Not a real loaf

Dough used by the soprano, Rosie (playing Alice) who was in the Alice Beech scene in Who is Molly Leigh? On the scene she pretends to make penny loaves for the widows and orphans of Burslem. When she passes away she bequeaths her cottage to Alice. The scene shows Alice baking and donating penny loaves to the poor.

One of the props every performance was some dough so she had something to represent the work at baking she did while she was singing her part. This was left over at the end of the Opera so I decided to make it into a Cottage loaf shape! No yeast involved and not cooked.

Bara brith for tea.

With a cup of tea.

Just back from Llandudno in Wales where my sister bought me a Welsh fruit loaf for a treat. I just had a couple of slices with some butter and a cup of tea. Very nice. Apparently it’s lost favour with younger people but I’d urge you to try it.

Wikipedia says :

History:

Bara Brith derived its name from the Welsh languagebara meaning bread and brith translating as speckled. It was traditionally made in farmhouses by adding fruit, sugar and spices to the basic bread dough to make a sweet treat for special occasions. It has subsequently been used as a colloquialism—to “over spice the Bara Brith” means to do something to excess.

We got two loaves from a little tea and cake shop in Llandudno.

Swanning about

The silver blue water of Westport Lake in Stoke on Trent today. This Swan was one of many that were searching for food. It had cygnets in tow, almost free of the pale brown plumage. The swans got out of the lake later as visitors were feeding them bread (not an ideal diet) but in this weather they need sustenance. They even tried a swift peck at my friends arm!

We only walked a couple of miles but that was enough for today. I was chilled by a cold breeze and glad to get back to the car. I will do more walks.

Chopped

Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was chopped. I could have drawn a can of chopped tomatoes, or a tree chopped down. But I wanted to play with ideas so I sketched a loaf chopped in half, I was using the various digital drawing apps that I have on my phone. Seeing if I could import the image between each of them!

Winter stew

I just made a vegetarian stew for dinner. I could have made Staffordshire Lobby which is a beef based stew, lobbing all sorts of things into the pot. But I used a meat substitute, Quorn pieces.

Basically I put two small chopped potatoes, two small sliced carrots and half a sweet potato, peeled and sliced, into a pan and covered them in boiling water. I let them simmer for a few minutes, then chopped up a small red onion, chopped some slices off a cabbage (about a sixth of it) and two sticks of celery sliced up. Then I added half a pack of Quorn and a couple of teaspoons of Lazy Garlic. I let everything simmer for about twenty minutes. Then I added a couple of vegetable stock cubes. Let it cook for a few more minutes before serving with a hunk of brown bread and vegetable spread. I didn’t add salt, but if you do add it on top of the stew when you serve, that way it sits on the food and doesn’t get absorbed into it. That means you don’t eat too much salt. You can also add pepper at the end.

Limerick

Today’s prompt for Esther Chiltons limerick challenge is Bread this week. I wrote this poem to be humorous and although I hate marmite I wouldn’t try and stop anyone else eating it.

Limericks have two rhyming lines at the start, then two lines with a different rhyme and then one single, final line, that rhymes with the first two.

Maybe it’s time to get your pen out…?

Play with the words, it’s fun, no doubt!

Rhyme and couplet

Words you can bet

You can be a real limerick lout!

Making bread

The blob

I decided to make a loaf today. Its just gone in the oven for half an hour, gas mark eight. Today’s loaf is half a packet of ready mixed linseed oil bread and half strong white flower. To make sure I had the right amount of flour I tipped flour from the big bag of strong flour into the small half full one till it was filled (I don’t have scales). Then as the strong flour didn’t have yeast I added a level teaspoon of dried yeast. I mixed it with about half a pint of luke warm water and a teaspoon of honey. I should perhaps have added a bit of oil and salt, but I decided not to.

The photo is the dough after it had risen, doubling on size, then it was knocked back and allowed to rise again. I’m happy with how much it has expanded. I hope the loaf that comes out will be light and fluffy… We will see. X