New stuff

Bread batch 602 was the order of the day yesterday and being between two (16kg) bags of Alto flour from Ponder's End, thought it was time to use the Sainsbury's own brand stuff, 3kg of it, bought in the panic buying season of last spring.

Different texture from the Alto flour, but the dough seemed regular enough when I had finished the first knead. While both first and second rise were faster than usual, with the result that I was all finished by 14:00. Also a paler crust than usual. In any event, by 18:00 the bread was very good, good enough that it was taken with butter rather than with cheese.

But a bit bland by this morning, so it was taken with cheese. The reverse of what usually happens, with it being fresh and nicely textured but bland the day of baking, but with a better flavour by the following morning. The back of the packet admits to adding chalk (presumably to whiten the flour), iron, niacin, thiamin and wheat gluten. Some of which I recognise from the corn flakes packets of my childhood; perhaps vitamin supplements rather than flavour enhancers or flour improvers. Who knows.

The text we took for breakfast was the idea that next year we have another viral plague, one which does not kill people or even make them very ill, but does leave males sterile. Thinking here of the tricks we play with insects we want to bear down on. How would this play out over time? We thought that maybe young males would not care, would brush it off. Young females would be slightly more concerned and females of child bearing age would be very concerned. Perhaps males who kept themselves isolated and so fertile could go in for polygamy. Selling fully functioning sperm would become big business. The Saudis and the Chinese would join forces to sink huge amounts of time and treasure into making artificial sperm. Of course, discerning ladies with money would want organic sperm, caught from the wild. None of this fish farming for them.

Perhaps some lady novelist has already worked this one out.

PS: after careful inspection of the packet, I find that the best before date was December last year. Reminding me that in the olden days, one stored grain rather than flour, with the grain storing better than the flour.