Does my cake look fat in this?

Sport is hard.

I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

It’s painful, it’s exhausting, it’s sweaty, it’s expensive…but some people aren’t satisfied with that. No, on top of the anti-social training hours, the missed trips to the pub, the injuries and the exhaustion, some people like to go a bit further.

Lightweight rowing isn’t something that many people know about; I certainly didn’t until I got involved in it at university (I coxed because, for those of you who don’t know, I’m a pretty tiny person). Not unlike boxing weight classes, lightweight rowers are only able to compete if they weigh a certain amount or less. In the case of the Oxford-Cambridge women’s lightweight boat race, this limit is 59kg per athlete. Just over 9 stone, or 130 pounds, if you prefer. A cap on weight means a cap on physical resources, so every kilojoule of energy, every gram of muscle has to be used in the most effective way possible to ensure the boat moves as fast as humanly possible. Therefore what you put into your body is fairly crucial.

This makes eating cake something of a challenge.

The annual race between the Oxford and Cambridge women’s lightweights , as well as races between lightweight men (who have a specified crew average of 70kg and an individual maximum weight of 72.5kg) and openweight women is taking place this Sunday at Henley-on-Thames, the day after the must more publicised men’s boat race on the Thames. And last weekend, to help the women’s lightweights prepare, several old girls from the club (including me) popped over to Henley to take part in a match race with this year’s boat race crew.

Needless to say, the current crew won. The really good bit came after the race, with the provision of the ‘match tea’ by the old girls. Normally, for a similar occasion, I’d get my butter hat on and produce something thoroughly unhealthy and delicious, but given that several of the girls were on restricted diets, this wasn’t an option.

So I went off-script.

I took a cue from Joy the Baker’s ‘Gnarley Muffins’ which replace butter with ground flaxseed, and use carrots and apples to give the mixture sweetness and moisture, and spent a few hours mucking around in my kitchen. All the while, the one question in the front of my mind was ‘how healthy can I make this?’ – this generally isn’t a thought which I entertain that much.

And you know what? The result was pretty damn healthy.

Credit for this image, as well as the featured one at the top of the post must go to Kasia, a member of this year’s squad whose camera is way more awesome than mine.

I’ve started so I’ll finish

Finally.

Finally [and much to the relief of my flatmates I’m sure] I have stopped obsessing over a fermenting bowl of flour and water. Finally, what started as a little jar of mush has metamorphosed into something solid, crusty, chewy and delicious.

Finally, I have bread.

Olives on the Floor of the Bus

No, I’m not riffing on Paul Simon.

After visiting some friends on Saturday night, I was sitting on the bus making my way back home. It was around about 11pm, which is that transitional period when the slightly odd characters start to emerge and populate the buses around London. I didn’t actually encounter such an individual on this particular journey, but was witness to a highly unusual and rather entertaining sight.

Olives. All over the floor, in that space reserved for wheelchair users or people with pushchairs (or odd individuals like me who prefer to stand on bus journeys). And nice-looking ones as well; not the kind that come ready-pitted in jars of brine and taste uniformly of…well, nothing. Apart from brine. But not these ones. There were black ones, glossy and with that purple sheen you often see on Kalamatas. There were green ones the colour of army uniforms (and actually, my old school uniform. I wish I was joking), plump and juicy and had they not been bouncing around on the floor of the number 35 I would happily have scoffed them. Each time the bus stopped and the doors opened, some rogue olives would make a bid for freedom, rolling off the bus and onto the mean streets of Brixton. The person sitting next to me had cottoned on to this, and there was an enjoyable camaraderie in sharing a smirk as more of the black and green spheres bounced on their merry way.

I couldn’t help but feel rather sorry for the person who had brought a nice punnet of olives and was most likely anticipating a delicious late-night snack. One ill-timed bump in the road, and their plans were scuppered.

Olives are the best friend of good bread. Especially a soft focaccia made with good olive oil, served warm. Which leads me a little tenuously onto this:

Focaccia with Red Onion and Thyme

Credit for these photos goes to my lovely friend Caroline who, as well as having an excellent name, has some mad camera skills too.

Culture Club

In my last post I was rather dismissive of people who refer to their sourdough starters as ‘pets’. I may need to retract that sentiment. In fact, I think I’m getting perilously close to acting like a new parent, let alone an indulgent animal owner.

My little culture has been growing since Wednesday, and is causing me to act irrationally. I’m taking photos of it- it’s not doing anything of any interest to anyone else, and the only discernible differences from one picture to the next are that it’s got slightly bigger. I’m telling anyone and everyone about how amazing my little bundle of joy is (although in reality it’s a fairly un-engaging and slightly smelly bundle), how I hope it’ll grow into great things, how awesome it is to have created life. The fact that I haven’t named the damn thing is the only, and very slight, redeeming aspect of my conduct.

BUT. I have taken photos of it and I want to share these photos with you. When you’ve got one of your own, you’ll understand.

Day 2 (Thursday)

Bubbles! The natural yeasts in the rye flour are respiring. I added another tablespoon each of rye flour and water, then left the jar for 24 hours.

Day 3 (Friday)

You would have thought that bubbles in a jar of mush – which by this point smells a little like weetabix dissolved in beer – would cease to be exciting after a while. I beg to differ.

I added 2 tbsp each of rye flour and water, and left for 12 hours….

More bubbles! Time for 4 tbsp each of rye flour and water- then leave for 12 hours.

(This photo was taken using the flash on my camera- I returned home at midnight and couldn’t go to bed until I’d fed and documented my starter’s progress. I’m not even going to try and justify this as normal behaviour.)

Day 4 (Saturday)

They grow up so fast! The volume of the added flour/water and the air bubbles created by the yeast necessitated a move to roomier pastures.

I then added 80g of flour and 120g of water before leaving for 12 hours. Now that volumes are increasing, it’s easier to do the additions by weight rather than arduously measuring out many many tablespoons of ingredients. I’m following the principle as used on breadsecrets that a tablespoon of flour is 10g and a tablespoon of water is 15g, although as long as the same ratio is used each time, exact weights aren’t hugely important.

12 hours later, and I removed half of the starter (200g- see below for a breakdown of weights and measures) and then added another 80g of flour and 120g of water.

The starter is now sufficiently bubbly and active to be transferred to the fridge, where the yeast will chill out a bit and become dormant until they’re used in actual baking.

For those of you who, like me,  like to have a grip on facts and figures, here is a handy table courtesy of breadsecrets plus an explanation of where it’s all going to go from here.

Add Flour(g)	Add Water(g)	Total flour(g)	Total water(g)
10 (1 tbsp)	15 (1 tbsp)	10	15
(Wait 24 hours)
10 (1 tbsp)	15 (1 tbsp)	20	30
(Wait 12 hours)
20 (2 tbsp)	30 (2 tbsp)	40	60
(Wait 8 – 12 hours)
40 (4 tbsp)	60 (4 tbsp)	80	120
(Wait 8 – 12 hours)
80	120	160	240
(Wait 8 – 12 hours)

After you have removed 200g of starter and given your remaining culture another feed, it should be very lively and bubbly. If it isn’t showing any signs of life, throw it away and start again. Assuming it looks and smells OK, this is your mother starter that you will keep in a jar in the fridge; cover it loosely with a lid for the first few days so the pressure doesn’t build up and it doesn’t erupt when opened, after that it should have calmed down enough to put the lid on properly.

I do like tables.

So it’s now day 5, and the starter is in the fridge. Hopefully I’ll be able to start assembling the loaf this week- this involves making a ‘sponge’ from the starter and some flour and water (just for a change) which will ferment for 24 hours or so before being built into actual bread. And about bloody time too.

Start Me Up

I have a job! Or an internship, at any rate. But it’s paid and is in a proper office and makes me feel like a young urban professional. So for now I shall refer to it as ‘my job’. And, as I tweeted (@batterandbeyond, follow me, I’m nice) I celebrated this by going out any buying rye flour to get cracking with a sourdough starter. I know how to tear it up, don’t I?

Sourdough is something I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but have always employed the age-old excuse “I haven’t got time”. Which, in itself, really is no excuse at all. Even more so when I don’t have a job. So with employment looming on the horizon I decided to get myself, and my little jar of flour and water into gear.

Basically, sourdough involves creating your own little pot of fermenting micro-organisms out of flour and water. The way you do this is painfully simple but does require feeding the thing (some people like to refer to it as a pet, which frankly I find a little odd) every day and keeping an eye on how it’s doing. After a week or so it’s ready to make into a ‘sponge’ which can then be incorporated into a dough. There are a million and one variations on how you go about doing a starter, I’m referring to breadsecrets.com mostly because they provide a lovely detailed little breakdown of what volumes of flour and water you’ve been adding…ask me about my control issues sometime.

So. Today was Day One. Are you ready for this?

I added 1tbsp of rye flour to 1tbsp of warm water (boiled water which had been cooled) in a jam jar which I had sterilised with boiling water. Then I covered it with clingfilm and left it at room temperature.

…

Bathos, much?

Breadsecrets gives a better description than I could:

Mix one tablespoon of organic rye flour and one tablespoon of filtered or cooled boiled water. Filtering or boiling gets rid of the chlorine (yeast doesn’t like chlorine), but also gets rid of the oxygen, which the wild yeast needs, so give it a very thorough mix to incorporate some air. Cover with cling film (plastic wrap) and leave in a plastic, glass, or ceramic bowl for 24 hours at room temperature.

Throughout this process, remember that these yeasts usually eke out a meagre living on a grain, they have not been selectively bred in laboratories to produce copious amounts of gas to raise bread quickly, so be nice to them. They like warmth, air, and moisture, like a lot of living things. You can keep them in the fridge when you want them to go to sleep, but you need to wake them up and give them some attention when you want them to do some work for you.

It’s certainly not much to look at, but one day this little jar of mush will turn into a delicious loaf of sourdough bread. And hopefully one day this little intern will turn into a grown up with a salary and a mortgage and… actually, no, that’s scary. Let’s just stick with the mush for now.

Walk This Way

Up until last week, I had a job. Or to be more specific, I was an intern. It was a month-long position with last Friday as its finishing date. So now it’s Monday, I’m unemployed, and I miss it. Not the aspects of it which required me to sit at a desk for the best part of 8 hours, nor large volumes of data which I was responsible for transferring into a database. And certainly not the instant coffee in the communal kitchen.

No, I miss the prospect of going in each day and seeing the same people – I was fortunate enough to be working in a small company staffed by people who I was happy to be sharing an office with – and falling into established patterns of behaviour. An office micro-climate, if you like. That shared milieu and common focus. I miss the people themselves as well, and the lift in mood when someone walks in carrying a bag of croissants first thing in the morning. And somewhat more unusually, I realised this morning that I’m going to miss the walking.

My office was located a half-hour walk away from my flat. There’s an option of taking the bus which cuts the journey by a third; I took advantage of this when it was raining once or twice, but I embraced the chance to walk. I’d set out every morning with a scarf resolutely wrapped about my neck, my gloves establishing a defence around my fingers and my iPod providing me with a soundtrack. Some mornings I was Rocky, spurred on by that unmistakeable bass-line of Eye of the Tiger. Or I was Mick Jagger strutting down the pavement, my stage, as Start Me Up carried me along. Occasionally, on more contemplative days, I channelled Johnny Cash.

As well as enabling me to indulge my inner music-nerd (and possibly encouraging the development of multiple personalities and serious delusions of grandeur) my morning walk gave me a much-needed engagement with the world. A little odd, perhaps, given that I built a wall of sound between me and other pedestrians, but walking along with people gave me a welcome feeling of inclusion. We were all going somewhere, with varying degrees of purpose and indeed awareness. And we were all moving, not standing stiffly in buses trying to create our own bubble of personal space amongst the myriad bodies surrounding us. Shared motion.

I put the world to rights on my walks to and from the office. The rhythm of my footsteps on the pavement, the watery morning sun or the mellow glow of sunset, the cold breaths of winter wind at my back, they all created a world where my thoughts were my own. This, of course, was all suspended as soon as I swiped my key-card at the office entrance or entered the code into the keypad at my building.

So it was an odd combination of things, a dichotomy of me embracing being lost in my own world and yet connected with the one around me as I took part in a common activity.

I’m trying to recreate those moments now that I don’t need to commute every day. And actually, I’m a lot freer to do so – there are plenty of streets which are asking to be walked, destinations to be found. There is also bread to be baked, and manipulating the dough with my hands has the same effect of creating a small bubble which I can retreat into; repetitive motion and freedom of thought. No other people, but sometimes that’s a good thing.

Hugs, Brownies, Wine.

There are plenty of ways to make me feel better.

I like being hugged. A cup of tea is almost guaranteed to lift my spirits. Want to put a spring back in my step? Tell me that my bum looks good in my jeans.

I bought some things on my way home from work the other day which, combined, made me feel like everything was definitely going to be okay.

Everything bar the wine was to play an integral role in a batch of brownies which I subsequently made. The wine was there because…do I really need to explain why?

Moving on before too many accusations of casual alcoholism can be levelled at me, the brownies are also a fairly sure-fire way to snap me out of a sulk. They involve chocolate. Lots of it. Lots of butter too, and eggs. They’re a pretty excessive concoction actually. But there are days when comfort can only be found in excess.

A bunch of flours

Two things have arisen from me seeing this clip:

1) I want to watch Stranger than Fiction

2) I have realised I might just marry any man who brings me a bunch of flours.

Cranberries Part II

It’s Sunday morning, and I wake up, not to the sound of Jon Humphrys interrogating a politician or James Naughtie insulting one, but because I am ready to wake up. My body is happy with the amount of sleep I have had, and is allowing me to open my eyes and face the world without being rudely forced into it by the Today Programme. (Incidentally, have you ever listened to the Today Programme whilst half asleep? I find it to be like drifting in and out of some bizarre alternate universe where all you’re allowed to talk about is politics. But maybe that’s just me…it probably is) Today, I can take as long as I want in the shower – or at least until my flatmates start getting irritated. I can savour a mug of tea, brewed for a decent amount of time and not [gingerly] slurped down as fast as my scalded mouth will allow. The sun is shining, the birds are singing (the railway next to my flat tends to drown them out, but I’m pretty sure they are), and the day stretches in front of me like a road waiting to be travelled. I can do anything, I can go anywhere… I am invincible.

 

Or at the very least, I’m going to bake some cookies.

And then I’m going to pile them up on a chopping board and take a picture of them. Because it’s a Sunday and I can.

Cranberries Pt I

Cranberries will always have something of an exotic, mysterious appeal to me. You know when you have an association of a particular place or memory which is connected with a seemingly innocuous object? I have that with cranberries. When I was about 9 or 10 years old we went on holiday to Cape Cod, MA (I can never spell the state in its full form) and the one foodstuff which will always stand out is cranberries. Ocean Spray had just begun selling cranberry juice in the UK, so I was dimly aware of these red, shiny, tart little beings, but being in New England, home of cranberry bogs, I suddenly saw cranberries everywhere I turned. And wait, you can eat these things? In cookies? Covered in chocolate? Mixed with nuts?

Blimey.

My favourite were ‘Bog Frogs‘ – cranberries, caramel and cashews enrobed in milk chocolate and shaped to look like frogs. Well, sort of like frogs. Did you ever play Frogger? Shaped like froggers.

So now, over ten years later, whenever I eat something containing cranberries part of me is 10 years old again. Part of me is reminded of how exciting it is to be exposed to something unfamiliar and delicious, and being able to relive that is a valuable thing.

Anyway. I’ve been baking with cranberries a lot this weekend. Part one: cranberry and almond muffins.