The coronavirus diary, or things to do at home: Dundee cake

With Britain in lockdown (although quite frankly Allison and I were already working from home before the Prime Minister ordered the country into lockdown on Monday evening), our thoughts have turned to what we can do while we’re having to stay at home.

Quite a lot, as it happens. The kitchen in particular has been subject to a cleaning regime the likes of which it hasn’t seen since we moved in, and we’re growing plenty of things in the garden and even on a window-sill (more on these in later posts).

But first, some baking.

I’ve not made any bread for a while, although given the amount of flour we already had it’s only a matter of time.

Cakes, though? That’s another matter. In times of national crisis, there’s nothing like a nice cake to lift the mood, right?

We went through the cupboards to see what we had before deciding what sort of cake to make. Checking the cupboards can reveal some interesting things, especially if you’ve not done it for a while. We, it turns out, had a fairly random assortment of dried fruits (currants, raisins, etc) – items that had been bought on a one-off basis and sometimes left over from Allison’s cooking club.

Based on this, a fruitcake of sorts looked do-able so I consulted the oracle (a very well-used paperback version of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course) and came up with Dundee cake. This is an old family favourite (my grandma used to make it) and it’s called Dundee cake because it reputedly originated courtesy of Keiller’s, the Dundee-based marmalade producer which mass-produced the cake in the nineteenth century. As with most Delia Smith recipes, it’s online. 

The quantities of the various dried fruits in the recipe did not of course match what we had in the cupboard (we didn’t have any glace cherries, for example), but I reckoned that if we added up the total weight of all the dried fruits and then put in what we had up to that weight, it should be OK. On the recipe, currants, sultanas, glace cherries and mixed dried peel weigh in at 450g (more or less a pound in imperial), and we were able to get enough currants, sultanas, dried mixed fruit and raisins to get to that level (using up everything but the raisins, as it happens). 

We also didn’t have a small orange and a small lemon to zest, but we did have some large lemons in the fridge so I just zested that. Also, we didn’t quite have enough blanched almonds left to meet Delia’s requirement, but that’s just for decorating the top of the cake anyway (the trick is to put them on lightly and not press them down). So I went with a simple cross rather than arranging them in concentric circles. Although with the outer circle, it’s really a Celtic cross!

When making cakes I do get apprehensive about cooking times as the last thing I want is for it not to be done properly on the inside (the opposite of those foolish contestants on Masterchef who seem to think that they’re going to be the ones who can do the perfect chocolate fondant, which clearly started out as underdone chocolate cake). 

Only once the Dundee cake had cooled could I cut it open to check...

Thank goodness it was done in the middle! The result goes very well with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Hot cross buns

Easter is a time for baking (there’s something allegorical about the dough rising), and this year I thought: Why not give hot cross buns a try?

Although they are very much an Easter food, hot cross buns can be purchased throughout the year these days – although a local pub only does its “hot cross burger” at this time of year (yes, that is what you think it is and no, I haven’t tried it).

Hot cross buns are an old English delicacy traditionally associated with Good Friday, and there’s a religious symbolism in the ingredients – the dough refers to bread served at communion, the spices allude to the spices that were wrapped with Jesus’s body and the cross is, well, self-evident. Their provenance, though, is a bit hazy – some say they go back to Roman times (the Romans are known to have made buns with crosses on them, but this may have been so they could easily be broken into four parts), while others reckon they’re a Saxon thing (associating them with the worship of the pagan goddess Eostre). There are various superstitions and traditions about hot cross buns being used medicinally and being hung in the kitchen to protect against fire (in this tradition, the hanging bun – said not to go mouldy if baked on Good Friday – is replaced annually). However, there are no written records about them until Elizabethan times, when their consumption was restricted to festive periods, and the earliest recipes for them date from the eighteenth century.

After trawling through our recipe-books, I decided to go for the hot cross bun recipe in my copy of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course (“a new edition for the 1990s”). Like many a festive recipe, hot cross buns have a much wider ingredients list than more everyday bread-based products, and as is the case with the traditional Ukrainian paska that I made last year, a case could be made for associating the extra ingredients – the butter, the eggs – with the end of Lent. The hot cross bun recipe called for a trip to the shops for a couple of items (while I still had some currants left over from the raisin loaf, the likes of ground mixed spice and cut mixed peel were not things that I already had).

So where to begin? Yeast first – Delia said to use the dried stuff, mixed with caster sugar and “hand-hot” water and left “until a good frothy ‘beer’ head forms”. Meanwhile, the dried goods – plain flour, salt, mixed spice, sugar, currants and mixed peel, were mixed together in a bowl, to which was added all of the wet goods – the yeast mix, milk (“again hand-hot”), melted butter and a beaten egg. I must admit to being a bit worried that that last one would scramble, what with the butter having just come off the stove, but in the event it didn’t. This was kneaded together and, though sticky at first, it did end up being “smooth and elastic”, just as Delia had promised it would be (although I bake a fair bit, I must confess to being a bit sceptical at times about sticky dough acquiring a smoothness without the addition of more flour, especially when using a recipe I haven’t tried before; that said, the kneading is always my favourite part).

One rising and knocking-down later, I divided the mix into twelve portions (is this supposed to be symbolic of the Disciples?) and arranged them on a baking tray. I then made a deep cross on each of them with a knife – this is how the crosses on hot cross buns were originally done – before considering the note that the bottom that mentioned that, for “more distinct crosses, use a flour-and-water paste”. Unfortunately I had by now ran out of plain flour, so I used wholemeal instead (it was that or self-raising). The paste was rolled out into thin strips which were placed atop the buns which I then left to rise.

After just fifteen minutes in the oven, the buns were ready! One last thing to do, though – brush them with a sugar-and-water solution as soon as they emerged, in order to make them sticky.

Sticky they most certainly are. While I am not entirely happy with the crosses (should’ve gone to get some more plain flour, plus they’re a bit on the thick side), I’m pleased with the way the buns have turned out. I won’t be serving them with burgers, though.

Baking with sourdough

How long can a sourdough starter go unused? That was what I wondered the other week when I happened across my own sourdough starter which had sat unused at the back of our second fridge (the one in the shed) for at least a year, perhaps longer.


My sourdough starter was created according to the recipe set out in Fergus Henderson’s second book which he co-wrote with his pastry chef (and also head baker) at St John, Justin Piers Gellatly (Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II). They call it the ‘Mother’; we call it the ‘Science Experiment’. I’ve used it before to make a sourdough loaf but there’s not much else that I’ve done with it. In their book, Henderson and Gellatly say that they started theirs “about five years ago”, and that was in 2007, but they use and replenish theirs on a regular basis. They do say that “you can leave it in the fridge without feeding for months” – but a year or more? Well, I followed their advice – “it will take a few days to restart it by feeding it … discard about a third and feed it equal parts flour and water. Repeat this until there are signs of fermentation.” When it’s ready, the starter “should be bubbly and smell strong and sour”.

After several days of reviving, it looked bubbly enough, and stank enough, to be used and so I made another sourdough loaf.

Only afterwards did I peruse my copy of Beyond Nose to Tail to see what else I could make, and I chanced across a recipe for raisin loaf. This required a few things that I didn’t have, so a trip to the shops was called for in order to get some raisins, currants, unsalted butter, more strong white flour (that sourdough loaf had used up the last of it) and fresh yeast.

Putting aside the fact that the whole point of sourdough bread is that you don’t need yeast, why would it need fresh yeast? And where could I buy that? I’ve only ever used the dried stuff, and for a while I did ponder the notion that, somewhere on the Inter-web, someone has probably come up with a chart that tells you how much of the dried stuff you should use when the recipe calls for fresh. Baking, though, is a bit of an exact science – in other forms of cooking, you can go a bit off-piste but you really can’t with baking – so I decided that I might as well get hold of some fresh yeast; although the recipe only called for half a teaspoon of it I was sure I could use it for something else.

My first port of call was a big branch of Morrison’s, where after initially being directed to where the dried stuff was in the baking section I was told that they did sell the fresh stuff, which could be found next to the butter. I found the label on the shelf all right, but no yeast – they were out of stock and hadn’t had any delivered for a while. I bought the rest of my goods and drove over to the nearest other supermarket – an even bigger Tesco. After looking in and around the butter section without success, I asked a passing worker and was told that I should “ask at the bakery counter, they might give you some”. They did, too – and for no charge (since I didn’t need to buy anything else there, I walked out as discreetly as I could, having for once got something for nothing). So there you have my baking lesson for the week: It’s possible to buy fresh yeast at Morrison’s, but Tesco will give you the stuff for free.

The dough, once mixed (with the currants and the raisins) was rather wet although Henderson and Gellatly had forewarned of this (“Your dough will be very wet and hard to handle, so good luck, and remember – try not to add too much flour”). I duly rolled it into a ball, left it in the fridge for an hour, then kneaded away and left the result in a warm place – in a bowl on top of a hot water bottle to be precise. They recommended leaving it for “about 3 hours, until it has risen a little”.

Mine had risen by more than a little within the hour, so I duly re-shaped and bunged the dough into my (buttered) loaf-tin and popped that back on the hot water bottle. After another rising, it went in the oven. The only odd part of the whole process came right at the end; after taking it out of the oven, Henderson and Gellatly said to “take the loaf out of the tin, lay it on its side on the oven shelf and bake for 5 minutes”, and then do the same for the other side. Well, if it’s in the instructions, that’s what you do, right?

The result: A delicious raisin loaf. Goes well with goat’s or ewe’s milk cheese, apparently.

Madeleines

Along with 13 items of vintage French pottery, a wicker basket and two fish-plates, our recent visits to the flea-markets of Paris also resulted in a set of four cast-iron saucepans which Allison convinced me would be able to fit in our kitchen. Due to all of the wine we'd also bought, fitting them into our luggage was more of an issue but Allison managed to get them into her handbag for the Eurostar journey back home! 

Allison had also visited a shop called E. Dehillerin, a famous cookware-store in the 1st arrondissement. From there she had purchased a madeleine pan, which is one of those kitchen implements that only has one purpose - the making of madeleines. 

Madeleines are those small sponge-cakes with the distinctive shell-like shapes which come from their being baked in (what else?) madeleine pans. Now that we had one of those, we couldn't not have a go at making them, could we?

Our recipe was sourced from a book called My Paris Kitchen by David Lebovitz, an American food-writer who is based in Paris. Allison is a fan although I am not so keen, having been not much taken with a previous book of his, The Sweet Life in Paris (to be precise, he lost me when he mentioned using his bathtub for doing the washing-up; as this is mentioned early on in the book, I feel that I may not have given him a fair hearing).

But this wasn't washing-up; this was the baking of a batch of small sponge-cakes which consist of eight ingredients. How hard could it be?

First up, the eggs had to be at room temperature before they could be mixed in with the sugar; Lebovitz said to do this in a mixer on high speed for up to five minutes, and then stir in the flour, salt, baking powder and vanilla (he said to use vanilla bean paste rather than extract, but he does helpfully give a quantity for vanilla extract as he evidently realises that this is what most of his readers will have; nice touch). Once this is mixed in, the batter is covered and left to stand for an hour.

In the meantime, the butter is melted and mixed in with the honey - and what better saucepan to use than one of the set from the flea-market? 

This then needs to cool down to room temperature (this recipe is, it seems, a very room temperature recipe) before being mixed in with the batter, which is then covered and left to stand for an hour.

Baking: It really is all about hurrying up and waiting.

Then came the madeleine pan. We'd bought a non-stick one and it so happens that Lebovitz recommends these, although they do still need to be greased. In My Paris Kitchen, he states that he used to use softened butter to do this, having been advised to do so by "several prominent pastry chefs" before giving melted butter a go and finding that it worked better; melted butter is, therefore, what he says to use for this in his recipe. 

The batter was then scooped into the pan (Lebovitz also goes into detail about what to use to do the scooping; I just used a couple of regular spoons) and baked for ten minutes.

They came out perfectly, more or less...

Lebovitz states that: "Madeleines are best enjoyed warm, or the same day that they're made." They most certainly were, and I have a feeling that more may be made in the future. After all, we have the pan.

Baking for Easter

To celebrate Easter, I have been utilising my baking skills. In honour of Allison’s Ukrainian-Canadian heritage, I have baked paska, the special bread which Ukrainians bake for this event.

Paska (the word derives from the Hebrew word pesakh, meaning ‘passover’) is one of those breads that moves away from the basic four ingredients of bread (flour, water, yeast, salt) by including milk, eggs, sugar and butter. Such breads are common among many communities for a celebratory event; in this case, the celebration of Easter. Many cultures have special bread that is only made on special occasions, and for Ukrainian Catholics the celebration of Easter is a very special occasion. Hence the inclusion of eggs in the recipe – although they are beaten before being mixed into the dough, I have found out that the yellow from the yolk is symbolic of Jesus rising from the dead while the white symbolises the Holy Ghost.

I used the recipe from a book called Traditional Ukrainian Cookery by Savella Stechishin –one of the first Ukrainian-Canadian cookbooks which was first published in the Fifties and which had got through seventeen editions before Allison was given a signed copy in recognition of a school project in 1991. All of the recipes in this book have their names given in the Cyrillic as well as the Latin alphabet, and some are credited to women from places in Saskatchewan and Alberta; I imagine all of these ladies to be five-foot-two grannies who worked hard to put food on the table for their families out on the prairies.

It starts with sugar – used in many bread recipes as an accelerant for the yeast – being dissolved in warm water before dried yeast is sprinkled over it. To this is added lukewarm milk that has previously been scalded (almost but not quite brought to the boil) and flour, which is covered and left until bubbly. Beaten eggs, sugar, melted butter and salt are added to this, the resulting dough being kneaded – always my favourite part – until it’s “smooth and satiny” according to Mrs Stechishin’s instructions.

This is left until doubled in bulk, then knocked down prior to the decoration. For this, two-thirds of the dough is used for the loaf, with the other third being used for the decoration. This has to go on the dough before the final rising, so I wasn’t inclined to do anything too elaborate as it might weigh the dough down and thus prevent it from rising (although I’ve seen some photograph of paska that are very elaborately decorated!), besides which Mrs Stechishin states that “elaborate ornaments require experience”. I have experience of doing braids for the Christmas kalach, and of decorating the top of a meat pie with a Union Jack made from the leftover bits of pastry, so I rolled my decorative third out into strands and did a braided cross design.

This was set aside to rise again and, to my surprise, it rose very quickly; how seasonally appropriate! After being brushed with beaten egg, it went into the oven for 55 minutes.

The result was, I am happy to report, one of my better bread-making efforts – the braided-cross effect looked particularly good. Bread made to celebrate special events is always bread above the norm, and after letting it cool overnight we toasted it for breakfast this morning. And then we had some for lunch. And there’s some more for tomorrow too. Even though I halved the recipe, we’re not going to go short of paska any time soon!

Canadian pie

Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving (which is more a celebration of the harvest than its American equivalent), and in accordance with tradition we had some relatives over for a turkey dinner followed by pumpkin pie.

Allison had to specially order a turkey breast from the butcher – it’s not something they usually sell in October, although as we’ve ordered from the same butcher for several years now, they are well aware that any order for turkey at this time of year will probably come from Canadians! I made the pie.

The recipe I used was originally clipped from one of Allison’s Canadian cookery magazines – from an advert for Robin Hood flour to be precise. This meant that the recipe for the crust simply called for Robin Hood Flaky Pie Crust Mix; without this to hand, I just used the short crust pastry recipe from my Mum’s old lemon meringue pie recipe. This meant that I was seriously mixing my weights and measures, as the pie crust recipe (being a British recipe) calls for the ingredients to be measured by weight, while the rest of the pumpkin pie recipe (being Canadian) has the measurements by volume (even for the butter). As I have learned from previous recipes, a cup in Canadian baking terms is a specific measurement (250 ml) – you can’t just use any mug to measure things out. This is a mistake most people only make once.

I also found that I didn’t have to blind-bake the pie crust (as I would’ve done for the lemon meringue pie), as the filling itself needs to get baked before the topping is added.

Ah, the filling. Just about everyone who makes pumpkin pie uses tinned pumpkin purée, mainly for the sake of convenience (apparently it takes many hours to render the raw ingredient down to the required consistency). However, there are two types of tinned pumpkin in Canadian supermarkets, pumpkin pie filler and pumpkin purée. Filler is the ready-made stuff that you pour straight from the tin onto the pie crust and bake, while purée is the one you have to mix with other things to make the pie filling.

I’ve been told that no self-respecting Canadian uses the pre-mixed filler, so I combined the puree with a few extra ingredients – brown sugar, evaporated milk, eggs, vanilla extract, cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg and salt – before pouring it over the crust and sticking it in the oven (15 minutes at 220°C, then 45 minutes at 180).

The topping, which also needed to be mixed, was a combination of oats, brown sugar, chopped pecan nuts, flour, cinnamon and melted butter. With the topping added, the pie is baked for a further 20 minutes. 

We served it up with whipped cream that had had some icing sugar mixed in.

Pumpkin pie: our annual autumnal treat!

Toblerone-topped caramel cheesecake

I never used to be much of a fan of cheesecake. It was heavy, overly sweet and I always thought that there were better dessert options available (the fact that they were invariably topped with a fruit compote didn’t help their cause with me, it must be said).

My views on this form of dessert have softened over the years, though, and the main reason for this is the Toblerone-topped caramel cheesecake. This is one of many recipes that we have that we clipped out of food magazines, although what makes this one different is that it was from an advert (for, as will soon become apparent, Philadelphia cream cheese). It is, quite frankly, amazing, and if that wasn’t enough it’s really easy to make – there are just eight ingredients!

One of these, as the title of this post suggests, is Toblerone. Toblerone is fantastic. In my opinion, anything that involves that triangular Swiss chocolate (with nougat, almonds and honey) bar cannot possibly be bad.

As with any cheesecake, the first thing to prepare is the base, which consists of ¼ cup of butter and 1¼ cups of Oreo biscuit crumbs.

Now, I do not have a problem with the North American way of measuring out ingredients by volume (a cup being around 250 mls) rather than by weight, but only if it’s limited to dry goods (rice, sugar, etc) or liquids. When it comes to butter, I’d much rather stick to weighing it out rather than trying to jam the stuff into a measuring-cup to ensure that I’ve included the correct amount.

Once melted, the butter is mixed with the Oreo crumbs. This lines the bottom of your springform pan (the recipe recommends a nine-inch one).

For the next stage, 750g Philadelpia cream cheese, ¾ cup of brown sugar and one tablespoon of vanilla are beaten together. Once they’re combined, three eggs get added one at a time. When it’s done, add this mixture to the springform pan.

This is baked for 40-45 minutes, at 180°C, then cooled and refrigerated for at least 4 hours (should you wish to make it a day in advance, it’s OK to keep it in the fridge overnight).

Just before serving, it’s time to add the pièce de résistance. The cheesecake is topped with ⅓ cup caramel sauce (that’s what the recipe said; I found it needed a bit more than that) and sprinkle 100g coarsely chopped Toblerone pieces on top of that.

Best. Cheesecake. Ever.

Sticky toffee pudding

“It’s a funny thing about English diners. They’ll let you dazzle them with piddly duxelles of this and fussy little noisettes of that, but don’t f**k with their puddings, which is my thinking exactly. All the dessert entries were for gooey dishes with good English names.”

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island (1995)

I like to bake but my dessert repertoire is, I’m sad to say, a little limited. One dessert item I have always wanted to have a go at making but never have is a favourite of mine that is indeed gooey (and stodgy, and sweet) and has a good English name: Sticky toffee pudding.

If I’m dining out and fancy going for a dessert item that doesn’t involve the cheeseboard (my usual option), then chances are I will opt for the sticky toffee pudding. Our local pub does a really good one!

Yesterday, Allison and I had some friends round for dinner and we decided that we would make sticky toffee pudding for the dessert. There are various different recipes out there, and we used one from the BBC’s Olive magazine which would apparently require “a little effort”. The main benefit of this particular recipe was that the pudding required baking rather than steaming, which I for one didn’t fancy doing. Plus, we had most of the ingredients already.

It required pitted dates (150g), butter (65g), dark brown sugar (175g), eggs (two) and self-raising flour (225g) for the sponge, and double cream (600ml), caster sugar (350g) and more butter (90g) for the toffee sauce.

The dates had to be simmered for 15 minutes first, during which I found out that the ones we have are not pitted. Pits removed, the dates were whizzed in the food-processor and left to cool while I made the sponge.

The recipe gave me the option of using a food processor for this too but I opted to do it by hand. Creaming the butter and the sugar was easy enough, as was adding the eggs and folding in the flour (“with a large metal spoon”), followed by the date purée.

Now for the baking tin. The recipe required a tin measuring “15x12cm (6cm deep)”, which we don’t actually own. A baking tin of slightly similar dimensions (longer but less wide) sufficed, and was duly greased and lined with greaseproof paper.

With the sponge in the oven (50-60 minutes at 180ºC), I got to work on the toffee sauce. This involved boiling half the cream with the butter and sugar for ten minutes, then whisking in the rest of the cream as it cooled. Quite frankly, the amount of toffee sauce that resulted looked like being way too much for our pudding.

Next came the tricky part as the newly-baked sponge had to be cut horizontally into four layers. It had also risen quite a bit and looked rather well-done on the top, so I took the opportunity to take the crispy bits off the top. This gave us the chance to sample the sponge and sauce combination. A couple of tastes were sufficient to convince both of us that we were onto a winner.

The layers of the sponge were reassembled in the tin, with sauce going between the layers so that the sponge could soak it up like, well, a sponge.

This much we did in advance. The final part, reheating the whole thing (15-20 minutes, same temperature as before), took place after the main course. It was served with extra sauce (there was too much) and ice cream.

Was it everything I’d wanted it to be? Yes. Was it delicious? Yes. Would I make it again? Absolutely!

Making bread

For several years I have experimented in making my own bread. I think it’s the kneading that I like the most – it’s rather therapeutic. Plus, I’m the sort of home cook who likes to follow recipes to the letter, so I am OK with baking. Unfortunately, though, the bread-making process is not a regular event for me as it tends to require a full day when I’ll be at home for some if not most of the time, what with the whole thing about waiting for four or five hours before I can do the next stage. It’s something that has to be reserved for those weekends when we’re not really doing anything else.

My forays into break-making started a few years ago when I found a fairly straightforward white bread recipe in Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and wondered how hard it could be to make a loaf of bread for my sandwiches rather than buying one. I subsequently progressed to specialist baking tomes such as Richard Bertinet’s Dough (which contained a step-by-step guide, with photos, about how to knead bread properly), making such delights as walnut bread, dark rye bread and rock salt and rosemary focaccia.

My masterpiece was épi de blé, a rustic version of the French stick that Allison clipped from a copy of Canadian Living, which goes very well with soup, although I also do a mean kolach at Christmas.

Things stepped up a gear a couple of years ago, with the acquisition of Beyond Nose to Tail. This is the second volume of the legendary Fergus Henderson’s cookbook, and it’s the one with the baking chapter .

For those who don’t know, Fergus Henderson is credited with having revived the concept of nose-to-tail eating in the 1990s. His view is that, having killed the animal, making sure that you make use of all of it is the decent and polite thing to do. As such, many of his recipes are devoted to doing all sorts of things with offal. Now I have always liked liver and am ready to give any cut of meat a go, but I must confess that I find Henderson to be a bit hard-core; I’d never even heard of chitterlings before I read his book (pig intestines, in case you were wondering). His main restaurant, St John, is appropriately located just around the corner from Smithfield Market and is highly recommended (order the bone marrow and parsley salad).

Naturally, Fergus Henderson’s people make their own bread. As one would expect, the chapter on baking isn’t for novices. Henderson’s was the first book I came across that seriously advocated sourdough, that naturally leavened bread made from a living, breathing starter – meaning you don’t need to buy yeast. The flip-side is that this involves making (creating?) the starter a week before you can actually begin to use it to make some bread.

Henderson refers to the starter as ‘the Mother’ (with capital ‘M’), although Allison and I prefer to call it ‘the science experiment’. It’s been with us for two years now, and is in fact the only one of three science experiments that I’ve undertaken in our flat that is still in existence; of the other two, sloe gin made with actual sloe berries was an unqualified success, and home-made lime pickle was an absolute disaster (that was from Floyd on Africa, and as I followed the recipe to the letter I suspect the great man may have been drinking when he wrote it).

Getting back on topic, the only problem I have found is that since this starter has come into existence, I have hardly made any other type of bread. The starter, after all, is sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. It’d be rude not to.

Anyway – the bread. But not quite, for if it hasn’t been used for a while the starter needs to be ‘woken’ a day in advance. This is done by taking it out of the fridge, adding flour and water and then leaving it for 24 hours. If it’s bubbling after this time, it has woken and can be used.

Making a loaf of bread is an all-day affair, so first thing in the morning (well, second thing – a cup of tea comes first) it’s time to fire up the stand-mixer and use the dough-hook implement to mix the starter with flour (strong bread flour preferred) and water.

Henderson’s is the only cook-book I have so far come across that advocates adding a ‘bathe’ to the dough after it’s been mixed together. This basically means adding more water but, unlike the water that’s added first of all, this has to be cold and has to be added in three stages. I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, but it’s in the recipe so in it goes.

There follow a series of periods in which you’re best off going away and doing something else. It has to stand for 20 minutes before the salt can be added, then an hour in the fridge before kneading (my favourite part!) followed by three hours in a warm place. The phrase ‘hurry up and do nothing’ could’ve been coined for bread-making.

The shaping of the loaf comes next and that’s the bit I have trouble with. My efforts at free-standing loaves end up looking like blobs on a baking-sheet so I prefer to use a loaf tin.

Four or five hours later, it’s ready for the oven. A bowl of water at the bottom of said oven helps to form a better crust (who knew?), and after 40 minutes (taking the water out with ten to go), the lovely smell of freshly-baked bread pervades through the flat, and the bread is done!