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Unlocked!


Forty-bloody-nine days of staying home, who would of thought, for those of you that have been following since the outset, that is a vast departure from Rule 4. Only stay in Hawera 1 weekend a month. Never mind Rule 1. Don't hang out with shit people. I note that I have been shit on occasion but I have managed to turn a blind eye to those performances, it may have been more enlightened to head down a path of self development, second note, that has not eventuated.

Like everyone I have become moderately competent at several forms of video conferencing platform, attended a weekly quiz arrrgggh…… if you had told me………, failed to achieve any personal betterment, had not a single alcohol free day, have many, many, man, many new website logins, navigated this bloody blog site, survived an online gig without the lights quite going out and have completed projects that have been on the to-do list for years. The things I enjoyed, probably like everyone else was the extra free time, less stress, and not driving all over the place to meetings. It pissed me right off that Bunnings was not open but I must tip my hat at Hamden Estate and Panhead for their liquid contribution.



The bit I liked the best was how the country embraced bread, I was fortunate enough to never be in short supply of yeast or flour like others and probably my finest achievements was the mastery of cake, something I have never previously aspired to, mind you only one type of cake, but today's effort is magnificent as you can see.
Here are the efforts from three bakers.

 Guy Oakley

Guy is a recently retired vet and has joined the hordes of people in NZ getting into bread making. His wife Jenny is the baker from hell so I am not sure how he elbowed himself a space in the kitchen but he did. He also had a crack at the sourdough and clearly did not use the speed sourdough version I have adopted. He sent me the following about lockdown life.

“We have a routine that keeps us busy during the day. We feed our various animals, go down the road on our mountain bikes to check some possum traps on a neighbouring farm, we generally don’t see anyone on the farm so feel that this is a safe procedure and gives us a daily dose of exercise. The afternoon is spent doing jobs around the house. At the moment we are weeding Jenny’s nursery. My father used to make sourdough bread, when a friend, James Scott told me he was making sourdough bread I thought it might be time to have a go so I got some starter from him. I have used a bread maker to make pizza dough but it looks as though sourdough bread is quite a different process. I was guided by the You Tube video clip here https://youtu.be/2FVfJTGpXnU. This recipe uses 800 gms of flour, 460 mls of water and 2 teaspoons of salt, and 320gms of starter. It is useful to watch the You Tube video as it is a bit of a lengthy process to make the bread.”


Jutta Rosenblatt

Jutta is German and would have made her bread with German precision, Kim Hill interviewed a sourdough dude the other week and asked if sourdough was easy or hard, his response was both, to knock out a loaf at home is easy enough, but to produce something to sell on a mass scale is much more tricky. Jutta’s loaf looks like the tricky option to me. Here are her notes which are just gold, she did offer to transcribe them but I prefer this version. 

She sent me the following message. “I got the recipe from YouTube Artisian Sourdough bread. I can give you the exact link or give you the recipe how I noted it down. Pleased you’re impressed with it - it tastes delicious! What I love about it is that the taste stems from the chemical process involved rather than from exotic ingredients. It really is simply water, flour and salt. Also the process is long and strung out the actual physical effort is a lot lower than with hand-made yeast bread. Just some pulling, stretching and folding. It’s really pleasurable. The most important thing in it is the starter. I got my starter from people who came to get a trailer load of horseshit from us and repaid in baking and - because I asked for it - Audrey (the starter). In that sense, Sourdough has more of a story and history to it as well as a relationship with breads and bread makers.” This is a link to a resource she used https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/science/sourdough-bread-starter-library.html?fbclid=IwAR1kZFotFCsdD0RXbu20RcSqqS4WqDqZd-e37Ex0j3G8TqG7fnmRimogsQs


Paul Rogers

Last but most certainly not least, if Paul was a girl he 
would most certainly be a domestic goddess as he is a boy and a very special cabinet maker indeed, not just a your average garden variety knocker up of kitchens but a true craftsman and furniture maker. His workshop is a very exciting place, he always has something interesting and creative going on and his collection of old tools still get plenty of use along with many he has made himself. He is also a notable cook, applying the precision of woodwork in his kitchen. We had a bun-off and I awarded him first place a few weeks ago, here is his more recent recipe for naan bread.




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