Sometimes it really does feel as if I am in Wonderland, with all the unpredictability and excitement of Lewis Caroll’s seminal poem Jabberwocky.

I’m wondering if there is somewhere out there a book or a blog or a site that anyone has come across just with scoring patterns, showing direction of travel, angles, what letters work as scores and so on.  I do a lot of staring at photos of finished loaves trying to figure out what the start pattern might be.  The distortion of the oven spring is what gives the grace and liveliness to the pattern but it is one of those things that is hard to guess from the finished look and one of the things that potentially frustrates most.

All that work making the dough, nursing it through its long proves, handling, folding and shaping,  and then the  great hurdle of preparing it for the oven and  getting it into the oven is quite a trial too, big high hydration loaves collapsing while you look at them….. many cries of nooooo-oooo… my favourite being when they spread over the side of the stone and descend towards the oven floor.  :o

I want to be a contemplative taoist baker not a wild eyed combatant standing in uffish thought in front of the worktop and waving my vorpal sword.

Anyway it’s Jeffrey Hamelman’s  pizza today, no need for the razor blades to come out :) I’ve got some lovely marinated artichokes, the mozzarella, rocket in the garden – it’s looking good so far…..

What’s your jabberwocky moment in the kitchen, my baking friends?