Cider Bread

I'm a huge fan of Nigel Slater, and for one of my Fathers Day presents, I had a copy of "The Kitchen Dairies, Vol II". I've flicked through it and not seen a recipe that I haven't liked.

(I also had a fantastic parcel of Beer, Strong Cheese and Chutney all the way from Australia.  I love my girls!!!!!!)

Anyway, back to the story, one of the first things I saw in the book was a recipe for bread made with Milk and Cider, sounds like my sort of thing I thought, rather eerily I then found a bottle of Bays Cider in the local shop, "buy me" it screamed so I did, and now of course I must marry the two.

Bays, incidentally is a local brewer, the Beers are fantastic so I'm sure the Cider will be. http://baysbrewery.co.uk/

Back to the bread, if you've seen the book you will know it uses Spelt and White flour, with the Milk and Cider to get a distinctive flavour.

Well that was the 5am job today, and after following the recipe (not one of my strong points) I ended up with this,

I think my oven must be on a slope because all my loaves seem to have risen more at one end, while I wait for it to cool so I can sample it I'm planning my next project.

The blackberries are nearly ripe, so that means Bramble Jelly, Jam and maybe some blackberry vinegar. Also wine if I can get enough.

I also made some digestive biscuits with the sourdough starter that would normally go to waste, funnily enough I then saw an idea for the same thing on another website that I hadn't seen before. Weird or what?

Anyhow these came out rather well, maybe a bit more salt next time, but they were so good that I experimented with a few chocolate covered ones as well.

 

 

Maybe the chocolate was a bit thick, but who's counting.

 

 

The bread has cooled a bit, so its time to take a look,

 

and of course a taste, slightly caramel and sweet, it would be nice with cheese, its a pity you can't smell it from the blog.

While the bread was cooling I went out with my trusty bucket and picked a few Blackberries from the bushes by the garage. There seem to be loads this year, in 20 minutes I had 3lb,

 most went into the freezer, they will be added to until I have enough for Jam, but I kept some back.

I added the same weight of sugar

 and boiled them for a couple of minutes,

That should be rather nice in yogurt.

We found a bird feeder that sticks to the window, the birds ignored it for a while but now seem to like the fat balls it contains.