This all started when Kev gave me a litre bottle of Wood’s 100 Old Navy Rum that had been sitting gathering dust for some years on his top shelf. He’d had a bad experience with it after a night on the rum and blacks – not surprising as it weighs in at 57 proof. To make sure no more dust settled on the bottle he sent me a recipe for Grog.
As you no doubt know, grog, in the form of rum and water, was introduced to the Navy after the invasion of Jamaica in 1655. Sailors were entitled to half a pint of rum per day, a practice that continued right up to 1970 when Health & Safety was invented.
This version is a straight lift from Difford’s Guide, the boss cocktail site https://www.diffordsguide.com/cocktails
Rum 60ml
Lime Juice 15ml
Simple Syrup 15ml
Chilled Water 60ml
Angostura – couple of shakes
Shake all the ingredients
Strain into an ice-filled glass
Add a wedge of lime
So I had one and I have to say it went down very nicely – you have to like the taste of tar though …
That’s when things started to go wrong. I was making a loaf of Campagne for our own consumption. I shaped the dough and put it in a banneton to prove, something I have done tens of thousands of times. Simple procedure; flour the basket, shape the dough, drop it in seam-side up, cover with a tea towel, top with plastic sheet.
At oven time I took off the plastic and tried to remove the tea towel but it didn’t come straight off – the dough was half out of the basket too. I’d only put the dough on top of the tea towel and was now mangling it up trying to remove the cloth.
This has to be the worst loaf I’ve produced this century – never mind the mangling, it was seriously underproved.
Just as well I only had the one …
The PArtisan Baker 