Adventures in Bread

One of the frustrations here is the lack of yummy bread that is also good for you.  there is no shortage of french-style loaves of crusty white bread, but I'm a bit partial to bread with actual food value.  We can get a nice Norlinger, but even it palls after a while.

I'm also pretty partial to making my own bread, but with the choice of flours being a touch limited it is an exercise in frustration, unless I want to stodge out on flours based on white bread or plain wholemeal.  Not so bad, but still boring.
Enter a new bread making book, skilfully discovered by Michelle 'Enabler' Dean for very little cost and quietly exported to Australia in my hand baggage, with step-by-step instructions (with pictures) of the creation of a sour dough leaven.  The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard for those playing at home.

Right.  To begin.  Rye flour.  Now I'd seen that somewhere...Al Fair?...Carrefour?...Nevermind, I have to do this NOW!! I've got chapatti flour made of 7 different grains (except rye) there must be some wild yeasts sitting on some of that.  Raisins.  Sigh, I don't have any of those (maybe I should go to the souq...NO! It must be done NOW!!)  I've got dates.  Dates are sweet, they'll feed the wild yeasts that may or may not be lurking on the chapatti flour.  Done, now to wait.  One day...two days...found the rye flour...three days...feeding, feeding, feeding...four days...five days...AHA!!

White four leaven on the move

Rye flour leaven on the move

Both leavens seemed to be pretty happy, so I went ahead on day seven and started to make my bread.  Lepard's bread instructions call for very little kneading, 20 seconds only, but at regular intervals over about four hours before finally shaping the loaf and letting it prove for up to six hours.  First up a rye loaf.  Mmmmm, I don't think this is going very far......... 

The not very action packed rye loaf attempting to prove.

Annnnd, it didn't.  The white bread on the other hand (I call it white, but it was made with a bread mix from England called Barleycorn.  It had whole wheat flour, barley flour and linseeds but no corn at all.)  I didn't get any photos of these two loaves.  They worked quite well and were somewhat reminiscent of ciabatta loaves, which David loves so that was good.  They were a bit chewy after being frozen, but still nice.  I think perhaps the dough was a little wet.

I was grumpy about the rye, so I tried another sweet rye recipe and using date syrup instead of honey.  Mmmmm, now THAT worked.  It tastes like pumpernickel and isn't very sweet at all.  Now it's all chopped up and frozen for very slow eating.

The cooked sweet rye loaf

The inside of the sweet rye.  Simply perfect.

Excellent.  Not quite what I was hoping for, but still. I had lots of bread so I popped the leavens into the fridge for a week and sat in a corner muttering to myself.  I also took off to Lakeland and invested in a temperature probe (good for meat, liquids and bread etc).

Then my yoga teacher showed me the "Diet Flour" that the Muscat flour mills produce.  It's got whole grains, malted stuff and is enriched with iron and folates.  It's sold as flour for making bread for diabetics.  Right ho, I thought, I'll give it a go.

I pulled out the white leaven and brought it back to life.  Pow!  Back into very, very active life!  Goodness gracious it was excited!  So excited I just used it rather than taking a photo!  I used a 60:40 mix of Diet flour and barleycorn flour and was a little more careful about the amount of fluid.  The dough was still sticky to start with but firmer than before.  

I had bought two little one pound bread pans so I thought I'd have a go at putting half the dough in these two just to see if the sour dough would behave in a tin and create more sandwich/toast friendly shapes.  They did!

Two one pound loaves and yes, they really did weigh one pound!

Aren't they cute???  I was very, very pleased and was itching to cut one to see how it went.  But first to cook the big one.  I proved this one is a square basket and tipped it onto a semolina covered tray before slashing it around the top and sliding onto the bread stone.

Here it is just in the oven and beginning to cook.

Well that worked a treat!!  It came out beautifully and sounding like a drum!  The temperature probe was very useful, but also helped me discover just how hot my oven doesn't get.  Grrrrrrr.

The results using the re-invigorated leaven

The first one pound loaf.  Not bad at all!

The second one pound loaf. Mmmmmmmmm.

 
The bread tasted fabulous!  It was soft on in the outside, crunchy on the outside and tasted divine.  It was also filling.  However, we did accidentally eat almost all of the two loaves over the weekend.  Actually when I say we, I mean I ate a lot more of it than David.  What can I say?  I'm an addict.  Luckily I cut up the 2 pound loaf and froze it. It's not quite so tempting that way............

I'll have some of that for lunch with the Mango chutneys that I made as well.................

A Visit Home Part I

We've just spent a truly lovely few weeks visiting home.  It was not all wonderful, the sudden loss of a very special man made for a bittersweet welcome home.  Words cannot express the joy in seeing friends and family on our home soil, so, as is my wont, it will be in pictures.

The first week was spent in Brisbane catching up with some of our favourite hairy friends and family.

At Knights of the North

My favourite Knight of the North in the Whole Worlde.

And of course we all know that the Politarchopolis/St Florian
World Domination Treaty is alive and well.

My favouritest Brisvegas Girlie

Swimming between the flags at the Gold Coast

/

The lovely, and very old, Shubs who ran out to meet us in Brisbane.

One of the loveliest things about Brisbane was spending time with Rufus and George, as well as a whole range of Rufus' school-friends and their partners.  While David conferenced like a maniac I got to hang out with Jacky, the cutest little button Ivy, Matt, Phil, Dougie and Anna.  It was fabulous.  Then David and I climbed into the green and purple Jucy machine.  It was special, but we had an uneventful drive to Canberra - including sleeping in the van in a rest stop -  and visiting Byron Bay - where we didn't see any real hippies at all.  

Yes, for the first time we went to Byron Bay...
I did stop at the Rainbow Shop and bought Rainbow Pants.

It is apparently legal to turn left, cross a road and run over a bike
Who'd a thought?

When I was a girl, hippies were on the pill..........

A visit to Al Ain Zoo

As many of you know, David is a little fond of visiting zoos.  Very fond of visiting zoos.  I am too, but sshhh, don't tell David.

It's just possible that David has already blogged about this visit already, but I'm in the zone and thought I would too.  I still have very fond memories of our visit at the end of March as I was particularly taken with the relaxed and cheerful staff as well has the very happy animals.  So here are some gratuitous animal photos......

Here we are.  In Arabic a zoo is called "The Park of the Animals"

We arrived early and decided to spend a small fortune on a guided tour of the zoo.  Ever since the Great Kayak Disaster of 2014, my knee has been known to give up and go home without notice, so the fewer actual steps the better. Not only did the tour come with a guide, it also came with transport that could carry twelve. Never mind that there was only two of us.  Next time......

Inside the visitor's welcome area

We started with some refreshments (coffee, dates and water) in the welcome area as our lovely guide prepared for us.  I have a photograph of her, but I promised I wouldn't post it as her father would not approve at all.

Our first stop was pretty little beasties with horns.

Our second was larger beasties with truly impressive horns

I struggled to photograph him out of the shade,
but frankly I think he looks pretty amazing just the way he is.

It wasn't very hot but, as with most zoos, day time is the lying around not doing very much part of the animal's daily life.

Of course my favourites are the ferocious big cats.

The killers of the savanah

Ready to take down their prey in the blink of an eye

David, however, managed to get some fabulous shots of the white lioness chasing a bird.  Mmmmm, domestic cats are not that far removed from their giant cousins after all.

She missed

It's too hot in Al Ain to have elephants at the zoo and I'm not at all sure how the other animals stay cool. Even on a gentle spring day (about 32 degrees) the hippos were up to their eyeballs in their gigantic undercover swimming pool.

I can seeeee you!

In the middle of the reptile house was a little fennic fox.  Lord knows what he was doing there, they are desert dwellers and a little bit of heat won't hurt them.  They're sooooo cute with their gigantic ears - which are a bit of a disadvantage when inside with continual running, screaming children.  However, the real reason he was inside might have been a protective measure.  After our visit I was chatting to one of the SQU students about the cuteness of the fennic fox.  He agreed wholeheartedly and mentioned they had them in their village.  He talked of them with gentle pride before telling me they had killed all their chickens and run of with his favourite peacock.  He thought that was a bit rude, but didn't dent his delight in the little critters.

One little fennic fox trying to work out how to murder all small children in Al Ain.

And there were flamingos!  Yummy pink flamingos!!

Of course this is the Arabian Gulf so there were fountains

And flowers

Lots of flowers

And a pile of sleeping flamingos
Safe from rampaging fennic foxes...for now........ 

One of the highlights was feeding the giraffes.  I got licked by a giraffe!!!  How cool is that??!!!  Also watching the birds of prey feed.........

I don't think this is fennic fox territory.

The keepers come prepared for the worst.

Gah!! It's back to the grindstone!

Well, the jury's in.  Revise and resubmit.  Gah!!!!!!

One examiner thought it was "a solid piece of work,"  that the "quality of the thesis is of generally of a high standard" with "relatively few errors" and the conclusions contributed to "the body of knowledge for both researcher and practitioner."

Another thought it was "of interest and substance" and that I met my goals in all but the acoustic analysis and discussion in the arena of acoustic science; that I hadn't proved that I knew what I was talking about.  That just made them more irritated by formatting errors (don't rely on word large documents to pick up things like ?? for you - apparently it's a proper word and don't whatever you do expect the printed form to bear any resemblance to the on screen form) and other things that might have been minor amendments.

The third examiner commended me for my approach but had the same serious concerns about the acoustic analysis, commented briefly about errors and then proceeded to give me very helpful suggestions regarding plugging the gaps including a reading list that mostly post-dated the work I had done.  The perils of taking too long to write the rotten thing.

The whole thing is quite frustrating because much of the information was there, in an appendix that was referred to in the text, and it would seem that no-one got that far.  I had been told that there was too much information, that it just sort of sat there not doing anything.  I insisted that it needed to be there, but in the end I moved it out.  What I should have done was to find a better way to incorporate it with the dissertation.

It is also frustrating because no-one on my panel picked up the problem, no-one, not even in my final pre-submission presentation, which heavily relied on acoustic analysis.  I was worried about my conclusions, about the biographical chapter, about the formatting, about the tale I was telling but apparently I left some ducks out of the line-up.

Back to the drawing board.  Most of the work has in fact been done (to quote the wise BJ), time to make it all work properly.

Lots of bridges and plenty of water....

Six months!  I haven't written a blog post for six months? How can that be? Where on earth did six whole months disappear into the abyss?  There has been, as the title of this post hints, a lot of water under those there bridges - not to mention the odd wadi or so.  Where to start?  For those of you who read Davids Dribblings, you may feel that you are a little up to datish.  But only just.

Life has pottered on here in Oman.  For the first time in I think my entire life I have no reason to organise my day (my week, my month) and the effect is disorienting to say the least.  You'd think that I'd revel in being able to do things I haven't been able to do for years -read a novel during the day guilt free, watch television during the day while sewing, embroidering or knitting (or patting the cat), go wandering, write blog posts lots of things.  But no. The days seem to manage to evaporate with there being absolutely nothing to show for them apart from a made bed, the occasional attack of dish washing and perhaps some clean clothes.  Well that's what it seems like anyway.  I suppose the reality is a little different.

In my last post I was playing with some natural dyes and about to learn to spin with an Omani drop spindle. What I was actually doing was feeling pathetic about not taking part in an exciting arts pentathlon with the rest of my household. So of course I had to help.  So apart from the legumes I played with saffron, indigo and madder.  I cannot believe how easy it is to get these things here!  Just pop down to the souq and pick them up!  This is what I made with my little balls of coloured wool. 

The back of the bag

The front of the bag.

It's a bag for keeping gaming pieces in.  Yes, I went a little crazy, but isn't it cute???????

Getting the hang of being able to dash away on the weekend has been difficult to come to terms with too, but we have been doing it. There would be lots of lovely pictures but we also go burgled and off went my brand new camera and my laptop (which was full of carefully downloaded pictures from the camera sigh) so there aren't any.  You will just have to make do with some from our Eid Al Fitr trip to Masirah Island, home of five different species of critically endangered turtles.  It was our first time camping by ourselves (I of course stressed about the food.  We had too much - who'd a thought?)

Masirah Island is someway down the coast of Oman and takes three or four hours to drive to the ferry.  We had been told many horror stories about how hard it was to get a place on the ferry, hundreds of cars and only a few places, they only ran at high tide, you could never tell when or where you had to be to get on.  "It'll be fine" says David (another thing to stress about) and, of course, it was.  It usually is.  We drove down the road towards the dock and they waved us into the last spot without us stopping.  We found out later that they had waited for us.

On the ferry.  It takes 11/2 to 2 hours to get to the island

After arriving we tootled off down the ocean side of the island to find somewhere to camp.  We were hopeful of seeing turtles and that was the side they nested on.  We hunted around, driving in and out of coves, on and off the beach, over some rocks (lots of rocks, we have a four wheel drive and David's not afraid to use it!) until we were almost out of light.  Then we found a beach with some sheltering little dunes and decided that was it for the night.  Cooking on the hibachi took a little longer than intended (let's not go into why foil wrapped potatoes shouldn't be baked on an hibachi) but we finally buried the potatoes and cooked the steaks anyway.

David attending the hibachi

After dinner (and maybe one or two beers) we drifted off for a walk on the beach.  It was hermit crab heaven!  There were shells of all shapes and sizes scuttling along the beach away from our torches, not to mention the very indignant looking crabs (the ones with the googlie eyes on stalks) who watched us from the edge of the waves.  We saw the tracks of turtles (they're a little obvious) before we came across a determined female who ignored us intently as she dug her hole.  It was pretty amazing I have to say and we might have been a bit excited.  Then I saw a little baby turtle.  I did a very silly happy dance and called over David.  By the time he got there (slowwwww, 2 seconds at least) there were hundreds, all appearing out of nowhere.  Now that is an experience that it not likely to be topped in a hurry.  I confess I picked up little turtles and turned them towards the sea.  They run around like crazy and really have not much idea where they're going.  Until the sea hits them and they become little swimming machines.  If I managed to get just one extra turtle into the circle of life I will be pleased.  

A teensie bit of our first campsite.

We had an excellent sleep, some beach walking and then David couldn't stay still any more.  We'd brought the kayak with us and we were determined to get it into the water.  Just not the ocean side with its rough surf and suspicious under tow so we packed up and headed round the Island.  

First of all we went in search of water.  There are wells dotted around the place and there is something very satisfying about getting your water from an ancient well.  At least from watching David get water from the ancient well......

Well

Well

WELL!

We went an looked at the wrecked dow.  Still a tourist attraction, but it's slowly disappearing.  Some people who don't pay attention when taking photographs might also disappear.......

The Wrecked Dow.  If you want to see it, get there soonish.

We went hunting for a congenial camping spot on the Oman side of the island.  Bad idea.  They have wind surfing and paragliding schools there for a reason.  It's flat, featureless and, you guessed it, windy.  We eventually found a place where we could snuggle between spiky trees amongst the camel dung.  It was loud and encouraged us to rethink our method of fixing our shelter.

David relaxing after a hard day of something.  Notice the carefully placed kayak- otherwise known as Mr Windbreak.

A quick visit to town failed to find either a repair kit for the air mattress (spikey teeth marks were found and the mattress stayed on Masirah in a comfy rubbish bin) or a fisherman to sell us fish for dinner.  Fine.  I then discovered that not only were Johnny cakes great on an hibachi, the Camembert, smoked salmon and avocado went extremely well inside the johnny cake dough.

Nom Nom Nom

What happens when you don't use sunscreen. Ow!!!

I found all sorts of things on the beach, including this little bird made of seaweed, sand and shells.

We left Masirah swearing and declaring that we would be back.  We travelled across on the ferry to the sounds of young Omani blokes have a sing song on the deck and the sight of a pod of dolphins cutting across the bow.  Driving back along the coast road we discovered that the signs that told you to be careful of moving sand dunes were right

Sand blowing across the road, BACK to the desert.