Cooking With LSP - Bread Of Life

Inspired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, I went to the kitchen in search of action. Yes, bread action. Here's the thing. From January to early March you were laying in supplies of flour and yeast. 

Why? Because you knew a Red Plague panicked populace would empty the shelves come the COVID shoe drop. So what to do with all those baking supplies? Make bread, obviously, and here's an easy recipe, which works. Trust me on this.

Dough after appx 18 hours. Add more flour if too runny

Here's how it's done. First step. Put three cups of flour in a mixing bowl, add 1/4 tsp yeast and 1 tsp salt. You can add more salt if you want to make like some kind of NYT know-it-all. There's no rule, it's up to you, but I recommend 1 tsp.

Whatever, behold the result and stir it around. Don't be shy, stir it up, then add 1 cup of tepid water to the mix.  Stir that up too, it's not hard. Add more water, maybe a 1/3 of a cup until you've got a shaggy dough. 

Tip it outta the bowl and onto a floured surface

It shouldn't be too wet or too dry, just a shaggy dough, and you'll know it when you meet it. Cover that fella with clingfilm, the bowl, not the dough, and let it rest overnight, 18 hours+.

Next day the dough should look bubbly, this is good. Remove it to a floured surface and form to a ball. Add more flour or water if the floury beast's too dry or too wet. That done, put it back in the mixing bowl, cover with clingfilm and let it rest for another hour, another rise. 

Heavy Metal

In the meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450*. 30 minutes later, put some unoiled heavy metal into the oven to heat up. I use a Lodge, you might prefer Crueset. That's up to you. Another 30 minutes later, uncover the mixing bowl, form the dough into a ball again on the jolly old floured surface, take the heavy metal from the oven, uncover it and...

Put the dough ball in the Dutch, crease side up. Don't burn your hands on the incandescent heavy metal, use an oven mitt, for goodness sake. Then cover and bake for 30 minutes at 450*. Uncover for another 10 minutes or until the bread's as crusty as you like, totally your call, and remove from the oven.

Right Tasty

Gasp in wonder. You've made bread which smells good, looks good and is good, it wasn't even hard to do. Reflection over, cover that bad boy up with an Archiepiscopal tea towel and let rest for a few minutes. Then cut into it and fall upon your scoff like...

A Warrior. 

LSP

White Bread

Gratuitous Handgun Video

OK, I know this doesn't have anything to do with eating ribeye steak or shooting enormous handguns, like LL's Smith & Wesson .460 Magnum revolver which, by the way, is perfectly capable of taking out a Main Battle Tank (MBT). No, this is about bread.

Bread Rising

One of the things I miss about England and Canada is good white bread. It's hard to find here in rural Texas, especially the white farmhouse loaf that goes so well with a Ploughman's Lunch or just about anything else, for that matter.

So, how to get that bread. By waiting for the Government to give it to me, as in the days of ancient Rome? By waiting for the State to take someone else's bread and deliver to the Compound just because I didn't have any and that's not fair? No, I bypassed Leviathan and its Big Bakery cronies, and made that loaf myself. In fact I made several. And it was right tasty, not that I'm an expert. Moral of the story?

Some Fresh Baked Bread

Don't put up with ersatz rubbish, not least food, and make the effort to be self-sufficient. There's a virtue and no little degree of satisfaction in that. And, of course, shoot huge revolvers whenever possible.

That's a given,

LSP