[Update: does anybody know why one only adds raisins or nuts near the end of the kneading cycle? They'd dry out the dough or something?]
It is delicious.
I started with the simplest recipe: just wholemeal flour, quick-yeast, butter, water, and sugar and salt. (I always thought the sugar was for taste, but it is in a tiny quantity and is there to influence the rising.) I think one could even do without the salt and the butter, maybe I'll try just for kicks.
Only imperfection of the loaf is a faint odor of either dough or yeast, I'm not sure which. I did use a whole sachet of yeast though, next time I'll use less like the recipe says.
Mike said:
You can't leave out the salt when baking bread. It enhances the texture by stopping the yeast operating so it controls the fermentation rate of the yeast. It also strengthens the effect on the glutens n the dough.
h2g2 says: "Salt is an essential ingredient, so don't skip it. Bread is insipid without the addition of salt. It also conditions the dough, making it firmer and more resilient and it tempers the yeast, thus making the bread more digestible. On a simple level, the more salt there is, the longer the dough takes to rise. Generally, longer-maturing doughs require more salt than shorter-time doughs.
How about the quality of the salt? Table salt and free-running salts available in the supermarket have magnesium carbonate and other chemicals added to keep them dry and free-running. If the aim is to make and eat 'real' bread, pure salt should be used. Fortunately, seasalt and rocksalt are both easily sourced these days."
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TTL said there'd be a riot if I posted something which pushed Nigella Lawson down on the page without a new picture to make up for it. I aim to please.
By the way maybe this and definitely the first picture of her I suspect of being much retouched, based on snapshots elsewhere. Nobody is that beautiful, and she does not appear to be in snapshots.
If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have thought of it, but they can really alter features in Photoshop. For instance, in the picture below, I suspect her smile has been widened.
5 comments:
You can't leave out the salt when baking bread. It enhances the texture by stopping the yeast operating so it controls the fermentation rate of the yeast. It also strengthens the effect on the glutens n the dough.
h2g2 says: "Salt is an essential ingredient, so don't skip it. Bread is insipid without the addition of salt. It also conditions the dough, making it firmer and more resilient and it tempers the yeast, thus making the bread more digestible. On a simple level, the more salt there is, the longer the dough takes to rise. Generally, longer-maturing doughs require more salt than shorter-time doughs.
How about the quality of the salt? Table salt and free-running salts available in the supermarket have magnesium carbonate and other chemicals added to keep them dry and free-running. If the aim is to make and eat 'real' bread, pure salt should be used. Fortunately, seasalt and rocksalt are both easily sourced these days."
Thanks, Mike.
Odd, though, Delia makes it sound as though it's there for the taste and that one can easily omit it, for instance for health reasons.
How about a picture of just her tits (any nude pix out there?) - that's all we're looking at anyway.
-Brian
I bet she shags like a minx.
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