For Ruth a speed blog post – I made a batch of squishy soft dough today with 200 grams of bubbly sourdough starter, probably about 150% hydration but I can’t be sure as it was all a bit random.

I used more or less:

• 200 g sourdough starter
• 500 g of mixed wheat flours
• 12 g of seasalt
• a dessertspoon of spraymalt
• 100 g of thick home made yoghurt
• about 40 g butter and
• then water.. about 300-320g I can’t quite remember

I don’t know quite what I had in mind but when I came to shape it, the dough didn’t want to be a boule, it sighed a lot, it flopped and said, ‘I can’t hold this form, don’t ask it of me.’ My dough often says that and rather than create one of those low profiled boules   for the umpteenth time –

– I rolled it out and cut it into pieces (remembering the muffins we made the other week) and left them to prove for about three hours and cooked them in the same fashion as those. Fried on a not too hot dry steel pan for about 3 to 4 minutes each side, with a wok lid over the top to keep the steam in and then into the oven at 180-190 C to finish baking for another 10 – 12 minutes, depending on size. They needed a longer time in the oven than the muffins and weren’t as fabulously light as those were, I reckon the egg is the secret ingredient that gives those muffins lift and softens the crumb. So if you have a go at this, add an egg in there.

With the left over dough I made some plain flat breads which we had with minestrone at lunch time, they were pretty good.

Later on I had a wander round the garden to see if I could forage a salad to go in the ugly buns with some cold chicken for a light supper.

I attempted very small snail (half a little fingernail) photography, they move surprisingly fast and this was the best of ten shots…

I couldn’t quite face eating the overwintered chard in its raw state, even though I picked the smallest leaves they were still too chewy for me.

So I hope this counts as an attempt at the 52 week salad challenge for January. I haven’t sown any new seeds yet so I am going to have to work a bit harder if I am joining in next month!  To find out all about the challenge visit Michelle at Veg Plotting.

I confess it was a ‘warm salad’ in the end, OK it was a stir-fry ( I cannot tell a lie when it comes to food blogging)  but it had nothing in it that didn’t grow in the garden!

I have no polytunnel and no greenhouse so all these are just growing outside higgledy piggledy, more by accident than by design that they were there for me this afternoon.  I have seen lots of chives, or wild onion grass growing locally but I didn’t pick any today.

In the garden I found and picked:-

• Self sown leeks
• The carrot thinnnings that I replanted hopefully when I pulled our carrots. Yes! We have some perky little carrots that came up again!
• Rainbow Chard – surviving the depredations of the wood pigeon, who in turn are the smarter ones who survive the sparrow hawk’s daily visits. I have to admire them as well as shout and bang on the window at them.
• Everlasting Spinach -a bit coarse but growing cheerfully
• The last of the coriander leaves
• Curly leaved parsley
• A garlic clove that that I had planted about two years ago in the flower bed, forgot all about that, yes I added that in.
• Australian mint
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Masses of bright new Greek oregano leaves, little plants seeding themselves everywhere
• Primrose flowers

The buns looked very ugly…

– a bit like squashed overripe Camembert pretending to be bread, but they tasted good when we ate them stuffed with cold chicken, warm stir fried garden gleanings and a dollop of Farringdons Gold Mayonnaise.

These two final pics are from the iPad camera so not that good but you get the general idea…