Welcome to my blog

Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm a keen cook who loves baking and who has way too many cookery books! Don't we all?

I started this blog to encourage myself to cook at least one recipe from all these books, so hope you'll enjoy sharing some of these recipes with me.

Thought I'd start with one of my favourite recipes - a bit of a cheat as I've done it many times before. It's from our lovely Delia's site and is her easy wholemeal bread.

The reason I love this recipe is that there is no kneading - which is a chore. Mind you, when I was teaching, I used to take all my frustrations out on the bread dough while kneading, instead of on the little dears at school! The resulting bread was very good too!

This recipes makes 1 large [as above] or 2 small loaves.

570g wholemeal flour

400ml handhot water

2 teaspoons salt [I use fine sea salt]

1 teaspoon soft brown sugar

2 teaspoons easy- blend dried yeast [1 packet]

Put your flour into a bowl, sprinkle in the salt, sugar and yeast.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the hand-hot water [ use half cold and half boiling water and this gives the right temperature].

Mix the liquid into the flour with a wooden spoon.

If the dough seems a bit dry, add some more hand-hot water; it's better to have too much water than not enough. The dough should leave the bowl clean.

On a flat surface, stretch the dough out into an oblong shape, then fold one end into the centre and the other edge over that. That's all there is to it - no kneading.

Put the folded dough into a 2lb [900] loaf tin or 2x1lb[450g] tins and press firmly round the edges.

Sprinkle the top of the dough with flour and cover with a damp tea towel and leave to rise.

Preheat oven to gas 6/400F/200C.

When the dough has risen to the top of the tin/tins bake it for about 40 minutes. When it's cooked it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

Allow it to cool on a wire rack and then enjoy.