Zeb Bakes

This robin has worked really hard all summer and apparently it’s quite normal to look like this during the moulting season.

The bird has probably been involved in some territorial fighting; it’s very common for robins to pull out each others’ head feathers; these should regrow once the moult is complete. She is friendly and inquisitive (the bird watcher’s term for this is ‘confiding’) and is a great observer of humankind, knowing when the feeders are being filled up and will come to Brian’s hand for scraps.

On one of our recent hot days I was trying to wash something down outside and she flew over and dashed through the spray from the hose. I stopped what I was doing and gazed after her.

She sat in this tree and dipped and bobbed her head at me.

I thought for a moment, then I pressed the trigger of the hose again and arced the water in a fine mist as before; she flew straight back through the spray. She did this several times before flying off to sit in the ivy.

One of my precious Brown Turkey figs

The ornamental vine produces some surprisingly realistic grapes!

The Family Apple tree (three grafts one root stock) is bowed down to the ground with fruit

Maureen’s cucumber plant gift

First crop of pears in five years – not ripe yet

The raised bed looks a little wild and unruly now

It’s a jungle down under the apple tree, a long forgotten perennial sweet pea has appeared

I let the artichoke flower this year, it’s the only one left, the others didn’t make it through the winter

The weather changes yet again….

Happy Birthday dear Zeb!

Before bread making, (BBM) I had a dog, in fact two, but I didn’t bake. I had one recipe for liver cake which the dog trainer gave me which I made, froze and doled out for reward based training. Apart from that the dogs had cheese squares, bits of sausage, toast, the less disgusting dog chews, dried fish bits, dried ostrich bits, dried tripe. The usual sort of stuff a spoilt western dog gets given. It’s a huge industry – pet food. If you worry about the origins of your own food, don’t keep a pet unless you are prepared to start fretting about where their food comes from too. The ‘pet food’ industry is a murky place. I work on the principle that if it is pink and tastes of sugar and synthetic bacon it is probably not something I want my dog to eat. Dog tooth decay is endemic and dogs smell bad a lot of the time because of it. Really they don’t need treats at all, any more than we need chocolate brownies!

Crumb shot - looks better than my loaf does...

Then, the first time I made bread sticks, the dogs became very interested and for a while I experimented with variations on the bread stick theme…but the dogs were trained by the time they were about a year old and didn’t need so many exotic treats to get them to do what they should be doing… I made the odd batch of liver cake, but it wasn’t really needed. Then we discovered that the supermarkets did small boxes of cocktail sausages and lazily we moved on to those for those days when the dogs needed some little something extra or were being looked after by someone else who needed a hand.

But Steve’s comment today (see his recent post on his delightful blog Burntloafer) reminded me that not so long ago he had used some sourdough to make tasty treats for his fussy dogs and Abby says she doesn’t mind the odd dog post… So today, having made a very flat pain de campagne, one of those breads, that sticks to the banneton and then collapses and spreads on the peel, to rouse itself into a light arc in the oven, sighing all the while, “Forgive me, I know I was supposed to be a jaunty, springy little number but this is all I can manage today, honest… whine, whinge….”

(Does sourdough suffer with depression sometimes?)

Please love me anyway....

Sorry where was I?

So being the dog’s birthday and all, what the hell, make him some sourdough treats, he eats enough bits of toast… he knows what it tastes like. If he doesn’t eat them I will offer them around with some taramasalata.

This is what I made:

Sourdough chicken parmesan potato birthday dog treats

Strip 3 ounces of chicken off last night’s roast chicken pieces
Blitz in small food processor to crumbs
Mix with 1 cold cooked potato
Add an egg
Add 75 – 100 grams white sourdough starter
Throw in a tablespoon of left over parmesan (Zeb would walk over his mother to get to the cheese)
Mix together
Add enough bread flour to make a sticky but manageable dough
Knead a bit
Sprinkle lots of flour on a board, pat the dough out
Hunt for your dog bone biscuit cutter
Cut out shapes
Put on parchment lined tray
Cover with towel, leave to prove for about an hour
Heat oven to 200 C Fan
Put trays in oven
After 20 minutes take little biscuit sized treats out
Turn down the oven to 180 C and give the big bone shaped treats another 10 minutes
Take out and allow to cool

Do a taste test. Yes, they’re acceptable to everyone.

This is a crazy world. We shouldn’t be baking for our dogs. On the other hand if you see the rubbish or dare to taste the stuff that the pet food industry wants you to give your dogs as treats, you would consider doing the same. Given that I have a pair of dogs in my home, the deal is they give me eternal love, I give them food, a walk a day, a warm bed and just once in a while – sourdough chicken biscuits.