One of the small joys of The Bread Circle, along with the bread, are the notes that the makers send out to tell us about the bread we will eating that week and to provide a bit of insight into the bread making process.

Unfortunately my grasp of the technology is not sufficiently proficient to enable me to insert into this post a copy of some of the notes so I will set out some selected extracts below.

Bread note 27-9-12

This week you are having what we laughingly call the “basic white”, but honestly there insn’t anything basic about it. Michael as usual was responsible for the preferment on Wednesday and he and Helen did the mix for Thursday am. The bake crew arrived to find 24 kg of dough bursting from its container and a request from Michael for 48 loaves…something of a record for us and largely due to eager new members who had sampled the bread on Sunday.

It was a good dough to work with, although as a 65% mix, a bit wetter than we’re used to, and with the newly repaired oven we were soon flying through the loaves.

Bread note 1.11.12

We made a total of 75 loaves today and managed, even had lunch and were finished in good time. Michael had made the starter for the rye bread yesterday morning, Dave and Michael mixed the dough with the flour and water at night and soaked 2kg of sunflower seeds and 2kg of cracked malted rye (superb smell!), with the addition of a small amount of salt. They also mixed the starter for the malted wheat bread (about $kg of it) and all the dough/starter went into the airing cupboard for the night. Michael went to Tesco at about 5.45am to get some yeast from the bakery (and some lunch provisions for the baking crew) so we could add a small amount to make the bread rise reliably (it could take too long otherwise for the time we have set aside for the baking). The granary type flour has a lot of malted whole grains of wheat in it and a fair amount of powdered malt and the malt also provides good food for the yeast & sourdough bacteria in both varieties. Michael and Helen started mixing at 7.00 am (Michael had already oiled the tins and prepared a bit), the first rye loaf went into the oven at about 9.00 am, and the rye bread was baked at about 10.30. At 9.30 Dave came and we started preparing for the next phase, and at 10.00 with Fanis’s and Ellie’s arrival we started in earnest with the shaping of the malted wheat dough and the three of them went ahead with all this without Michael being required and we were finished by 13.30. we then had a good lunch and debated among ourselves whether the malted wheat had enough salt in it or not, and as one might expect we had as many opinions on this as there were people in the room.

I had some of the bread for lunch yesterday as a ham sandwich. The rye bread was good enough to eat by itself, no need for cheese and meat, although a small glass of beer would have gone down well.

I was able to have the beer for lunch today as we finished the bread off with the cheese that is left in the fridge and some slices of the lamb left over from last night.

Listening to The Wrens and looking forward to The Unthanks this evening.

Thank you to Michael, Dave, Ellie, Helen, Janis & Steve for making the bread and the notes.

Tonight was a good night. The family was out watching James Bond and by the time I got home there was 40 minutes or so to really upset the neighbours. My default listening pleasure at this stage is usually Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones from the extra disc that came with the the box set of Get Yer Ya’s Ya’s Out, an old bootleg version of Boxcar by REM or Rock’n’Roll by Led Zeppelin from How The West Was Won. Each a perfect opportunity to beat hells bells out of a tennis racket and pretend for at least a moment.

This evening I went for something different. I have found myself on the email list for Six by Seven who briefly about 12 years ago were a Peel favourite before falling off the map. Despite being off that map they have continued to plough a very worthwhile furrow and every few weeks I get an update from chief SxS Chris Olley as to where he and his music is at.

Earlier in the summer he almost gave away ten or so CD’s of historic music to remind us of how great they were. On the drive back from work the Ipod shuffle had thrown up something by Fuck me USA (which is a very good name for a band) so I though I would dig out the CD of SxS platying live at Glastonbury some years back.

It was the perfect noise to sort out the rack of lamb chops I picked up from The International Store on the way home. There is a beauty about pure noise. That moment where an electric guitar is suddenly hit vey hard so that all the possible notes are gathered up and spat out as a grunt of sound that hopefully goes on for a long time.

SxS manage to do this a lot and it can be quite liberating to listen to on a Friday eveing whilst cooking up a plateful of lamb chops, marinaded in honey, garlic, ginger, ras el hannout and morgrabia.

This evening I have been thinking about smoked mackerel and have decided that next summer when we are at the Cottage I will have to make a smoked mackerel carbonara.

The smoker is not much more than a glorified biscuit tin, its bottom raised an inch or so off the ground, a small edge round the side to balance the rack on and a loosely fitting lid. There is a methylated spirit lighter that sits on the ground.  The first priority is to make sure there is some methylated spirit in the garage, if there isn’t any there, take time out to swear violently and make a mental note to buy some when next in the village. Then kick yourself again and rembember that mental notes are never enough and take more time out to scribble down that same note to be positioned prominently in the kitchen so that it forms part of the shopping list for that next trip to the village.

If there is a plastic bottle of spirit fill up the lighter and light it. Place the smoker on top and sprinkle a handful of wood chippings on the bottom. It will start to give off smoke very quickly. Hopefully you will have cleaned off whatever gunk there is on the rack from last time, lay out the fillets of mackerel, put the rack in the smoker and cover with the lid. Leave for five minutes or so and check how it is doing.

If all has gone right then the small fillets should be more or less cooked and will be giving off their oil. If you are not sure, pick up a fillet, be careful, it will be hot, and gently pull it with your fingers, the flakes of flesh should just pull apart, although there should be some residual stickiness giving back a bit of resistance. Lick your fingers. If that fillet is ready remove the rest from the rack onto a plate.

They will good enough to eat as they are but could be substituted for bacon in a carbonara. Heat up a pan of boiling water. Pull the skin away from the fillets and discard. For the rest you will need a tub of thick cream into which you have strirred in an egg, salt pepper and some finely chopped parsley.

Once the water is boiling cook enough pasta for the number you are feeding. Once the pasta is done drain it quickly and return to the pan, add the cream and egg, the seasoning and the smoked mackerel fillets, stir gently together. The fillets will break apart as they are stirred so it will be an idea to keep a few to one side. Pour the pasta into a serving bowl and top with the reserved fillets some more seasoning. Serve and eat.

If we are eating this next summer I fancy listening along to The Unthanks.

It is Cora’s birthday tomorrow again so of course some time has been given over during the last few days for preparations.

That preparation started, in part, on Saturday morning with the purchase of the biggest pumpkin they had from the greengrocers on Oxton Road. Time was then spent on Sunday morning looking for a suitable face to first of all be marked out on the side of the pumpkin in black ball point and then carefully carved by father and children with a variety of sharp knives.

There was, of course, some friendly discussion between father and children as to who should do what. No fingers were lost and we now have a proud pumpkin.

This evening we had Cora’s favourite supper – noodles.

For Cora all she really needed was a plate of noodles in broth – anything else would be a distraction and extraneous to the noodle eating to be done.

That would have been boring for the rest of the family so peppers and baby corn were sliced, garlic, ginger and spring onions diced  and chicken breasts chopped. Similar chopping was applied to a lump of tofu for the vegetarian option.

The woks were taken up from the basement, cleaned off and put on a high heat with a glaze of corn nut oil.

Ten minutes later we were done and sat down slurping at the table. The sauce was a combination of bottles that needed using from and cupboard – mostly fish sauce and plum sauce and a teaspoon or so of red curry paste that has been lurking in the fridge and looks like it needs eating up.

It was not quite all finished and there should be enough left for me to have cold for lunch tomorrow.

We listened to the dream pop of Beach House – not that anyone else in the family noticed.