Seeded Sourdough Loaf from Homebaker's club and the art of breadbaking

 I've been practicing 'The Art of Breadmaking' for some time, in fact years, and there is always something for the home baker to learn.  For a few months now I have been a member of The Homebaker's club following all the detailed on line classes from my bread hero Jack Sturgess. Recently I attempted the Seeded Sourdough Loaf.

Without watching the class, without reading the recipe properly, without working the timings correctly and not putting the dough to rise overnight in the fridge, I hadn't grasped some of the finer points.  Let alone not having a Dutch oven to use, with the ratios mixed up giving a much higher amount of wholemeal flour, we still ended up enjoying a very good loaf. 

Take two: I watched the lesson from start to finish, and because of my having made the loaf albeit not understanding the finer points, the second attempt took account of all of these and most probably these have sunk into my mind and can also be transferred to other sourdough bread making sessions.

I learnt that by rising the dough overnight in the fridge, it makes it possible to bake good bread in the morning, and the Dutch Oven technique although rather good, I am satisfied with the good round shape from baking on a pre heated Silverwood baking tray.  I was not waiting up late to bake the bread, or having to leave the bread to cool overnight.  There was no tearing or any weak points, and the dough opened up nicely along the score lines.

The only thing I did differently was that I did not add the seeds to the outside, as with the poppy seed rye loaves I have made, I wanted to spare all the bits on the worktop and floor from the bits that fall off as the bread is cut.  There are of course plenty of delicious seeds in the dough.

Bread making tools came to my drawing class, again lots of lessons learnt during my first drawing class. As with bread making lots of practice and attempts will be required to get any better.

From my Garden - Six on Saturday - 26 October 2024

 Ending the week with some sunshine makes wandering round the garden even more delightful. Not all life is closing down for the winter just yet, even though the Amelanchiers have shed all their leaves.  As most plants start to prepare for the winter, others are coming to the fore and  I find little tasks, and make a note what I would like to do the following day as I put away my tools.

I am linking as usual with other SOSers over at Jim's, it is not at all an 'exclusive club', find out there the guidance for anyone wishing to contribute six items from their gardens.

Acer Wakaranai (Japanese for 'unknown') 

1. I've rearranged some of the potted plants in the garden and placed a couple on the small round table the better to be seen not only a reasonable height but also from the window's at the back of the house.

2.  Behind it is a small flowered Chrysanthemum which is of similar colour to the acer: Chrysanthemum Picasso is such a neat, tidy and well behaved supposedly hardy Chrysanthemum.  I was asking around at the HPS meeting last week about it, and some had lost it during the very wet winter.  Having lost mine, thankfully  Brenda, to whom I had passed one of my propagated plants in 2022, gave me one back.

Chrysanthemum Picasso

3. As I was admiring the small flowers, camera in hand,  I spied a Cricket.  I have seen grasshoppers in the garden before, and I was chuffed that this Dark Bush Cricket wasn't camera shy. 

Dark Bush Cricket

and as if one interesting insect was not enough a few flowers away was a shield bug

 Gorse Shieldbug, Piezodorus lituratus 

Identification is thanks to a request on the Entomology Group on Facebook. I seem to have a few different types, and found some tips online on identifying them.

4, Mahonia Soft Caress is having its best year.  I've had this plant nearly ten years found and bought at Cotswold Garden flowers when I went out on a January excursion to Cotswold Garden Flowers. 

5.  Fuchsias continue to look attractive and growing there around the perimeter of the garden and allowing them to grow tall keeping the stems from the previous year has worked nicely. Here the white flowered Fuchsia 'Hawkshead' has kept its leaves so far, as well as its flowers and has been in bloom for months.

6.  The small silver leafed Fuchsia microphylla ssp. hemsleyana ‘Silver Lining’ is another of those plants in garden with close association with friends, and was brought here in a pot from my previous garden. It has not needed to be moved, and in its ideal sheltered spot, it still has flowers, it is showing off its tiny pretty purple fruits.

In a Vase on Monday in October

I was going to write something about the changing clocks and how I become quite discombobulated days before and days afterwards, and how I wished they would not mess around with the clocks. However as it not actually pouring with rain today,  I have decided that I would instead ground myself in the lovely activity of picking flowers and arranging them for today's rendezvous chez Cathy for In a Vase on Monday.

This week  another studio pottery vase found  a few years ago, with its asymmetrical shape and a low centre of gravity makes a return to IAVOM with a few small stems.  It looks that there may be three elements here, however both those lovely leaves and the white flowers are from Persicaria Red Dragon.  The Chrysanthemum is Chrysanthemum 'Picasso'.

It is towards September and October that any Chrysanthemums come to the fore in the garden.  They need the shortening days to come into flower.  I was able to reintroduce Chrysanthemum Picasso which I first acquired under the HPS Plant preservation Scheme.  I lost it as it did not prove to be hardy, or was it that I had dug it up and potted it up to have some protection during the winter months. This year it is staying in the ground but with a good mulch.  I do hope it survives, as it is such a lovely plant just the right size for the garden here.

The Ginkgo has started to turn a lovely yellow, so a few leaves were picked up to nestle at the base of the arrangement.

Pumpkin gnocchi for lunch

 

It is pumpkin time again, and a large Turk's Turban was split and roasted on Wednesday in preparation for a big Mexican inspired soup when several friends from the WI came over for the book club.  Many of the pieces have been stored away in the freezer for future use, with some still in the fridge.  My sister asked if I knew of any pasta recipes and I set to to find some links for her.  This led to my making some pumpkin gnocchi for our lunch today.

To get to the base mix, I had to process the baked pumpkin.  I just have a small attachment to my hand held stick blender, but by diving up the mixture of around 300g baked pumpkin, it was possible.  The pumpkin baked up very firm by that I mean not at all watery, and the mixture was very dry, so I added two eggs.  Just around 200g of OO flour kneaded into the mixture gave just the right consistency.  The recipe I found on line was just a guide, and it didn't have salt, but I definitely would add salt next time, neither did it have any eggs, but since we were having this as a main course the extra protein was good.

We had half of these gnocchi for our lunch, and the other half are now being frozen down. Several of the recipes I looked up mentioned a dressing of butter and sage.  Here two pans are ready to start the cooking: the large frying pan of water was to boil the gnocchi, and the small one for preparing the butter and sage.

I treated myself and a friend to something from the Wells Food Festival just last week, and decided to try them for the first time.  I gently crushed the soft black salted Kampot pepper corns in a little olive oil and added a few fine strands of sage which I have gently heated in a little oi.  before melting the butter for the remainder of the gnocchi sauce.

At the same time as frying up the freshly picked sage from the garden I added in a good measure of roasted pumpkin seeds which I have ready to add to salads etc., and the whole was topped with some grated goat's cheese.

The dressing of sage and pepper infused olive oil was drizzled over the chopped tomatoes as a side salad and placed within the bowl....

Improvements for next time: salt the gnocchi and also the poaching liquid.

Use that dressing of sage, olive oil and bruised Kampot pepper corns to dress fresh sliced tomatoes served with anything else, it was delicious!

Possible food pairings: pumpkin gnocchi poached in a sweeten sauce and topped with toasted pecan nuts and maple syrup, alongside a dollop of yogurt?  

Years ago on holiday in  Austria in a traditional hill side hotel, we were served a simple dessert of dumplings with a vanilla sauce which was surprisingly good and obviously memorable..it was dressed with a scattering of toasted poppyseeds.  

From my garden , Six on Saturday - 19 October 2024

We have had rain: lots of it, a couple of days where for part there has been sunshine, but we have had no frosts.  How do I know for sure you may ask? The little nasturtium plants which sprouted up, once some top growth from early flowering perennials was cleared, are still standing well, turning their leaves as the sun travels from east to west.  I only mention this as I wonder whether there will be observations about the weather when I and several others link into Jim's post. There you will find how to join in yourself should you wish.

For now here are six random musings or observations this week, mainly chosen as some time during the week I ventured out and caught something on camera. As friends who came to lunch on Thursday observed: there is still a lovely amount of colour in the garden.

1. For the first time I have planted autumn flowering Crocus speciosus Oxonian.  It was rather a gamble as to where to plant the bulbs which I bought from Pottertons at the Rare Plant Fair in Wells only a few weeks ago.

  

Crocus speciosus Oxonian

There was a big clump of Origanum Bristol Cross which was getting rather congested, that got dug up to make way for the Crocus.  At the same time Squirrels are finding any softish piece of ground to burry their nuts, so the lovely twigs from a Magnolia that I had in the house as 'dried plant' material were retired into the garden to form a cage which also helped to keep the blackbirds off that area.  They have rather suffered in the pouring rain, but a couple of days of less rain and some sunshine drew me into the garden to admire them. 

2. One of my favourite areas in the garden is the gravel garden as it is there that I place plants apart and this doesn't look strange, in the sense that the current trend is to have full borders.  I used to volunteer at the Elizabethan gardens in Kenilworth, and learnt that back in those days, the 'exotic' plants were so precious that they were placed separately so that each precious plant could be admired.  My gravel garden functions as a place to appreciate the forms of plants.  This week the Allium thunbergii is probably the top star of the gravel garden.

Allium thunbergii Ozawa

3. And because I grew this Cyclamen myself from seed, this plant in the gravel area gives me even greater pleasure.  The pattern and richness of the leaf alone as it emerges and the relief I feel that it has survived another year, is exhilarating. There were two small tubers of Cyclamen graecum subs. candicum a little too close together, in the picture below it is to the left, a little out of focus, and yesterday I dug it up and moved it to a better position, which I hope will be successful. Looking at the root it was has the characteristic thickened long root. It is advisable to grow this one in a glass house, and since I don't have one but only a sheltered garden, I am delighted that it survives.

 4.  I just need to get close to this plant to look into the very small blooms to be amazed by the complexity of the petals.  It is a Knapweed, and in any case I love the wild ones too, but this plant is small and just the right size for the garden.

Serratula tinctoria var. seoanei

With bright light and a drop in the wind, a good close up was possible.   

5. By the conservatory, from where I can sit and look at the garden,  there are some rose bushes, and despite not having given them the care they ought to have had, they are giving a fine display. This is Rose Grace which I keep dead heading almost daily. I probably showed these a few weeks ago, but they have continued to give a lovely apricot warm glow even on the grey days.

6. New England aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae 'Purple Dome' is standing up to the rain and wind and I particularly like it as it does not require any staking.

Today I am off to attend the HPS meeting and am looking forward to hearing  Paul Cumbleton's talk ‘A Growing Addiction: Bulbs from the Winter Rainfall Area of South Africa’.  

Garden flowers in a vase on Monday

Even part way through October it is still possible to pick a few blooms for In a Vase on Monday.  This post is going to be the 300th of the series of Monday vases which I have created to link into Cathy's blog where having crafted her first vase many years ago has been gathering fellow gardeners and flower lovers.  Cutting flowers from the garden is a sure way to record what is going on there. 

The flowers were not grown specially for arranging, instead I pick bits and pieces from the garden.  The vase is a studio pottery vase I happened to spot in a charity shop many years ago.

 

The starting point for this vase is the white Chrysanthemum White Gem 21f, which I bought from Halls of Heddon a couple of seasons ago.  

The sedums are looking good and here we have two varieties on the left of the picture is Hylotelephium 'Herbstfreude', better known as Sedum Autumn Joy.  Most of the blooms in the sun have gained a red rusty shade, but this one was shaded, and on the left is the lovely pale pink Sedum 'Frosty Morn'. This is a particularly long flowering sedum.

Both flowers and seed heads of Japanese anemone 'September Charm' are used and below on the right the flowers look a little bashful.

Lastly adding foliage and a little accent is the Fuchsia Tom West, a nice plant at the front of the border and again one I have had for years, 

Six things in the garden - SOS 12.10.2024

 There is nothing quite like a walk around the neighbourhood and looking over walls etc to catch what is looking good in gardens locally.  For a wider view and also into back gardens the place to go is firstly over at Jim's at 'garden ruminations' and through the links there within the comments you can view many other gardens.

The bucket which if left out gives me an idea of the amount of rain that has fallen.  It was a bucket load, really, right up to the top over two days, I wished I had taken a picture! The mulches have been ordered and are now stacked ready for application, but I did have time to do a few jobs as soon as it stopped. I was suffering with cabin fever after the two days of rain, and being outside in the garden is a sure cure.

Yesterday it was dry and sunny, yes all within one week such a huge variation.  

1. I am in need of pink asters as I have seen some lovely ones along my local walks.  In the meantime here is a little dwarf one: Symphyotrichum novi belgii 'Trudi Ann' which has survived the downfalls very nicely and is front of the conservatory border. 

2. Just as I thought I had seen the last of the bumblebees for the season, when the sun came out there they were, and I suppose it is because there are still several plants in bloom, with the asters, and yet to flower chrysanthemums.  The Fuchsias seem to have been a good food source.  I've allowed this Fuchsia which is a hardy one with quite large flowers to grow with some wooden stems over a couple of years with just the softer growth cut back, I had seen this way of treating hardy Fuchsias on a garden visit to East Lambrook Manor with the Alpine Garden Society a couple of years ago.  On Thursday and Friday they were humming with the sound of the bees.

3. Ladybirds too have been noticed, such as this one on the seed head of grass Miscanthus nepalensis,  I'm not sure if this is a 22-spot ladybird or it could be a harlequin ladybird.

4. I guess a snail enthusiast would have been delighted to find this sight in a pile a broken crocks stored in under the potting shed, and then gone on to find many more.  Snails too go into hibernation.

5, When I am scrolling through Facebook I come across interest groups probably selected for me by AI and my eye was caught by the Kusamono and Shitakusa group.  The form is a little miniature gathering of plants to show alongside Bonsai.  I have neither the fancy pots or the artistic flair to participate, however it has perhaps shaped my view of the arrangements I had made in the past.   I have been known to grow little miniature gardens in old bonsai pots or shallow dishes, and also love the moss which grows on them. Here moss covered stones were appropriated from another bowl that had recently been dismantled. 

Having found a little self grown fern which will probably grow into a Japanese painted fern Athyrium niponicum which I have had in the garden for a long time, I placed Sisyrinchium biscutella to act as 'the grass thing', and a little creeping Thymus serpyllum minimus which I just happened to have bought from Graham at his stall at Wells market.

6. Loropetalum Fire Dance has now recovered nicely after its ordeal and hard prune back in 2023. I find this red leaved Chinese witch hazel works well contrasting with other plants in the sheltered shady border. This will be one of the border that will be mulched over the coming week.

Loropetalum Fire Dance

Even when most garden flowers are over I still love to be out 'playing in the garden'.  This coming week I shall be mulching and moving plants indoors and into shelter in the shed. the garden is small so it all within my capabilities, which I am pleased about.  

Poppy Seed Heads in a Vase on Monday

This week's post and arrangement has been inspired by finding these on the soil in the garden.  Gastropods that is to cover all the little snails and slugs that are currently not only tidying away fallen items but also green living material.

 They are so beautiful and hopefully I will have time this week to make a sketch of them.

How did they get to be like that?  A few weeks ago I threw out the dried flower arrangement that had been gracing our dining room for over a year, and had chucked the seed heads over one of the beds.  I love poppies, and after they have filled a gap, and set seed, I harvest them and stick them in a vase. 

 Only last Sunday I decided to cut off the heads of this year's crop to harvest the poppy seeds which I use in my baking.  The seeds are smaller than the commercially available baker's poppy seeds, and it just gives me so much satisfaction to use whatever is in the garden.

Well it is a Vase on Monday, so I had better get on with something in a vase. The poppy seed heads had been sitting in the taller of the glass vases, and yes I had even kept the stems as the form of the pale straw and green stems added a dramatic composition especially with when the shadows fall against the wall.  

That probably doesn't cut the mustard so a little close up of a very pretty glass vase, a present from my Australian sister, from one of her holidays.  This vase is a little work of art, as within the blue glass are slices of smaller 'flowers' of glass and the surface is marbled with gold leaf applied before the glass is fully blown out.

Just as somewhere to put them, there are some blooms that I had made with wire. And just my chance it was in here that I had deposition the tiniest of the poppy seed heads.

Later when I have rattled my seed heads empty, I shall scatter the empty ones over the garden, and watch as each day more of the outer casing is etched away, and hopefully I shall be able to harvest more eroded seed heads, and am already planning what to do with them.

A short note about the pie dish that I used this year to lay the seed heads in.  It is a stoneware pie dish by the studio potter Simon Eeles.  I spoke with him at his exhibition at Ford Abbey when I went with our WI group 'Bloomin Fun' a couple of years ago and fell in love with this piece.

For real fresh flower arrangements Cathy will have come up with something beautiful, and I am sure there will be many more linked into her post this week.  

Somerset Rural Life Museum - another excellent exhibition ‘Spinning A Yarn’

‘Spinning A Yarn’ is a celebration of British wool and since we are already members of this excellent museum in Glastonbury, we decided to head over on Saturday morning.

The Mapstone Gallery had a few displays about the history of wool through artefacts and oral histories. 

Both Mr S and myself greatly admired these samples of hand weaving by Gladys Dickinson and Norah Biddulph. Having first met int he 1930s Gladys and Norah begun their small spinning and weaving business.  They used locally sourced wool and natural dyes to manufacture woven textiles.  Having been commissioned in 1956 by Mrs Harry Fox to weave a curtain based on the colours of a piece of serpentine rock, they then went on to use coloured stones as an inspiration for their designs.

There was a variety of contemporary artworks of which these caught my eye:

By Jane Ogden, Form  Four Weld

Gladys Paulus

After a short rest with coffee in the sunny barn courtyard, we went into the barn to watch the film by Trevor Pitts.  We sat on benches topped in lovely soft warm wool mats and had wool blankets to keep us warm had we needed them. It was interesting to learn a little more about Fernhill Farm, up on the Mendips. Just now I have found a shop selling yarn from sheep reared there: Lace Knittery.

On the other side of the barn a large installation by Nicola Turner took full advantage of both the height and size of the barn, but was too dark to photograph. (activate to see a picture of it)

I recognised the style as their had been a piece last year when we visited the Wells Art  Contemporary last year. 

Our walk around Uphill near Weston super Mare

 From our walks along Brean Down which juts out into the sea, looking north along the coast towards Weston super Mare a church is silhouetted above a cliff just the other side of a small estuary.  We often wondered where that was and whether one day we would go and explore the area. 

Our weekly outing was moved to Thursday as fine weather was forecast. We parked with ease along Uphill way and turning left by the Marina found ourself on a well surfaced path leading along the base of the old quarry along which we first came across a preserved lime kiln and later the explosives store.

 Later we turned and followed a beaten track up the grassland to the tower and then the church.

Uphill Tower

From the hill top above the quarry there were fine views across the estuary towards Wales. Brean down is just on the left hand side.

Views towards to Wales

From the Church a steep rocky footpath criss crossed lower down by many tree roots took us straight down the hill back to Uphill Way, where we had a light lunch at La Cucina Italiana, which was really Greek rather than Italian, then we wound our way back home along the picturesque southern slopes of the Mendips.

Pimping my porridge - I've been doing it for years

I was chatting to a couple of young people this week, that is just something I do, I love to chat to people, anyone I meet young or old. 

We were talking about breakfasts and they were really quite surprised that me, a seemingly old fogey, well they did not use that expression, but really to anyone in their early twenties, I am an old lady,  that I 'pimped' my porridge.  They were also really interested in the concept and asked me for ideas, which I shared.

This is just one example from this week: sweet cinnamon, demerara sugar, sliced banana and roasted pumpkin seed. It is never the same from one bowl to another.

If you are a breakfast person and love porridge, how do you like yours?