That's one big mother!

It was Mother's Day yesterday and for the first time in a long time, I've not been back to Chez Wong to visit my Mum or cook her a meal. The main reason being because of my family situation at the moment (le sigh!), my old bedroom is now being used by my Dad and I refuse to sleep on the bed in the spare room. I might as well sleep on razorwire and potatoes for all the good it does your back. But this is one Mother's Day out of many more I'm sure and I'll make it up to her another time.

We did have Si's parents over for dinner though and I decided I would bake bread from scratch for the first time (apart from flatbreads - they don't count!). As always, not settling on learning to walk before I run, I dove head first into the culinary version of the 110m hurdles and decided to make focaccia using HFW's recipe.

Now, let me make this clear. Whenever we've had home made bread, I've only ever used the breadmaker. I've not even made pizza dough from scratch, much as I fancy twirling that round my head and shouting, 'Bella! Bella!' whilst I'm doing it. When HFW says the dough is gonna be sticky, it's going to be sticky. I kneaded and floured, floured and kneaded, scraped and floured, kneaded and scraped with Si looking on telling me I had worn the wrong top to make bread (I suppose wearing something with bell sleeves was a mistake) but then realised that I had no idea what the dough should feel like. Yes, it said silky and smooth in the book but just how silky was it meant to be? Like 200 thread count bed sheets or 800? I settled for a high end 4* hotel with a thread count of 400 and left it to rise.

45 minutes of gardening later (alright, Si gardening and me watching), I had a sneaky peek at my dough but was quite disappointed it hadn't ballooned to double the volume as HFW has said so I took a leaf out of Dan Lepard's marvellous 'Short and Sweet' book in which he advises to take 10 minutes as marvelous things can happen in the world of bread in that time. A rather large mug of tea later and the dough had risen a bit more and was ready for the knock back and second rise. I won't bore you with the rest of the process but will tell you that I can see why people love to bake their own bread. Not only do you get the pleasure of handling the rather tactile dough baby in all of it's squidgy glory but to have that delicious aroma wafting through and permeating every room of your house makes it all worth it.

Also, in honour of Mother's Day, I decided to get cracking with a sourdough starter or as it's otherwise known, 'The Mother'. It's basically a gloppy mix of flour and water which you continually feed with more flour and water. It fizzes and ferments away until you're ready to make your loaf when you take some of the starter mixture and make a sponge which is the base for the dough. I'm not a huge fan of sourdough but I'm totally in love with the concept that a jar of gunge that's living in your fridge, with a little maintenance can provide you with a daily loaf of bread.