202½ + 315

At the weekend my daughter Kate in Ireland sent a photo of her freshly homemade garlic bread, a starter to the weekly family Saturday Pizza night. The photo was in response to her brother’s photos of his weekend visit to some old ruins in Rome. In fact, he had been visiting his sister two weeks ago and helped planned the Pizza Oven that Kate and hubby Barry are currently building on the terrace.
 
Perhaps my old school friend and fellow Bliper CB Images’ recent posting of his homemade, very healthy looking, rye loaves also inspired me to do something.
   
I was rather taken by the idea of fresh garlic bread and today thought I would give it a try using a German recipe from the web which looked interesting. The basic dough is tossed with various herbs, grated cheese and garlic before baking. The outcome was not at all bad but I was not happy with the “lightness/airiness” of the baked dough. Not sure what it was, perhaps I mishandled the kneading or somehow got the ingredients not quite right but I somehow think the yeast “starter” using dry yeast in warm water with a bit of flour and olive oil didn’t really get to work. The dough didn’t rise as much as I would have expected.  
 
One of the things that I did have to “adjust” was the flour type. The recipe called for standard flour which in the UK would be “soft flour” or in the US “pastry flour”. There is no such thing as self-raising flour here but all flour from wheat, spelt and rye are sold by “Type Numbers” which reflect the degree of milling and the quantity of “ash” i.e. the amount of minerals and vitamins in mg per 100g flour. So the common wheat type is Nr 405 (405mg of ash) and there are a further four grades up to 1600 which is the wholemeal sort. Spelt is in three types from 630 to 1050 and rye in five grades from 815 to 1740.
 
I ran out of the standard wheat 405 flour and had to use about half 630 spelt. Not sure if that had an effect. I do rather like the 30,000 odd German "DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung" standards (German Standards Institute) which sets all these things. Makes life much easier for many things in daily life. Not sure if it was DIN or a separate “packaging law” that until recently legally obliged manufacturers to offer their foodstuffs in specific sizes – Milk in 1-litre packages, chocolate bars in 100g, sugar 1kg, butter 250g  etc. I think it has been relaxed but most seem to stick to it although larger sizes and thus "10% extra free"-like tempting and often misleading offers do abound.
 
And many products were matched. Baking powder is commonly in 16g sachets and that is exactly the amount needed for 500g of flour and thus with a pinch of salt makes "self-raising" flour. Or fresh yeast was in 48g packets and a recipe would only have to say “half a packet” and everyone knew what was meant – 24g.


So maybe I followed the “rough” recipe I found which used tea and tablespoons too closely. I learnt that a teaspoon meant a level teaspoon. I watched the video of the garlic bread recipe afterwards and saw the author was very generous with her tea and tablespoons.
 
Angie enjoyed it so that was a result. Will have to try and perfect it and see if I can put something together when they are all over in a month or two. Son-in-law can down garlic/pizza bread like no one I know and he will make a good judge.
 
Apart from the bread, pottered about and did some preparatory work in the vegetable garden where I hope to kick off tomorrow in a big way (hens allowing). Spotted the horses munching their evening herbs. (Extra photo)