Bread. It has sugar in it. But I’m still gonna eat it…
This Bread Roll Pizza was my husband Marcel’s excellent idea the other day, and I’ll share what I did in a minute. Neither of us likes going to the supermarket, so these days it’s hard to find something nice in the fridge for lunch. One thing I nearly always have, however, is beautiful home made bread. No, there is nowhere to buy wonderful bread in Kilcolgan, which is why I make it. I have to because the kids take sandwiches to school every day. We won’t talk about the fact that two out of the three prefer bread in a horrible white sliced pan version. So every evening at about six-ish I do the following…
Bread
Put 350ml water into the bread bucket of your bread machine (other machines are flour-first, do whatever yours says). Add 1 tsp salt and 1 tblsp sugar.Weigh out 500g storng white flour and add it on top. Then sprinkle about 1 tblsp fast-action dried yeast on top. Set the programme to DOUGH and off you trot to do something else.
When the programme is finished, either turn the dough into a bread tin, or split it into 8 big rolls or 12 smaller ones. Let them rise for at least two hours. All too often I leave it too late to give the bread time to rise, and it rises overnight. This gives a lovely texture…but means you have to get up a bit earlier to bake it.
Bake it at 200 degrees C for 15 minutes (rolls) or 30 minutes (loaf).
Optional:
Add a glug of olive oil to the dough.
Add a few herbs to the dough.
When the dough is done, add some cubed strong cheddar and mix it through (it gets lost if you add it before the dough is mixed).
Do half strong white and half strong brown or strong wholemeal.
Do two thirds strong white and one third ordinary wholemeal flour.
So the one thing I always have is good bread. “What about,” said Marcel, “if you put cheese and tomato on a roll, then added chopped anchovy? Then melted it under the grill?
Like a sort of pizza?”
That’s what I did and I can promise you it was absolutely delicious.
Meanwhile, I was in a waiting room with my eldest, Honor. Things haven’t always run smoothly between us for the very simple and not unusual reason that she wants to forge her own path in life, and I don’t always think it’s the best path. She is her mother’s daughter in that she’s very outgoing and a little lacking in good sense at times, and her father’s daughter in that she has a rather unique approach to life. So when we were getting on wonderfully the other day, I took my opportunity to sketch her…
Here’s my young lady in person…
I learned something from that – to take my opportunity to sketch one of my family whenever I can. That means always, but always, having my sketching kit with me.
Oh, about the sugar-free sketching…I need some encouragement! The other day I was serving some ice cream and chocolate sauce to my family. I asked the group whether I was fooling myself to allow myself to have a little sweet treat every now and then, and did that mean my sugar-free stance was a mockery. Marcel and my younger daughter Olivia could not summon up enough interest to answer but my dear son Paddy, who also tries to avoid sugar, gave me an impassioned answer. “Of course you must have a treat every now and then!” he said. “That’s the only way to sustain this thing long term!”
What do you think?
