More bubbles in my sourdough

I’ve long been a sourdough fan and back in 2015 I shared how I made my loaf. It’s always made a fairly dense loaf and that’s been ok. Recently though I’ve been experimenting and have made a bubblier sourdough on more than one occasion, so today’s post is all about that.

It may be different to your sourdough recipe, or those of the sourdough artisan bakers - but this is my new way of making my sourdough. And part of the reason I’m sharing it here is so I can remember the quantities of the ingredients - sadly, true.

The ingredients are:

• 500g white bread flour

• 300g water

• 150g sourdough starter

• 8-10g salt.

Now having just compared that to my previous recipe I’ve realised that my experimenting has led me to swap the water and sourdough starter quantities. How strangely peculiar.

Anyway, the method is pretty much the same - combine all the ingredients until they come together, and leave in a warm place.

At this stage it is a bit bumpy and lumpy - but don’t lose faith. Every 30 minutes or so I use the flexible dough scraper to “turn” the dough, making sure I scoop from underneath and fold that into the top. I usually count 20 turns on each attempt.

Gradually it looks more like the dough you were expecting. Then I cover it and leave it in a warm place until I’m ready to cook it several hours later. The trick is to leave it long enough so the dough rises, but not too long that it over-prooves, as an example - if I start this around lunchtime, I’ll cook it between 9-10pm. If that tells you anything about me, it tells you I’m a night owl.

For cooking times - I heat the oven to 220 degrees and put a small ramekin of boiling water in the oven once it’s at temperature to help with the crust. I’ve taken to cooking the loaf on baking powder, but mainly so I know it will be easy to get off the small baking tray.

This loaf had a bubble at the top of the dough, and I learnt that that will burn. Next time I’ll make sure the bubbles are less obvious, I think.

It still tastes good though!

A whistle stop of a week in the Lakes

This week I’ve used the last of my 2020 leave which I carried over into 2021 and rather appropriately they have been spent on a rearranged 2020 holiday. We’ve been in a cottage near Cartmel which we should have been in after a family wedding at the end of May. The family wedding didn’t happen thanks to Covid and has been rearranged for next May instead, and we postponed our holiday by a year and a week adjusting it away from the bank holiday weekend and towards our wedding anniversary. It’s a week we tend to go away, and have done in the majority of the previous fourteen years, pandemics permitting.

It’s a long drive though from South London. But worth it. We packed a lot in to our four night stay, and I’ll be sharing more I’m sure, but in the meantime here’s a quick run through of our week - hang on to your hats.

THAT FIRST CUPPA AFTER A LONG DRIVE

OUR VIEW FROM THE COTTAGE

After that first cuppa we set out on foot to get our bearings. Walking through the country lanes to the the nearest village, wondering what would greet us around the corner, unlike the sheep you climbed the wall for a better view. As you do.

ERM, A SHEEP ON A WALL

For our first full day we headed off to Levens Hall as the gardens and its topiary had been recommended. The hall wasn’t open but I was intrigued by the different designs of the windows - each on this side of the hall was different.

The gardens were full of topiary and colour and it was good to explore the different zones before heading on towards Sizergh Castle.

The ‘battlement’ style walls were to become a feature of this trip, these at Sizergh were the first we saw. The gardens were extensive and warm, and I’ve many photos.

Our other mission was to stock up with some supplies. The fall back plan was to head to the Sainsbury’s in Kendal but we didn’t need that as the Sizergh Barn Farm Shop had everything we needed. It was here that we bought some raw milk from a vending machine - quite an experience, and to be honest it tasted great even though it was whole milk rather than our usual semi-skimmed. I’d definitely buy it again, and not just for the novelty factor.

The forecast for the next day was less promising so we invoked our first museum visit. We booked online for the Lakeland Motor Museum which also has the exhibition dedicated to Malcom and Donald Campbell’s record breaking attempts, memorabilia and machines. But there was much more there than that and many memory prompts for both MOH and I. They packed a lot into a relatively small space, and it’s definitely worth a visit, even if you don’t think it’s your thing.

For lunch we headed over to Ambleside and ate alongside the lake spending a fair amount of time people watching - another fascinating way to pass the time.

On our way back our plan was to stop off in Cartmel and buy some sticky toffee pudding from the shop where it originated. Parking was tricky so we came back to the cottage and walked back in. Later that evening we headed back into Cartmel for dinner at Rogan & Co - I started with a nasturtium negroni, which was fab - as was the whole meal. It’s just as well though that our step count was just short of 19,000 steps that day.

A passing comment from our hosts saw us head to another museum on Thursday - this time the pencil museum. Yes, who knew? It was as fascinating as the motor museum, but for entirely different reasons. And obviously, there were many pencils - though less when we left as I treated myself to 48 soft colour pencils in a lovely wooden box which are absolutely beautiful.

It was still relatively early so we pulled into one of the viewpoints and booked tickets to Holker Hall. This was one of the places I’d earmarked to visit before we left London, but when I looked earlier in the week it appeared fully booked. It turns out I looked at house and garden tickets, but there were still garden tickets left, and what’s better it’s an RHS partner garden and so my entry was covered by that.

It was a relatively small garden, though we didn’t explore the parkland to its full potential, but again there was a lot to see including the sundial which is 5ft in diameter and the cascade which Neptune proudly sat at the top of.

Thursday night was stone-baked pizza night in the village and so we ordered pizzas heading down to collect them before relaxing, after finishing the packing, in the private hot tub, with its window view of the countryside beyond.

We’ve not quite had the temperatures that London has experienced, but for the Lakes we’ve been assured this is good weather - and it’s been lovely. We’ll be back in London before we know it, and back to work too. Our next break isn’t until July, and that’s a weekend a couple of hours away from us, and another hot tub - but more on that another day.

Looking back at my garden in September

I’m not wishing the yet-to-arrive summer away, though I am looking forward to some warmer weather, but this post is one which takes a look at my garden and prompts some memories from last September. As you’ll know somehow I missed a whole series of posts at the time, but I don’t want to miss them from this space completely.

The patio remained lush and the white roses kept on flowering. These roses have multiple blooms which seem to last forever, but shed their petals in an instant almost if you look at them too hard. I think the insect in the photo above is judging if they’ll do that before making its move.

The sedums were starting to turn pink, whereas the geraniums which are now a few years old were already a faded pink.

Outside the greenhouse our baby squash was still going strong and looking promising. However - spoiler alert - it didn’t make it dropping off the plant without growing or ripening further. We didn’t have much success with courgettes, squash or tomatoes last year which was a shame, but something to work on.

Elsewhere in the garden the leaves from the laurel were already falling and turning brown. These were just the first of the leaves we collected over the winter months, and which we store to make leaf mulch making use of one of those very large builders bags. It’s big and bulky but thankfully relatively easy to shove and lug out of view.

We had more success with our runner beans and like in other years a steady supply kept up our bean levels up. Even these weren’t as prolific as usual and we think that’s probably because the light levels in our garden were lower than in previous years as our trees are at their largest having not been cut for a good few years. They’re even taller this year, so I’ll be choosing what we grow carefully to maximise the potential.

I almost can’t believe it was last September that our lighting masterplan was formed, on a post-it naturally. We bought the lights, and the hooks to put them up with and with a few days of them arriving the weather changed - sorry! It was only recently that I found the hooks again, but as the weather has been so bad we haven’t got around to putting them up. Given the winds last week, where we had a few branches down, that seems to have been a good decision.

Let’s hope we’ll get them up soon, and that we have plenty of opportunity to use and enjoy them.

The year was good for our ornamental quince though, these are the largest I’ve seen since we’ve lived here. I don’t think it was just the good weather though, the previous year it had a really good prune, so both probably contributed to its very good year!

MOH is very fastidious about picking up leaves, and clearly at one point I caught him sweeping the grass - too good not to include here!

I grew some sweet peas from seed and this pastel pink one was a particular favourite. At the back of the garden the pear tree had a bumper crop of pears, though unfortunately even the squirrels reject these as they’re often like bullets, and usually there’s not enough pears to bother cooking to see if that makes a difference.

We weren’t the only one to enjoy our garden during the month, our neighbour’s cat definitely made itself comfortable and made the most of the warmth from the roof of the little shed. It’s a tough life, hey?