Disaster 555

Bread batch 555 was the big event of Tuesday, the last batch to involve a significant amount of Waitrose's Leckford Estate flour, the subject of some rather shaky looking arithmetic back in 2017 and noticed at reference 2.

For some reason both the first rise in the airing cupboard and the second rise in the proving bin downstairs were very slow, despite the airing cupboard being quite warm and the central heating being on. Four and a half hours and four hours respectively.

At the end of the first rise, the lid was only just lifting off the bowl, instead of its usual half inch or more - generally twice as much in the middle of the airing cupboard (right) as on the wall side (left). The stainless steel bowl - once the property of the Exe Vale group of hospitals - is a bit more than a foot across and is, for reasons of domestic economy, placed in the left hand side of the cupboard, above the hot water cylinder, our house being antiquated enough to have such a thing. But the resultant dough was quite sticky, so something had been going on.

The second rise seemed even slower and in the end I left it rather too long: it should have been four, rather than four and a half hours - by which time the dough had risen up more than an inch above the rims of the loaf tins - and with some signs of bubbles, a bad thing as they swell and burst during the baking.

Worse still, I managed to snag both loaves as I put them in the oven, and both deflated in a very dramatic way, with the dough sinking down as far below the rims as it had been above them. BH tells me that sponge cakes can do something of the sort if you disturb them while they are cooking: clearly the sponge is in a very fragile condition until it has been baked in.

Which left me rather deflated. But all was not lost, and the top loaf recovered quite well, right in the snap above, and the bottom loaf fairly well. And the bottom loaf, despite appearances, tasted pretty good. Not as risen as usual, but not heavy in the way of some organic wholemeal from orgo shops, and with a very good flavour. Something the celebrity chefs say develops with the longer rise.

PS: I have just heard that we trapped the fourth mouse in the garage overnight, Wednesday-Thursday. Not where I keep my flour, I hasten to add - just the vegetables, which do not keep well in our relatively warm kitchen.

Reference 1: https://leckfordestate.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/background-processing.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/frost.html. Last mouse report.