It's the official end of the Edinburgh Festival today - and that's including the arty posh bit, and not just the crazy Fringe.
To say August has been a busy month would be a fairly massive understatement - but since today is September, it's a new month, and I'm taking advantage of a momentary pause in the craziness this evening to write a blog post (or maybe even two, if I'm still awake later on!).
Back at the start of the Festival, Mr E and I went to see James Morton (of Great British Bake Off fame) at the Assembly Rooms do a show about bread, and indeed bake bread during it. It was a slightly random format, but a fun way to spend a lunchtime nonetheless and very interesting (although I'm still no further on as to why so many bread-machine recipes need milk powder in them, and I'm not sure I managed to convince the slightly shocked bread purists all round that I don't actually own one of said bread machines! Just that I know several people who do, and I can't eat dairy, hence I can never eat the bread they bake - hence the question - but it shall remain a mystery for another day).
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| Naan - not exactly! |
A couple of nights later, Mr E and I decided it was time to give some bread making ago, however we were so engrossed in discussing which of the recommended kneading techniques were least likely to wake our 3yr old daughter sleeping in the room directly above the kitchen (I kid you not, we lead a rock and roll lifestyle!) that neither of us were paying very close attention to the ingredients and forgot to put in the yeast. Which is a) a rather fundamental problem when making bread, and b) fairly shameful, since there were actually only 3 other ingredients, so it's not like we had a lot to remember.
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| There really are no words... |
We did momentarily debate whether or not you could retrospectively knead the yeast in and quickly concluded that was a monumentally stupid idea (almost as stupid as missing it out in the first place) but decided that rather than chucking it straight in the bin, in the spirit of waste-not-want-not we'd see if we could dry fry them to make some flatbreads.
It worked surprisingly well - they were dry fried for a couple of minutes on a high heat on each side, then chucked straight in the toaster which made them puff up more than just using the pan on its own.
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| Mini-M perfecting the dough dropping splat |
We didn't use all the dough, wrapped some in clingfilm and stuck it in the fridge, cue much fun for Mini-M the next day, squdging, stretching and playing with the dough, and choosing the next one to go into the pan each time, to go with soup for dinner.
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| Another one about to be splatted from on high |
Disaster averted - however next time I'll not be forgetting the yeast - and I can see just how foolproof James' bread recipe, since clearly my fool quotient is fairly high!
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| Yep - still very flat! |
