It Arrived: my Excel Book

Here is the proof copy of my Excel book. 585 pages :)

I will post the link to the eshop within a couple of days.

Duncan Williamson

Welcome Back Bulghur Wheat

For some reason I have spent the last two or three years avoiding Bulghur wheat. No idea why but I have.

Anyway, I gave started buying and preparing it again and will just say how fantastic it is.

I am using basic and coarse types: both tasty and just as easy to prepare as each other.

Well done!

DW

SlugAlong

I put bread out in the garden for the birds. What I got was a few gastropods ... watch out for the pneumostome on two of the slugs ... their breathing holes.

So far I have seen no birds at the bread table!

DW

Very Third World

There I was, working away, listening to the radio and minding my own business and then ffffpp! Power cut off.

I went to my fuse box to see what had blown and found that nothing had blown.

This is a genuine Britain of the 1950s and 1960s power cut.

30 minutes and still off!

After two hours it came back on!


DW

Do you Need to Knead?

If you watch any cookery programmes in which they demonstrate the making of bread, the trend over the last few years has been to find more and more extreme ways of kneading to stretch the gluten in the flour. It's almost got to the stage of showing bakers stretching a kilogramme or more of dough so much that it covers an entire table or bench. You MUST do that to allow the gluten to stretch and to create the perfect crumb they say.

Normally, I comply with the above but yesterday I was in a bit of a hurry to make some bread buns so I put all of the ingredients in the bowl but simply mixed it, thoroughly I have to say, with a knife: slice and fold, slice and fold. It did NOT look like my normal silky smooth dough but I put cling film over the bowl and left it to prove. Then I knocked it down and shaped it into buns and left it to prove again.

Cut to the chase: I was delighted by the result: the buns look rustic AND the crumb is delightful. Really, it's more open and the buns are a little bit crumbly. I will try a loaf using this method next time and see how that copes.

DW

I wish I'd Taken this

I stumbled across this photo on Wikipedia this morning and wish I'd taken it.

It comes from this page.

DW

Today's Challenge

I made a big mistake last week and washed one set of my yellow towels with some blue towels.

I am very proud of my towels so I need to get the off yellow towels back to normal.

Can you see the difference, below?

DW

Fantastic Mo Farah

I just watched another fabulous race at the Olympics. Mo Farah won the 5,000 metres for Team GB in terrific style. Watch it if you can!

DW