Floats

This battered old cookbook is a good friend used so much the pages are coming loose. I just ordered a backup copy from Amazon for 1p.

Lucky friends got a bang-up birthday meal from it this weekend. I did Accra de Morue for starters and Sue did a heavenly Boeuf Creole for the main course followed by her yummy baked cheese cake.

With the accra I thought it was time I had a bash at making Floats, the fried Trinidadian flatbread. I put together a sourdough version with the help of a recipe from the book but, never having seen a float in the wild, had to guess the dimensions.

Strong White 229g  100%
Water 114g  50%
Starter 69g  30%
Butter 64g  28%
Salt 4g  1.7%

Rub the butter into the flour, make a dough, 3 x 10 short kneads, 4 hours fermentation.

Scale at 60g, pat out to roughly 4″ rounds (so I ended up with eight and a little one).

Shallow fry 3 minutes both sides, drain on kitchen paper.

I was scared they’d come out stodgy and greasy but they were really light and puff pastryish. Did them ahead and quickly reheated.

Will be doing them again.

Of course, it’s also the book the Barbados Rum Punch comes from – pretty much traditional on Saturday night of the annual baking event – only three months away now.

We started with a jug of punch, waded through a few wines before getting onto the spirits. But we did manage to wrap it up before tears flowed over 50 year friendships.