A Sticky Business

While on holiday I promised Marion that I would make more contribution to the weeks cooking. Marion attends an evening class on a Monday so I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to break my duck. Particularly after having watched two episodes of the Great British Bake-off, I fancied myself as a baker.

So in the parlance of GBB mine was the technical challenge, Marion selected the recipe. I was challenged to make malt bread using a recipe by none other than Paul Hollywood himself. Now I think that Marion chose this recipe deliberately. It contained some difficult challenges, firstly Marion know where all the ingredients are stored. I had to search around for the ingredients; indeed I did not even know what malt looks like. I do now.

This recipe had some of the stickiest ingredients known to man, and worse when combined the stickiness increases exponentially. It gets on your hands, all the utensils, the worktops, and other places that I have yet to discover. As it dries the mixture also hardens like pliable cement. The recipe asked me to roll the dough into two separate sausage shapes. Impossible, the only option that I had was to pour the mixture into the loaf tins.

At the same time I was multi-tasking talking to my son, impressive eh. So the next problem then arose, you have to prove the dough, placing the tins into plastic bags, why don’t I have a proving drawer. Now I know that Marion uses cheap shower caps, but where does she keep them, an absolute mystery. So I resorted to Waitrose shopping bags, probably not ideal.

Still some two hours later some sort of rising had taken place, so it was into a pre-heated oven for 30 minutes. Now the presentation of the loaf was very unimpressive, as I was not allowed to slice it. So I will have to wait for tomorrow to see the success or otherwise. Some portents are good; it does not have a soggy bottom and has a nice crust. However it does seem a little soft, undercooked? So watch this space and I will let you know whether I am the star baker or I have been kicked out of the kitchen.