Seeing as we, like so many, are currently indoors, I am making up for time that I wasn’t able to bake in the last couple of months.
One of my favourite things to bake is bread. The trouble here in Warsaw, though, is that I cannot seem to find plain old dry yeast. The shopping frenzies have resulted in the normally plentiful compressed yeast being sold out everywhere.
That hasn’t stopped me, though, because I also really enjoy making soda bread. This time, I took my normal recipe (from River Cottage) and added a chopped up Granny Smith apple and about 100g of really sharp cheddar that I cut into cubes. Topping it off with a further 50g of grated cheddar resulted in small pools of cheese on top. It was perfect.
That being said, yeast bread is still my jam. The pandemonium has driven me to finally making my first sourdough starter. Because I’m me, I had some whole grain rye flour in the cupboard so, again, I took some advice from the fine folks at the River Cottage and made that bubbly jar above. I can’t wait to see how this turns out later this week.
Finally, I just finished making this lemon drizzle cake from Her Majesty, Mary Berry. It was a big hit every time I made it in Liverpool and it’s nice to still be able to make it here. If you don’t have any self-raising flour, just add an extra teaspoon of baking powder for a total of 3 teaspoons.
Dan Alcantara 