Using my Loaf!

[Coral Maestro]

I use a corkscrew for getting the paddles out - minimises the damage to the loaf.

[Liphook]

Good thinking CM

[Olly]

Italian bread I had in Sardinia was rather like a balloon - all outer crust with very little inside - even worse than a Malteser or Aero!

[Mole-Patrol]

I made a loaf using the bread maker last week. After half an hour or so of whirring it went quiet and then just over half an hour later the electricity went off. I checked the consumer unit and the main fuse had tripped. It bounced back when I tried to re-set it so I unplugged the machine and the trip re-set. I quickly put the pan from the bread maker in the oven and made a half-decent loaf. I say half-decent because that is all I got - half a loaf. The top half. The rest remained in the pan stuck to the two paddles that were also fast on their spindles.

I returned it to the charity shop and got a refund which I used to buy a slightly more expensive Kenwood model. Then, when telling a customer about my experience, she presented me with her Morphy Richards machine that she assured me worked perfectly, but she hadn't used it for years so I could have it.

Today we were having three friends round for lunch so I made a sun dried tomato loaf in the MR machine. I used that one because of June's recommendation and fond memories of two burglars who became attached to my dog at the MR factory in Sth York's.

The same thing happened. Same time of the cycle the electricity tripped. Now it is obvious that we have a faulty circuit, not a faulty bread maker. The loaf was a success and it came away from the single paddle cleanly.

So now I have two bread makers; one for domestic use and one for fishing use. Next loaf will be maize bread for the carps.

[Mole-Patrol]

Finally got around to making a maize bread with yeast. Hoping to get chance to feed some fish tomorrow.

[Duckett]

This last year I've been making sourdough bread regularly. I keep a sourdough starter on the go at all times. Very strong, pungent and packed with yeast culture, I mixed some into a paste and caught two carp at the local backwater in Autumn last year. I have to say that it was the only bait I had taken with me on the day so can't really say definitively that I caught due to the yeasty nature of it or if I was just lucky. One thing is for sure though, the bites were savage and I'll be experimenting with it again when the season starts, maybe mix it into cheesepaste or make a kind of sauce as a dip for bread flake etc. All good fun!
Russ

You remind me that visiting County Cork some years ago, the chef-proprietor of the hotel we were staying at told me something I found very interesting about sourdough. My mother, a great lover of sourdough, was praising our hosts sourdough. The woman replied that this was excellent news as we were eating a memory of her mother and grandmother. Her reckoning was that as the starter had been begun by her grandmother and as each working of the dough adds wild yeasts from the cooks hands, there was something of herself, her mother, her grandmother and anyone else who’d happened to lend a hand with the kneeding over the last 50 years!

So, it may simply be that the Carp liked the taste of you!

Phil

[Mole-Patrol]

I'm glad to have introduced some culture to the forum