9am Satisfaction

What more can I say? The produce of my little labours this morning and it is only 9am. Second attempts at French baguettes and crumpets. Son has already had four for his breakfast, hot out of the pan with a slight smear of marmite. He said they tasted better than crumpets and he is not known for being polite to me to be political.

The French breads have yet to cool and be cut into. Only then will I see what the texture is like. However, the outside is far crispier than my last attempt and something amazing happened after I took them out of the oven and put on the cooling rack: there was a strange noise in the kitchen area. A sort of cracking crackling noise. Small and insistent. I leaned down and listened to the crumpets cooling in front of me - as you do! On the basis that maybe the bubbles were still bubbling and nothing. It wasn't coming from the direction of the cooking and the other crumpets in the pan. I went around the table to the French loaves and voila - they were crackling. What a wondrous sound. I imagine it could be the crust doing what it needs to do in order to become crispier though I do not know.

Last night I made two granary loaves and despatched one over to my niece who is on a diet that allows homemade bread. I gather like us with our loaf they had tucked into it last night. Yum yum.

Something I realised when I was doing my stuff this morning and that is, I can do something really well. Not just "I can do well but one day someone will find out I can't" well, but truly inside with a nice warmth, well.

I shall be modifying my warrior diet today and will toast crumpets and serve with mugs of tea for breakfast for Mr Doris and I. Then, I just know I will need to try the French bread by lunch. Maybe I will do all my eating this morning, now that is an idea and then not eat until tomorrow evening as per usual. I can do that. But depends how much French loaf is left by the time I get home from my main job this evening after 8pm. Am off out shortly to another little job. The sun is shining and our windows are wide open. Ideally, I'd like to use my sour dough starter in a loaf but as that can take a couple of days and I shall be mostly out working now over the next few days that is not going to happen. Must be patient. Maybe that is what Bank Holiday Mondays are for?

Recipes:
For the baguettes I used this recipe www.dovesfarm.co.uk/recipes/baguette-bread-stick/
and left out the Vitamin C (as I don't have it) and used half the amount of sugar as I wasn't sure why it was in the recipe. I don't have a baguette baking tray and used an upturned heavy baking tray as that gave me more usable space and placed the baguettes on a slight diagonal as my oven is on the small side.
For the crumpets I used this recipe  www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/crumpets_61013  The first time I used one quarter of the measurements and this time I used one half of the measurements. I probably made them too shallow so therefore more than two dessertspoons of mixture are needed for each, especially if there are supposed to be 10-12 from the full quantity and I yielded 9 from half the recipe. Next time I would not use olive oil as that smokes at a higher temperature and perhaps I can get the pan safely at a higher temperature and that is all I need to fix to get them cooked better on the inside.