New Grain

Major step forward on the milling front. About five years ago I bought a 25K sack of wheat grain from Doves and I finally milled the last of it. Amazing how well it keeps. But now I’m finally getting a little more organised/disciplined. It only takes about 8 minutes to mill a kilo of grain. […]

Pork Belly Pizza

Like a lot of towns and villages Bethesda’s Stryd Fawr (High Street) is dead. Not sure if it’s anyone’s fault – no point in going on about it – it’s the way it is. Maybe even worse is the state of the City of Bangor where stretches of the High Street (the longest in Wales) […]

Bobby Charles

The highlight of our holiday, the first in four years, was ordering a second-hand CD and finding it on the doormat when we arrived home. Some of this information might have trickled down to you but, we had five weeks booked in France, in Arcachon where we have been holidaying for 40-odd years, in a […]

Chips

You see dat? Dat costs £235.00. Wot do you think of dat? Over the years (and I mean a lot of years) we have been buying Le Creuset – I don’t mean collecting, that’s another thing altogether. Couple of things were wedding presents 40 odd years ago, couple more were bought full price from Habitat […]

Watch This Space

My sister Mary wanted to come and see us at two day’s notice and, given the vagueries of North Wales bus services, would only be able to stay for about three hours. Sounds like pizza to me, Hadn’t baked pizza for a few weeks and went for the Pinsa dough posted some time back – […]

Under-Everything-ed

Starter not ready, underfermented, underproved – sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do … Sometimes it seems things become more tricky when you revert from being a small bread producer back to being strictly amateur. Could always be my age of course. When you’re a producer you have your own […]

Kolach for Maryna

Maryna’s a baker in Kyiv and she bakes bread every day. I started corresponding with her after the Russian invasion but I find it hard to know what I can say, what I shouldn’t say and what is helpful to say. So I constantly feel I’m not a lot of use. But bread is a […]

Paella & Things

Today, completely unplanned, I made a seafood paella with stuff from the freezer – raw crevettes, a squid and a bit of cod fillet + prawn stock – always make some when you shell prawns. Plus a couple of new acquisitions: caramelised piquilo and ñoras, both as a paste. Teaspoon of each in your soffrito […]

2 for 1

50+years ago I was labouring in a small works gang for John Laing. One day the agent, who was an obnoxious little man, said to one of the brickies, “What the hell’s wrong with you Jock? This week you’ve dropped more bollocks than a second hand truss.” What made me think of this? In the […]

Baking Hot!

How’s an old gel supposed to stay cool in this weather? You spend hundreds on a deck and parasol: But today she prefers her Old Rosie box (her downstairs one – she’s also got one up on the landing) Legs recommends Old Rosie boxes …