Baking experiments and social media

This weekend started off with a treat when my husband and I took Friday afternoon off and went on a rare trip to the cinema to see the new Bond film before having a slap up seafood dinner at one of my favourite Glasgow restaurants, Gamba. The food was great and due to the magical world of Twitter, fishy chef extraordinaire, Derek knew we were coming and made sure we were well looked after. My favourite was the fish soup with crab and ginger which I could happily have eaten all day long.

Twitter has also got me my first baking commission with @whwlatest on the look out for some gluten free bread. I've had some flour in stock for a couple of weeks so decided to give it a bash today. It actually turned out quite tasty, more like a crumpety milk loaf then a crusty bloomer, but would make a decent bit of substitute toast to satisfy an emergency bread craving. Looking forward to re-baking it for public consumption and seeing how it goes down with those who need it.

Whilst I was waiting for that to bake, I also dug out the bag of spelt flour that had been waiting to be tried for a while and adapted a Richard Bertinet recipe for honey and lavender bread. All was going well until the final transfer to the oven when it deflated somewhat leaving me with a strange looking but heavenly smelling loaf. The lavender was subtle and the nuttiness of the spelt balanced with the sweetness of the honey to give a great tasting, unusual bread.

Twitter is a very strange and wonderful thing. It draws you in, introduces you to like minded people, and provides an amazing platform for marketing, motivation and distraction. I've shared today's experiments with the inspiring @thoughtfulbread who are busy baking on a much grander scale at the other end of the country for some foodie feedback and will let Nigel Slater know that his Brownie recipe is indeed a winner later. It's all very strange, but it keeps me working towards the dream. Just don't tell my mentor @PosiOut about my lack of business planning progress!

Sourdough, cake and inspiration

This weekend it was time to try out my rye sourdough starter which has been slowly fermenting for the last month. It had gone from smelling of paint stripper to boozy, sharp apples so at last I could experiment with the sponge method and get baking.

This technique involves mixing together a ladleful of your starter with some flour and warm water the evening before you want to bake and leaving it in a warm place overnight. The next morning it had transformed into a frothy milkshake and was good to go. The next stage was making the dough by adding more flour and salt and kneading until smooth and shiny. This took me about 10 minutes using the satisfyingly aggressive and noisy French kneading technique to which I am now a firm devotee.

You then leave the dough for an hour or two, before deflating and re-forming into a ball, then repeat the resting, deflating and reforming stage 2-3 times until you have a lovely fluffy, smooth pillow to play with. The final stage is to divide the dough and form into loaves to pop in proving baskets for the final rising stage (again another 2-3 hours). Finally by tea time they were ready to go in the oven and by supper time we were tucking in to some delicious fresh sourdough.

This is definitely a technique for a long lazy weekend, rather than when you want bread in a hurry but the results were amazing. My best sourdough yet.

It also gave me a chance to try out my new signature slash to the crust. The H for Hels' Bakehouse looks great, although much to the delight of my husband, who works at the SECC, it also looks like the new Hydro arena in Glasgow and has now been christened 'Hydro bread'. I spy a marketing opportunity!

In between all of this bread making it was the usual weekend mixture of dog walking and child ferrying. My son goes to a drama class on a Saturday so whilst he was busy becoming a star, I took advantage and headed off for a coffee and a cupcake at The Butterfly Bakery & Cafe in Bearsden. I've been driving past for a while and looking for an excuse to pop in and I'm glad I did because the cake was delicious and it's the perfect sneaky treat for busy Mum's looking for a sanity saving 20 minutes peace and quiet.

To keep my motivation levels up (with less calorific side effects) I've also joined the ManicMums group on Linkedin and would definitely recommend this and the website mumandcareer.co.uk for anyone struggling to balance work, family, career, guilt and ambitions for a better way of doing all of this. It's full of inspiring advice from like minded people and there's nothing like feeling you're not alone to give you the confidence to keep going.

Bank holiday baking bonanza

This weekend has been all about the the bread. I am slightly obsessed and my kitchen now looks like a science lab, come illicit still.

I've baked bread occassionally over the years but the obsession started in earnest in June when we went on our family holiday to Lyme Regis and made a daily pilgrimage to the Town Mill Bakery.  I love everything about it: the communal cafe set up and open plan kitchen, the friendly atmosphere, the home made muesli, jam and peanut butter and, of course, the bread. We started each day with a mountain of toast, fresh apple juice, coffee and a pastry or two on the side, and I left inspired to bring some of that feeling back to our every day world.  I heard on the grapevine that the franchise is up for sale, and if I lived at the other end of the country and had won the lottery I would definitely be up for it.  As it is, my home kitchen will have to do for now.

Since then my bread maker has been relegated to emergencies, and I've been working my way through Richard Bertinet's great book - Dough. Every weekend, I've been trying something new and watching my family devour the results. It takes a lot of time, but it is time well spent and I am now addicted to therapeutic qualities of the French kneeding technique which I'm sure helps set off the calories I am now consuming in fresh bread. Next time I go to visit my parents, I'll definitely be insisting we head to Bath to check out the Bertinet Kitchen.

Although my results so far have been impressively edible, I decided that I really wanted to get a bit of expert advice, especially as I wanted to take it to the next level and start experimenting with the king of all artisan breads - the sourdough.

That's when I found Lesley's Kitchen, run by the lovely Lesley Martin, and signed up for her one day sourdough class. Lesley and her husband run a B&B and baking school in Muirkirk, Ayrshire. They converted an Old Church into their beautiful family home and business and Lesley now passes on her many year's of baking expertise to keen amateurs like myself in the heart of her amazing kitchen. I had a brilliant day, starting with fresh cake and coffee on my arrival, to going away armed with my own starters to try and keep alive and a whole host of new tips, suppliers and techniques to try out. The next day I baked off the white and sourdough loaves I had started under Lesley's expert tutelage and enjoyed the fruits of a day well spent. Now the only decision I have to make is which course to try next!