Crowned

The couronne bordelaise resulting from yesterday's Zoom baking class, after proving overnight. It's certainly not as tidy as Patrick's, following some rather tense moments where it stuck to the cloche. Manipulating a hot pizza stone, hot cloche, hot and fragile bread: not easy. But as I've never made a couronne before despite being a keen baker, I am pretty happy with it and I know what to change next time (make it smaller so it fits in the cloche). 

As I've said previously, even if you are a dedicated amateur you always learn something new from watching a professional. In this case, how to knead wet dough without ending up with impossibly sticky hands, and how to make neat, even balls of dough for rolls. And I was surprised how easy this couronne was to shape thanks to a nifty technique. I was less impressed with the apple and cider soda bread, which was more cake than bread, but it was worth a try. We now have a vast quantity of bread to get through.

Another overcast and intermittently wet day, though not as wet as yesterday. My only outing was a forage for (wet) pine cones to light the fire with.

We finished off yesterday evening by watching The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, another Billy Wilder film we haven't seen before. It was pleasantly silly and witty.