Focaccia in St Pauls

Last week we turned up at a freeconomy freeskilling event at the Midnimo Centre in St Pauls to learn the wonders of bread making. Anyway, this fun but serious session which started with an explanation of the woes of modern bread manufacturing (i particularly liked the phrase used to describe industrial dough as 'flour mousse'), also gave us a chance to have a hands-on go making chapatis and foccacia dough. Unfortunately the Midnino oven wasn't quite up to bread baking, but we did see the chapatis cooked in the street on a rocket stove. This small stove, made out of an old olive oil container and tin cans, and lit with twigs left over from basket weaving managed to cook the chapatis perfectly despite the rain. We walked home buzzing with plans for baking as I clutched a small balls of oily foccacia dough in my hands.

Since the workshop I have been hunting around for books on bread making, finding 'Breadmaking at Home' by Harold Bagust at the library near my office, and 'Bread' by Linda Collister at the Oxfam bookshop at the top of Park Street. I have also been sourcing ingredients also discovering that I already had some forgotten fast-action yeast. I am still on the hunt for stone-ground organic wholemeal flour to make a sourdough starter which I hope to pick up tomorrow at the Bristol Food and Wine Fair.

My first attempt was a pizza base which went pretty well except it was hard to stretch out and we ended up with a smaller, thinker pizza than we hoped for. My first loaf was pretty successful although I think it had too many rising as I was trying to fit it around work schedules. It also spread into a crazy shape which made it hard to get into the toaster! I have now invested in a loaf tin and am hoping to find some flour tomorrow to make the 'Grant Loaf' that I have read so much about.