Bara brith is a fruit-bread from Wales, the name translating as ‘speckled bread’. Although it sounds distinctive, there are so many different versions that there is very little anyone can definitively say about it. Some make it with yeast, others…
The black-market is associated with many different products and materials, but high-end yeasted goods are not normally one of them. Time Magazine , however, reports that an illicit trade in the hybrid pastry known as the ‘cronut’ is thriving in…
A few years ago I was researching the availability of organically certified baker’s yeast for the book. If I remember rightly, the only evidence I could find for such a thing was on a German manufacturer’s website; I was unable…
The poet Phillip Larkin wrote that ‘Sex was invented in 1963’, a wry nod to the lingering influence of Victorian morals on 20th century Britain. But earlier centuries were often much more licentious than we think. The seventeenth century writer…
Here’s a thought-provoking article in the Washington Post, via my Palestinian sister-in-law, about a cookbook with a difference: The Gaza Kitchen. Most of us know Gaza only as a place that regularly crops up in news reports about violence between…
Pita bread has to be one of the easiest and quickest yeasted breads to make. In terms of quality, the bar is set so low by commercially made pita that you can hardly fail to be satisfied with the results:…
There’s an interesting post over on Spitalfields Life about the writer Jocasta Innes, who has died aged 78. I always thought of her as an author of books espousing a very particular approach to interior design – one that, as…
‘Man shall not live by bread alone’*, which is why I like to go off-topic from time to time, and today I would like to offer you a paean to one of my favourite dishes: poached eggs. Unfortunately, poaching eggs…
Finally my phoneline has been installed and my broadband is up and running. Not only that, but spring has made a late appearance and I’ve spent considerably less time this last week trying to thaw out my extremities. I made…
I spent a pleasant Easter weekend painting walls, but I still found time to make a batch of Easter biscuits (my only concession to the Paschal festival). I used a recipe from my old kitchen stalwart, the Reader’s Digest Book…