Bread-making

I spent most of today doing a bread-making workshop with a small group of people (all female!). We had a great day - the sun was shining in through the conservatory roof, and it was warm enough for our bread dough to prove outside in the sun. We started the day with some coffee, fruit and my experimentation with a new health bread which I had baked the other day. The taste combination of spelt flour, honey, bananas, blueberries and nuts went down a treat, so I'll have to write up the recipe and publish it (contact me if you would like a sneak preview!).

After the bread and coffee, we got down to the real business of the day. We made up our dough for focaccia and set it aside to prove. We then moved onto the healthy wholemeal spelt bread with its linseeds and pumpkin seeds, and made scones and a loaf each. Then revisited the focaccia dough to give it its second stage - putting it back out in the sun for its second proving, while the scones were sampled, straight out of the oven, with some butter and homemade strawberry jam. The group got on really well - career advice was exchanged as well as many foodie conversations!

We finally made up the focaccia bread - keeping it classical with toppings of garlic, rosemary, olive oil and salt. All the breads were a great success - I'm not sure if that was down to the creative talents of the group, or my teaching ability, or maybe a combination of both! One of the group has promised to send me on the photo she took of the fruits of our labour - and when she does, I'll publish it to my blog... Hopefully everyone will try out the recipes at home and get to the stage where they'll be making bread without having to even think!