Burning away the Clouds

Today Radio 4 promised in a poetic moment that the clouds would burn away as the day went on and it would get a bit warmer. Here’s hoping!

In the garden, there are daffodils, the magnolia is unfurling a first bloom, the hellebores are at their best, and there is leaf burst here and there, with tight buds on the bay shrub and glossy new leaves.

A pair of handsome jackdaws are ripping all the moss out of our little lawn, which is slowly being colonised by daisies. I think the jackdaws have a plan. They arrived about three weeks ago, figured out how to balance yin yang style on one of the feeders meant for the small birds, but are very equable with the other birds, yielding gently and avoiding arguments. My sort of bird!

The hawthorn is full of juicy green leaf clusters, the alliums are getting ready to play host to bees. I saw one huge bumble bee the other day, slowly going through the garden, but it really is too cold for bees to be out and about right now. The cardoons have survived the winter, as have many of the other plants; in particular, there is the thrill of peonies to come, big fat shoots making their way through the leaf litter.

I think of my friend Betty, who I keep safe in my heart, when I see the peonies making their way to the surface, she loved peonies and planted them all round her Edmonton house. That’s how I know they can survive a cold winter!

Tubs full of last year’s spring bulbs are purposeful once more.

On the kitchen table I have some tulips from a kind friend, but it feels a bit like cheating . What do you think about cut flowers? I have very mixed feelings.

The wood pigeons are still feeding from their little ground feeder on the vegetable bed, the walls of which have suffered once more with all the repeated frosts; the wooden seat under the birch trees has begun to rot away and is host to a determined fringe of fungi. Some re-thinks due here in the next year or so.

By the side of the playing field adjoining the woods, the plum trees in the hedge are covered in tight little white buds; the first intrepid few opening only yesterday.

It can be a time of conflicting emotions. All this new eager life, looking for sun and water, space and time, love and death – the big stuff, the stuff I don’t blog about. OK, just one more thing…

Today it is a year since Alan Peck died. We miss him still and are grateful for the gift of his teaching and his life. I hadn’t known him that long, less than a year, but his smile lit up a room and his welcome was extraordinary. If we all smiled like he did and opened our hearts the world would be a better place.

The Buddha said:
This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

THE ONLY THING WE REALLY HAVE IS NOWNESS, IS NOW.

What the caterpillar perceives as the end, to the butterfly is just the beginning.

The Partisan Baker’s Sourdough Primer

My friend Mick Hartley bakes bread at home, but unlike me he works really hard at it and for several days and nights a week transforms his home into a microbakery, taking orders and selling wonderful loaves to his customers. Somewhere along the way he has found the time to work on his books and I’ve just bought a copy of the first of these, which is called Bethesdabasics. Illustrated beautifully by Wendy Shea and written in a clear and succinct manner this book deals with the business of making sourdough in a way that strips away much of the anxiety and worries that the aspiring sourdough baker is prone to.

: Cheers Mick!

Next time I offer to show a friend how to get started with the sourdough, this will be an excellent book to have on hand. I am well aware that there are many fine baking books around and more seem to come out all the time, but there is much to treasure in this book and I like the way Mick’s calm and unfussy approach comes through in the writing. You are in safe hands with the Partisan Baker.

When I first started baking Mick used to post on Dan Lepard’s forum and he gave me loads of advice which has stood me and many others in good stead. Most memorably when I was dithering around and getting obsessed with different types of flour and trying to make baguettes, he told me not to worry and just make the bread with what I had on the shelf. I think the hardest thing when you start out is figuring out what you need to worry about and what you don’t and I reckon if you follow along with Mick’s lessons here you will have just the right amount of information to get on track to great bread and you will get the recipe for some ‘totally awesome’ flatbreads amongst many others.

Share the sourdough love

olive oil bread Dan Lepard foccacio sunshine

Lets hear it one more time for this Dan Lepard recipe!

We had fun today. It’s so good to bake with a friend! And as an added bonus the sun came out this afternoon, look how it transforms the bread!

First time sourdough!

We made Jeffrey Hamelman’s sourdough; the Vermont with the increased grain and we made Dan Lepard’s olive oil bread (a version of this here) only this time we followed the recipe from the Handmade Loaf exactly down to the last gram of malt and it was perfect. Maybe the best I’ve ever tasted, which I put down to my friend’s elegant stretch and fold technique and her gentle final dimpling. We chopped up some garden rosemary and threw that on the top together with some Cornish sea salt.

Light as air and fragrant with olive oil and rosemary

As none of it was ready by midday we had to defrost a loaf of bread for lunch and hunt out some soup too: but as this was a loaf of Cheese Bread made with fine Glastonbury Cheddar from Gloucester’s farmers’ market and the soup was our take on this great Christmas Lima bean and celery recipe we didn’t suffer too much.

Showing someone what you do in the privacy of your own kitchen there’s always that moment of self-doubt, well several quite often….Will the starter work, will it do what it should do, will the dough stick coming out of the banneton, will it rise, will the slashes open? And all the time, you’re answering questions, I’ve never known an activity for generating so many questions. It’s amazing that the bread gets made at all.

Boules of sourdough springing in the oven

But this time it worked fine. Happiness all round. I don’t know any other cooking activity that makes me feel this good. I love the quirky lively Chi-full shapes of the bread. I would recommend bread baking to anyone for sheer happiness. Find a friend, insist on baking with them, share the bread love.