When cooking goes wrong

Cooking can be a hit and miss affair. Over the years I've got much better at following recipes, particularly to expand my repertoire and to get a better technical understanding. But you still need to keep pushing boundaries and take the odd risk.

Not long ago I had a misguided experiment with some duck. I roasted the bird and then deglazed the pan with a generous slug of Campari, stirring in redcurrant jelly. To say this didn't work is quite an understatement. My husband who is not the greatest fan of Campari anyway (I love it!) observed all this, grimacing. I thought the aromatic bitterness would make a perfect foil to cut through the rich duck fat. But no, it just tasted bitter. Horribly bitter. And the bitterness seemed to intensify. So much so that I had to replate my food. Sensibly, my husband already had already done this by that point. I even recall blotting my duck with some kitchen roll to remove all traces of the sauce. (Bizarrely, it had tasted fairly balanced and interesting when I sampled it from the pan.)

The subject of when cooking goes wrong was suggested to me by my friend Ginny who lives in Greece who sent in the picture of the burnt loaf. She's a keen cook, very ambitious and (obviously) couldn't wait to try out a wood-fired oven that came as part of her family's new built-in barbecue. It looks like a lovingly prepared loaf and it's almost heartbreaking seeing it like this. However, she tells me that after much hilarity, her sons removed the charred crust and 'scoffed' the rest of the loaf. The flavour must have been fabulous. Not surprisingly, they are now on the look out for a decent oven thermometer – and still keep laughing about it!

Do please let me know if you've had similar experiences. We can learn from each others' mistakes...

Sourdough bread: cooking doesn't get more satisfying than this

I've been a keen cook for longer than I care to admit, as I started baking cakes on Sunday afternoons from the age of about seven. Personally, I've always found it very satisfying. I guess it taps into something quite profound. We eat to live, so I strongly believe that cooking is an important life skill; I also consider it an expression of love. It is also a wonderful way to unwind after a stressful day. When I hear people blithely admit to not being able to cook, I feel they are missing out on one of life's great pleasures. There is something soulful and primal about cooking and I like to think it helps foster a healthy relationship with food.

Since I started regularly baking bread earlier this year, my satisfaction levels have reached new heights. And, for me, baking sourdough bread is the most profoundly satisfying cooking imaginable. Creating your own starter is exciting enough, but there is something startlingly satisfying about making such a fundamental foodstuff. You can't believe that you have created such a wondrous thing! And merely from flour, water and salt. The fact that it makes you feel like a magician is probably a sad reflection of our modern food buying habits and the industrialisation of food.

Here is how I bake a sourdough loaf. They all come out a bit different as, sometimes, I don't let them prove sufficiently, but I'm working on my patience. A sourdough loaf takes about a day – but please don't be put off by this. There isn't much work involved, just the initial mixing together and the odd light knead, but, as you are using natural yeasts, time is the key factor as they take much longer to ferment or rise than commercial yeasts. This is why sourdough bread tastes so much better.

Sourdough bread (based on 'white leaven bread' from The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard)

200g white leaven at 18°C
325g cold water at 16°C
500g strong white flour
1 and a half teaspoons good sea salt crushed in a pestle and mortar
vegetable oil
semolina for dusting the baking tray

You will also need a clean, damp tea towel, a second clean tea towel, a large baking tray, a craft knife or Stanley knife, a small water spray bottle.
Optional, but helpful: a scraper, a flour dredger, a basket for proving the dough.

1. Before you start it's worth preparing a surface in your kitchen as your dedicated 'kneading surface'.

2. In a large bowl weigh out and mix together the ingredients, except the oil and semolina. This is best done with your right hand (if you're right-handed), squeezing it through your fingers to get rid of any lumps of flour. Use your left hand to scrape the dough off your right hand as the dough is very sticky. Cover the bowl with the damp cloth and leave for 10 minutes. Wash your hands.

3. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on your lightly floured 'kneading surface'. I keep my flour dredger handy to prevent the dough from getting too sticky to move around. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds (about 12 quarter turns). Try to keep the dough as sticky as you can bear, otherwise it will end up more dense and less likely to have the distinctive open, bubbly texture. Shape into a ball and leave covered on the surface while you clean out the bowl and lightly oil it.

4. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, place in the bowl and leave covered for 10 minutes.

5. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 30 minutes. (The proving periods gradually get longer and you can get on with other things in the meantime.)

6. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 1 hour.

7. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 1 hour.

8. Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds. Shape into a ball, return to the bowl and leave covered for 2 hours.

9. Prepare your dry clean cloth by rubbing generous amounts of flour into one side of it. You'll need plenty of flour to stop the dough from sticking. Floured side up, use it to line a bowl or, ideally, a proving basket (I use a cheap plastic one with a 30cm diameter – see below). Knead the dough for 10–15 seconds, shape into a ball and, seam side upwards place into the cloth-lined bowl or basket. Either fold the cloth over the dough or cover it with your damp cloth and leave for 5 hours or for as long it takes to almost double in height. This obviously depends on the weather and how warm it is in your kitchen.

10. Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7. Dust the baking tray with semolina. Upturn your loaf onto the tray. With the craft knife, cut a four line grid shape or a circle into the surface of the loaf. Before putting it in the oven, spray the surface with water. Be generous with the water and also spray into the oven. The moisture helps the loaf to rise.

11. Bake the loaf for about 45–50 minutes. Check to see whether is has cooked by knocking on the bottom – it should sound hollow. Allow to cool on a wire rack. As this makes a large loaf, it's worth cutting it in two, wrapping one half in plenty of clingfilm and freezing it for another time. I do like to prolong the satisfaction!

Soda bread: last-minute baking

Today we were due to meet friends on Hampstead Heath for a picnic and I didn't have any suitable bread to take with us. What I had was fine for toast, but not ideal for hungry youngsters. I should add that I'm currently well into my baking obsession and reluctant to buy any bread (particularly given the feeble offering at our local Sainsbury's). I've discovered that baking bread tends to be anything but a last-minute affair (unless you don't use yeast).

Well, this was a good opportunity to test out soda bread – something I haven't enjoyed home-baked since my childhood best-friend's Irish mother knocked up one Saturday afternoon when we were about 8. I turned to my copy of Bread by Daniel Stevens from the River Cottage Handbook series and quickly got on with it, mixing some malty flour into the white.

Soda bread

Makes 2 loaves

350g plain white flour, plus extra for dusting
150g malthouse flour
10g salt
4 tsp baking powder
300ml milk (or buttermilk, thin yoghurt or water)

For coating:
A little flour (they suggest that rye would be good)

Preheat the oven to 200°C. In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients and mix in the liquid to make a dough. I needed to add a bit more milk as my dough came up quite dry. I also added a splash of maple syrup. (The book suggests adding a good tablespoon of black treacle if you use wholemeal flour.)

Knead briefly and divide the dough into two. Shape into two rounds, flatten them a little until they are about 5cm thick. Shake flour over the loaves and place on a lightly oiled baking tray. (I'm suggesting this as my loaves got a bit stuck and I needed to use a fish slice to lift them off.) Cut a cross in the top of each loaf, almost through to the bottom and then gently stab all over with the knife.

Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

We pulled the soda bread apart by hand and ate it filled with ham or sticky cheese, nibbling cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumber, while sitting in the sunshine. A bit scone-like (maybe because it had cooled right down), but good nonetheless, and the malthouse flour adds decent texture and flavour. With a hearty soup or casserole – for dunking or mopping – it would be fabulous.

Let there be life: creating your own starter

Currently I have a really enjoyable work project on the go, editing a cookery book, but while I've been waiting for copy to come in, I've been doing a lot of baking. I've also been trying to create a leaven. A week on, it seems as though I may have succeeded with my leaven as it truly seems to have come to life. It is VERY exciting.

Last Tuesday, following Dan Lepard's instructions in The Handmade Loaf, I mixed together wholemeal flour, strong white flour, live yoghurt, raisins and water. The pictures below are before and after mixing (day 1) and leaving it in the sealed Kilner jar.

Each subsequent morning this was fed with flour and water and yesterday (day 7), after feeding it, I strained the starter and returned it to the jar. This morning I discarded three-quarters of it, fed it and, within a few hours, it sprung back to life. Earlier this afternoon, I look up from my work and saw the starter almost filling the jar, bubbling away (see below and first picture). Over the course of the week, the aroma became more acidic, yesterday it was more like fresh bread and now it's a subtle rotting apple smell. You really can't believe your eyes when you see all the activity.

I might even be able to bake my first sourdough loaf later this week which is a particularly exciting thought. The wonder of nature!

Baking bread: simple pleasures

There's way too much bad bread out there. Even here in North London it's difficult to find a decent loaf without having to search out decent delis, specialist bakers or markets. And, when you do, you have to spend a pretty penny. For a number of years I've used my trusty Morphy Richards breadmaking machine to improve the quality of our bread, but I've always yearned for the satisfaction of being a proper home baker.

I've had a few attempts, but I think the yeast may have been lurking in the cupboard for too long and the results were leaden. So, this year, I have restocked the larder and plan to give home baking the time and respect it deserves. Bread is a fundamental foodstuff that humans have been making for thousands of years. It really can't be that difficult, can it?

No it isn't! What's more, thanks to the Internet, you quickly realise how many keen home bakers are out there, many offering tips, recipes and support. As a regular reader of the Guardian, I'm often drawn to Dan Lepard's recipes and, emboldened by having successfully made his Black Forest Ham Rolls (published 22 January 2011), I was ready to move on to bread proper. Last week I keyed his name into Google, along with the word 'spelt' as I've had a bag of spelt flour which has been languishing in the cupboard for too long. I came across a wonderful Anglo-Spanish blog, The Winter Guest, and an adaptation of a recipe from Lepard's book The Handmade Loaf. (I have ordered a copy, of  course.) I followed Miriam's clear instructions, using a half quantity of wholemeal spelt, but my kneading is more in line with the Lepard approach – three short kneads of about 15 seconds with 10 minutes between them, followed by 30 minutes' resting time. I baked this for the first time last Friday – and was delighted that my loaf looked just like Miriam's. As the loaf went down so well (and so quickly) over the weekend, I baked a double quantity yesterday.

I'm just warming up, though, using commercial yeast. The next step is to get much more hardcore and move on to sourdough bread...

Dan Lepard's simple milk loaf (double quantity)
500g strong white flour
500g all-purpose flour
700g whole milk at room temperature
40g golden or maple syrup (like Miriam I used maple)
3 teaspoons fresh yeast (like Miriam I used dried fast-action yeast – 2 sachets or 15g)
2 1/2 teaspoons good sea salt

In a large bowl mix together all the ingredients. Remove the dough from the bowl and give it a light knead on a floured surface. Return it to the bowl, cover with a slightly damp tea cloth and leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Take out of the bowl and continue kneading on an oiled (or floured) surface for 15 seconds. Wipe out the bowl and lightly oil it.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for 10 minutes.

Repeat this process twice. Then leave the dough to rise in an oiled bowl, covered. In the picture above, you can see how the yeast has already started working – the dough has become silky textured and pliable.

After about an hour, the dough will have risen considerably (see above), remove from the bowl and punch out the air, giving it a good bash about.

Butter and lightly flour two 2lb loaf tins. Divide the dough into four balls and place two in each tin.

Cover the tins with the damp cloth and leave in a warm place to prove for a second time until almost doubled in size.

Brush the loaves with some milk and bake at 210°C for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for another 20 minutes.

Can you see that the longer, narrower tin worked much better than the other which is better suited to loaf cakes. My preferred tin (below left) is La Forme Kaiser 2lb tin, 25cm x 11cm. The other is by Anolon and is 23cm x 13cm.

http://invitadoinviernoeng.blogspot.com/2009/06/dan-lepards-simple-milk-loaf.html
http://www.danlepard.com/