bread and porter

One of my goals since making bread has been to try and make something like the wonderful dark breads we had in Germany last year.

So I tried a new recipe; 100% rye flour and half a bottle of Fuller’s London Porter.  For those who don’t know, or who’ve led a sheltered life, Porter is a dark beer - a stout - so named because it was the drink of choice of 18thC street and river porters of olde London town.

The verdict? Very tasty - but not there yet.  So more experimenting to be done.

I also tried a new method, which was to assemble the ingredients last night.  There’s a lot to assembling, by the way - measuring accurately and all that - and then programming the bread maker so that the bread would be ready by breakfast time.

Anniemay was not sure about this; “what if it catches fire and burns the house down, while we’re asleep? What if ……?”  and so on.

I reassure her; “bread making is man’s work, my love and nothing ever goes wrong with machines and similar technological devices, left on unsupervised over night, when men are involved.”

This seemed to do the trick and she returned to watching the late-night news showing Donald Trump being left in charge of all sorts of things while we‘re asleep.