make do and mend for tougher times

Pooky

Fuddle - If you have any bootfairs near you then it might be worth a look for wool - I've picked up tons of the stuff today (as you can see from my blog). I use whatever I can get my hands on for my blankets - I'm currently working on one with the aaron wool @ldi had in earlier in the year - it was £5 a ball (a huge ball at that) and is lovely to work with. I've used W1lkins0ns acrylic yarn too and it's lovely and washes well, they have brighter colours and it was only 98p a ball when I brought it last.

My local sainsbugs is out of the value teabags - own up - who lives near me and is snaffling it all?

Mrs_Chip

Fuddle

Don't forget, now you can make bread at the drop of a hat ( and the 5 min bread recipe can be made and kept in the fridge for up to two weeks, if you have room make double and do that) that is is more storage-efficient to store the flour rather than the made bread - you only need a little for emergencies in the freezer as you can make it when you like!

Enjoy the pizza!

mardatha

Where the 5 min bread recipe please Mrs C ? I need to try something else. I have Hovis granary flour and yeast now, will try them.
I used to love Round the Horne too, I think you can get it on radio 6 or 7 or something?

Possession

fuddle wrote: »

edit: possession lalaloopsy is currently diving off the couch along with Tom Daley

Who knew Lalaloopsy had such skills?!
Just dropped off DD at a birthday party today, got completely lost as the family have moved house, got stuck in awful traffic through town as there is a big festival on this weekend and made the mistake of taking DS to Aldi with me on the way back, thereby spending £15 instead of 5. Not a great morning really.:o

Mrs_Chip

Mar - here is the orig recipe. I would ignore the actual ingredients in this and just use the method (particularly the bit about handling the dough, which is much softer than normal dough). I will post the ingredients in another post to make it clearer. Also, it is an idea to Youtube '5 minute bread' to see how to handle the dough!


5 minute bread

Master Bread Recipe
from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day"

Ingredients
Preparation time: 15 minutes to prepare enough dough for four loaves, to be baked over four days. Each daily loaf will average 5 minutes of active preparation time.

Makes four 1-pound loaves

3 cups lukewarm water (about 100º F)
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt
6 1/2 cups all-purpose white flour (no need to sift)
Cornmeal for the pizza peel

1.In a 5-quart bowl, mix the yeast, water and salt. Add all the flour, then use a wooden spoon to mix until all ingredients are uniformly moist. It is not necessary to knead or continue mixing once the ingredients are uniformly moist. This will produce a loose and very wet dough.

2.Cover with a lid (not airtight). Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse, about 2 hours, but no more than 5 hours.

3. After rising, the dough can be baked immediately, or covered (non completely airtight) and refrigerated up to 14 days. The dough will be easier to work with after at least 3 hours refrigeration.

4. On baking day, prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the bread from sticking when you transfer it to the oven. Uncover the dough and sprinkle the surface with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough (serrated knives are best). Store the remaining dough in the bowl and refrigerate for baking at another time.

5. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won't stick. Create a smooth ball of dough by gently pulling the sides down around to the bottom, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. While shaping, most of the dusting flour will fall off. The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will flatten out during resting and baking. Shaping the loaf this way should take no more than 1 minute.

6.Place the dough on the pizza peel. Allow the loaf to rest for about 40 minutes. It does not need to be covered. The bread may not rise much during this time.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, place a pizza stone on the center rack of the oven. If you don't have a baking stone, use another baking sheet. Remove any upper racks. Place a broiler pan on a rack below the pizza stone or on the floor of the oven. Preheat oven to 450 F.

8. When the dough has rested for 40 minutes, dust the top liberally with flour, then use a serrated knife to slash a 1/4-inch-deep cross or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top.

9.Slide the loaf off the peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour 1 cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door.

10.Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch. Allow the bread to cool completely, preferably on a wire cooling rack.

Mrs_Chip

Right here is the simplified version, use the ingredients as per this one. Fuddle might have some tweaks as ahe has been making it regularly. If you have granary/hovis flour I would do half/half with strong white and you might need a bit more water, say another 1/2 cup, but you might need to experiment with this!

Preparation
Authors: Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë Francois

Chuck in a large bowl: 3 cups water, 1Tbsp yeast, 1Tbsp salt and 6.5cups of plain flour.
Mix until combined.
Cover loosely.
Let rest for 2hrs.
Shove it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

To bake: take out some dough using as light a touch as possible.
Leave it to rise for about an hour on an oven tray.
Put an empty baking tin in the oven and heat oven to max.
When oven is hot, put the tray with dough in it and pour some hot water in the baking tin.
Bake until golden (depends on the size of your loaf ...about 30min for me)

Right, there you have it: no copyright breach as it's in my own words and it's a simplified version anyway.

Having said that, seriously guys just type 'Master boule recipe' into Google and you get the original recipe.

Recipe By:
Serving Size: 4
Cuisine:
Main Ingredient:
Categories: Bake, Bread

-= Ingredients =-

-= Instructions =-



** This recipe can be pasted into BigOven without retyping. **
** Easy recipe software. Try it free at: http://www.bigoven.com **

mardatha

Awh thanks pet, and sorry to give you so much typing Copying it down in me pad lol

kidcat

I tried the recipe and whilst it was gorgeous, it was kind of flat and spread all over my baking sheet - no idea where I went wrong.

Was up early this morning as we had electrician booked to do replace DS14 light, go over all of DD17 electrics as they are very complicated (previously the kitchen) and fix the security lights. OH was going bonkers I had booked him for today - apparently I should have booked him for Monday - DD and I pointed out it would just get messy again and we would end up spending all weekend cleaning up and being miserable, better to get it over with and have weekend free. He is very rigid in his thoughts and we could not convince him.

So all ready and done by 10am - electrician doesnt arrive, we wait for an hour or so to give him chance before calling him to find he isnt coming!! Not impressed. OH storming round glaring at me, DS14 slammed into his room in a huff!

Had my last few TC letters today and am so relieved as we do not have any overpayment for last year at all, in fact they owed us - (£3.50 but every little helps ) its just a weight off that we dont have to repay anything. This now means that our council tax should finally be sorted and I can get back to budget knowing what the payment will be.

Interestingly our council has started to close on Saturdays, I assume its cost cutting measure, where before they were open all day Saturday and part of Sunday too.

Worried about the tea issue, I buy sainsbobs basics for normal use (ie guests) but for me I am buying Earl grey, I am finding that any other type gives me a migraine,its expensive enough buying earl grey now. Will stock up on guest supplies though.
I find even instant coffee sets my migraine off now, so I am sticking to the earl grey when in the house, when I am out I will treat myself to a cappuccino as that doesnt set me off either - i would really like a proper cappuccino maker but its so far down the list of priorities I am not sure its even got a place

Mrs_Chip

Kidcat - have you tried Jasmine tea, The sort you get at a Chinese restaurant? I love it, you can make it very weak and drink without milk, it is very refreshing and very cheap if you got to an ethnic shop (sorry I really struggle with remembering whether peeps here are town or country mice!). I used to make a big pot and drink it all, so good for fluid intake. Also mint tea is similar, either dried from shop or made fresh with a big handful of mint from the garden.

Not sure what went wrong with your bread,but this is def one you have to try a few times to get right,but once you have it pegged it is a marvellous way of having fresh bread, rolls or pizza bases every day with little work.

prepareathome

Replying as I read

smileyt wrote: »

PAH if you want, I can check with the guy I got my budgeting club outline from. If it's OK with him (I guess it is his intellectual property), I can pass it on to you if you'd like? Maybe we could do a swap and you can send me some stuff about storecupboards? Ha maybe we could set ourselves up in business teaching a course called 'Surviving the hard times the old-style way' :rotfl:. Seriously though, there's no point re-inventing the wheel, and if you can get a grant to run some kind of course or group then it's worthwhile passing on info. You've given me an extra idea for our last session, so thank you.

Of course am going to put together info ( well have it all saved on disks the preparing at home and the store cupboard stuff plus a lot is in files on my yahoo group ) into one file all tidy and easy to read and when done will pass it on to you. I guess for a grant I will need to write up a proposal about what I intend to do - that is educate people in all aspects of storecupboarding from deciding where to store it to what to actually buy for their family. Then one for the emergency preps as well - this still tickles me as its always been my thing, the storecupboarding came out of that and when she mentioned did I know anything about it, I just could not believe my ears after all these years of being thought daft or expecting the world to end next week - years ago I called our cities emergency planning office for ideas and even they told me I was wasting my time as they would deal with everything and basically patted me on my head and sent me on my way and now a HA with thousands of tenants wants to teach them about it........guess I was just ahead of my time:rotfl:

The HA said their aim was to help people with money management so any info you can share I can add to the storecupboarding ( I like that word so I now declare it a real word). To me money management is another form of storecupboarding.

Everything I send you will be my intellectual property so up to me who I share it with so HA will have no say in that. Once I get things going them some things might belong to them, but will cross that bridge when and if it comes....

Hugs and Love xxxx