ
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    They also have to share it with Tufty*, our friendly neighbourhood squirrel, who comes along most days for his breakfast, and you wouldn't believe how much he can put away!

    I've seen a tee shirt with a picture of a squirrel and the words, 'Excuse me but your bird feeder is empty'.

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    That turned up as a Facebook meme the other day. :smiley:

    If you're virtually hungry, I've just made a pot of tomato, celery and apple SOUP, so help yourselves.
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    Ooh your soup sounds nice @Piglet. I've got rather a lot of a cous cous salad left if anyone wants a main course.
    Glad you had a good time with the inlaws @la vie en rouge . I bet Baby en rouge had a right good fuss made of him.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    edited August 2018
    Piglet, that soup sounds delicious and summery.
  • Ah, but will it be as good as the Portuguese Caldo Verde which my wife has made for lunch?
  • I’m on for the caldo verde (I don’t like tomato soup). In reality I’m having smoked venison slices and a poached egg for lunch.
  • Hold the poached egg, please.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    Wouldn't that get a bit messy?

    MMM
  • :)
    I love poached eggs, I’d add one on top of the caldo verde too.
  • There are several Portuguese dishes which have an egg (fried, I think) floating on top - but IME Caldo Verse isn't one of them.

    "Chacun à son goût" however!
  • There are several Portuguese dishes which have an egg (fried, I think) floating on top - but IME Caldo Verse isn't one of them.

    "Chacun à son goût" however!
    Had an excellent pizza, in Venice of all places, which was topped with a fried egg. Otherwise it was veggie & fish and while it would have horrified any self-respecting Neapolitan, it was a very good pizza.
  • Sounds like my ideal pizza, I tend to have spinach, egg and cheese.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    We're just back from seeing the St Petersburg ballet doing Swan Lake at the Coloseum. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

    I said to Macarius that I had never gone through the little girl 'I want to be a ballerina' phase. He just looked at me and said, 'and do you think the art world suffered?'

    MMM
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    For some reason (it may be something to do with Monday being a bank holiday here) D's pay was in early, so we postponed the SOUP until tomorrow and had a scoot round Costco instead, and had lunch there (chicken fingers and chips - not exactly haute cuisine, and resulting in the Devil's own thirst).

    Then, as has been our wont on Thursday evenings during the summer, we met up with some of the choir in our local for a bite and a bit of good company.

    Back to old clothes and porridge next week, as my dad used to say.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    Then, as has been our wont on Thursday evenings during the summer, we met up with some of the choir in our local for a bite ...
    Are you all vampires, then?

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Ho ho ho ...

    After D's recital today we were invited to lunch by a couple in the choir (the ones we did the house-sit for, so we dutifully paid our respects to the cat). As it was a glorious day - sunny, 22° with no humidity to speak of - we ate in their beautiful garden, watching the squirrels and birdies enjoying the offerings at their feeders (it was looking after their birdie bistro that prompted us to open our own) and occasionally making a fuss of the aforementioned cat.

    The conversation turned to the excellent crop of crab-apples they've had, and I'm now the proud owner of a huuuuge bag of crab-apples, which I'll turn into jelly once I've found a (hopefully) piglet-proof recipe. They also gave us a few flowers from a lovely hydrangea plant, which at their suggestion we're going to dry - I just took the leaves off and set the flowers into an empty vase. They have a similar one that's been in their sitting-room since we were staying there, and it looks really good.

    I may do a spot of light ambling before it gets dark - it's really too nice an evening to waste.
  • Just back from walking the pooches.

    Mr Boogs has man flu so I offered to make the evening meal. He said ‘no, let’s have a take away’.

    Says it all about my cooking skills :tongue:
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    You want to get him a nice curry - nothing better for clearing out the tubes when you've got a cold the flu. :smiley:

    Hope he feels better soon.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited September 2018
    Man-flu (a Most Serious Ailment) is, as enny fule kno, best treated with copious doses of GIN, ALE, or WHISKY (well, IMNSHO, anyway).

    Mr. Boogs is clearly Not At All Well, and must in all charity be treated thusly.

    Meanwhile, crab-apple JELLY or JAM is a very toothsome addition to bread-and-butter (or toast-and-butter).

    ION, September has begun here in Ukland with a most beautiful late summer day - light (but balmy) zephyrs, warm sunshine, and blue skies.
    :grin:

    I managed to trim the front lawn at Our Place this morning, without too much fatigue, and hope to do the same to our east end 'woodland glade' (overshadowed by two HUGE plane trees) on Monday. We have a potential (fingers crossed!) new priest-in-charge visiting on Wednesday next, so we want the place to look neat and tidy.

    IJ
  • It’s been a marvellous summery day this 1st of Sept and I’ve made more progress with taming the small front and back jungles gardens and have decided that with careful and mixed planting I can probably get by without the allotment, after I’ve harvested the grapes. Probably prompted by a ridiculous email from one of the other committee members trying to over tighten the Rules and generally rattling cages. But I guess that’s what committees are all about, and I for one don’t need to play their game.
    So I now have a thornless blackberry waiting to go into the front garden and am wondering what can be moved (plants, water butts etc) from t’ plot, as well as looking forward to a trip to the garden centre for baby veggies.
  • Sounds like a Plan!

    Committees - of all sorts -should be condemned to Hell forthwith.

    Or even fifthwith, IYSWIM.

    IJ
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