Lovely Day Here

Welcome to Katie Weston via here. A lovely day has dawned in our part of Norfolk. Blue skies, streaks of different clouds scudding across the sky and a brisk wind. Cooler than of late but that is no bad thing. I keep waiting for the garden to go to sleep so I can finish cutting down the dead vegetation.

I made up Raymond Blanc's Pain De Campagne bread, the recipe for which is here
It is also on my recipe link above. I left my starter for 4 days in the end as I just couldn't find the time to make the bread. We love it, such a lovely flavour, slightly sour dough in taste and so bouncy. The only thing we do differently to his recipe is add a level teaspoon of caraway seed (measure first before grinding). This seems to intensify the sour dough flavour:

Always do mine in tins as I always worry that it will keep on growing all over the oven if I left it to its own devices. I plan to make some more for when DS and FDiL come in January.

Yesterday I managed to get some roast potatoes prepared for the freezer. You make them normally, allow to go completely cold then open freeze (forgot to do this so might be interesting when re-heating) before packing into a bag and popping in the freezer. When you need them, put them on a tray, straight from the freezer and bake at 220C for 20 - 25 minutes. That should crisp them again and be hot all the way through:

The ones at the back are for our delayed Christmas dinner (in January). The ones at the front are to go with our meals for Christmas and Boxing Day! I plan on cooking once and serving 4 meals up. Come Boxing Day, the second meal will be reheated.