Bread Making.

On and off throughout our life we have been making our own bread, and for the last twenty plus years we always have made our own. When we first moved to Ireland we found the bread unacceptable, so started making our own by hand three times a week. As our organic business took off we often found we were out of bread and had no time to make it so we bought a bread maker, this was OK, it gave us quite good bread, but not as good as the hand made bread. Since moving to Spain we have reverted to hand made bread, sometimes we use the food mixer and sometimes we do the process by hand. We think the food mixer with a dough hook gives better results, although it takes about the same amount of time.
So to make bread.
1lb of strong white flour or half and half of white and brown. We always use Organic flour.
Half a pint of half milk half water, just warm.
1 egg.
18grams fresh yeast or two level teaspoons of dried yeast.
1 desert spoon of sugar.
1 level teaspoon of salt.
We always add the yeast to the warm milk/water with the sugar although it is not necessary to do so, we find this works best.
Place the flour with the salt in a large bowl or the food mixer bowl with the salt. Wait for the yeast to foam up,add this to the flour and add the egg, mix together well, if using a dough hook this takes about 10 minutes, if by hand about five minutes, with a further five minutes kneading, using the heel of the hand to work the dough, stretching and folding the dough under until it is pliable. You will know when it is ready by pushing your finger into the dough, it should spring back.
Shape the dough roughly to the shape of your tin and place in the greased floured tin, brush the top with either milk or beaten egg and sprinkle poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top, leave in a warm place to rise. When it has doubled in size, bake in a moderately hot oven about 30- 35 minutes. It is as simple as that,it should sound hollow when cooked, you can do what they call a double rise, this does not give a better loaf. You can of course add various thing into your bread, from garlic to stinging nettles, nuts to fruit.
Try it, it's fun and very rewarding.
Unlike pastry that needs the gentle touch, bread likes to be pummelled, it also likes warm hands, unlike pastry.
Last week we were forced to buy our sugar in a plastic bag, the shop had run out of the brand in the paper bags, the sugar in the plastic bags is made from sugar beet, so more plastic to get rid of, although it is a cent or two cheaper. The sugar in the paper bags is cane sugar, what we had not realised is that beet sugar is sweeter than the cane sugar. I had the second batch of Marmalade to make using the beet sugar we found is was far too sweet for our taste and had to use a couple of lemons, this of course changed the thickness of the marmalade so it is very well set, I just hope we can spread it on our bread.

Food for free

Today is a jam making day, or more correctly a marmalade making day. Monday we were at friends for the day and they have a large, heavily laden orange tree in their garden,the winter months are when the oranges are ripe, one of those trees that flower and fruit together, we came away with eight pounds of oranges, far too many for us to either eat or make into juice but we both love marmalade, I have the first three pound simmering away, marmalade is not a quick job unlike most of the jams that we make, it requires several stages. This Christmas I was given a zester, so half of the orange peal has been zested and the other half grated, hopefully by this evening we will have our first batch of marmalade made. Of course marmalade is normally made with Sevilla oranges, however I have never been able to find them in Spain, maybe they all go for export.
So far the winter has been kind to us unlike other parts of Europe, we are getting lovely sunny days, very little frost and just one day of snow, it's also been quite dry, with only a few wet days. We just hope that the snow is not storing up ready for the peach blossom, this happened a couple of years ago resulting in a failed peach crop.
The new kids are doing well and enjoying themselves frolicking around in the field with the other kid.

An eventfull week

However much we have tried to skip Xmas it just never happens and we now concede that it's a good time to have friends round and enjoy a meal together, compleat with all the trimmings.
This year was mainly home produced,however, I dont think prawns are something we can grow ourselves, well I suppose we could try fresh water cray fish but that might be taking self sufficiency a tad too far, so we are happy enough that the geese and the veg were ours, the sausage rolls, mince pies, Christmas pud and cake all home made, the greenery to decorate the dining room was all from the hedge rows, decorations that did not entail the uprooting or cutting down of a tree. Keeping it simple is fun although a lot of work! somewhat a contradiction in terms.
The past week seems to have be very busy, Simon had the last three of our table birds to slaughter, they all weighed about the same 6.5 lbs, and are definately worth doing, we have only cooked one so far, and it tasted like chicken should. Then came the slaughtering of the Xmas geese, this is quite hard work, and they are one thing that neither of us feels quite right about killing, geese have real personalities. Still that's the price we are prepared to pay. So the job was done, and all that was left was the baking, until Thursday. Simon went out to pick the greenery for the decorations and came back in with a new born kid, we instantly named him Noel, photo taken and the kid returned to mum and there was the second one. So we now have two more kids, Noel and his sister Gabrielle.
Christmas day was bright in more ways than one, we had our two newly married friends over with their helper, and after the meal played silly Xmas games,and had deep conversations, putting the world to rights, although it was conceded that is no longer possible to do so. The latest Wikileaks are an eye opener.We are glad that we did 'DO' Christmas this year, for who knows what the future has in store?

Organic chicken

Today we have slaughtered the first of the four table birds that we got three months back, we have reared them for around 100 days, and the first one has weighed in at 6lb 4ozs, approximately 28000 grams, he looks good and has good breast length, under organic standards, slaughtering should not happen until at least 84 days so we were more or less on target. At least we know what he was fed on, and that he enjoyed his life. He will get stuffed with a few herbs and served with all our own veg.
Wednesday has been set aside for the slaughtering of the two geese that we reared this year, this is our Yule tide celebration meal which we will be sharing with some friends, although we shall miss having so many geese around we know that our dinner enjoyed their life's and have been fed on the best of feed, totally GM free. Hopefully they will taste as good as they look.
There have been a few hard frosts, but so far no more snow, the days are still sunny for the most part, tonight there seems to be a fog descending.
This coming Tuesday is the solstice, [the shortest day] and there is a Lunar eclipse, I'm sure this must have some significance, although we don't know what it is, no doubt someone will tell us. We are not too sure if we will be able to see it, I shall have to Google to see where it is visible from.

Yule Tide

For two decades we have tried to skip Christmas and to some degree we have been successful, we refuse to become part of the consumer frenzy which surrounds this time of year, it is above all the celebration of the shortest day, and looking to the future, the longer days, the planting of the new crops and of new life in the spring, somehow it has been hijacked by the big corporations to make loads of money. Even here in Galicia we saw the first signs of Xmas at the end of Oct. We will celebrate, but it is very home spun, we always make a cake, but this is because we like a nice rich fruit cake, we will have a special meal,but they are still running around the field at the moment,[goose] and we always have a 'Xmas Pudding' but again, this is because we both love Xmas pudding, the veg is from the garden. What day we will have our Yule Tide meal has yet to be decided.If we do decorate the house it will be done a day before our celebration from whatever greenery we can find.As we have no open fires we can't have a Yule log, but we always make a candle holder from whatever interesting log we find.
We have a puppy lodging with us for the next month,owned by friends who have gone to the warmth of Tenerife for a month, he has settled well and our cats are fine with him, however our two kittens do not like him, they have had little contact with our own dogs, but no doubt, after a month they will at least tolerate him.
The last couple of weeks have been unseasonally warm, this warmth followed early snow which was very pretty and didn't last long, today however it feels as though the weather is about to change again, although sunny there is a distinct chill in the air.

Winter has arrived

The weather has up until now been quite good, it was a very mild and dry autumn, just a few days of rain although a couple of those days it did rain quite heavly, a few light frosts, just enough to give good autumn colour.
Today we seem to have caught up with the rest of Europe and have had our first fall of snow, a couple of inches fell overnight and everything has a lovely frosting. It's nice to look out at. Our house is a warm house mainly because of the metre thick walls, double glazing, useful in the summer as well to keep the heat out, and of course lots of roof insulation, I dont think you can have enough insulation, the cost envolved is money well spent. Of course we also have our wood burning stoves, the Aga, which does both our hot water and radiators. So we are nice and snug, mainly thanks to a great helper, Rod, who spent a week or so cutting and chopping this years wood supply. Many thanks Rod.
I have still not planted either the onions or the broad beans, next week we have warmer weather forecast so hopefully I can get them done then.

Two paces of life in Spain

Most things in Spain are done slowly, well anything that involves bureaucracy at least, however, last week there was the exception to the rule .We have friends who were wanting to get married, the main delay seems to have been waiting for official translations of birth certificates and waiting for their interview to assure the authorities that theirs was not a marriage of convenience, after being together for twenty four years hardly likely. We had made the cake some weeks before hand and had done the first layer of icing but had delayed finishing it as the icing would have been too hard. Monday I received an excited phone call, 'we have the date for the wedding'. Great! weeks of waiting and it was really happening, so when is it I asked? This Friday at 1pm !Help,! I could here Mike in the background and there were definite sounds of panic, also at our end. Although I had been trained as a cook this was many years ago, and cake decoration was not something I had ever enjoyed, probably due to the fact that I don't like icing, however, there was a job to be done, and done quickly. In the end it took just two hours, and come the day, Mike and John were over the moon with it.It was a beautiful day, crisp and sunny, the food, all done by Mike and John was superb, and we were all waited on by their two exceptional helpxers. Well done to every one who made this day so special for two very special people.