Bread!

What's better than freshly baked yeasted goods for breakfast? Nothing beats it. The house is filled with the luscious smell of bread and tempts you long before it comes out of the oven, let alone your plate. I'm an enthusiastic baker, both yeast baking and cakes. Bread is being baked in my kitchen more often than some people change socks (it also smells a lot better than such people's socks, by the way).

I prefer home made bread to shop bought bread and the kind that comes in plastic is just dreadful. It is so easy to make bread, I am surprised that it is not more wide-spread than it is. I am not sure why people don't bake their own. Perhaps it is too time-consuming? But.. it is not really. Once you know what to do it's as easy as hoovering your living room, just a lot more fun.

Most of the time I just make it up as I go along, I know how much liquid I need to make a certain loaf size and then I just add whatever flour I fancy. But I do try to follow recipes now and then, just to broaden my horizon as to which combinations you can do, what techniques to use and do expand my list of baking skills to a little more than loaves and buns.

One of those lovely little things you can make are croissants. Mmmmm... delicious. And very dangerous, unless you have really good self control. It takes a bit more time and work than the common loaf, but is totally worth it. I have tried both Rachel Allen's recipe from Bake (good) and the one from Bourke Street Bakery (very very good), the latter requiring a little more work than the former.

Then there is the popular no-knead bread which seems to have plagued the blogging world since it saw daylight a few years a go. I didn't really want to try it at first, it felt like cheating. But I am very glad I decided to give it a go. Now I make it occasionally and it's lovely and rustic.

At the moment I have Rhyley's Granny's honeyed porridge bread in the oven and it smells delicious. Here is the link to her recipe: http://teandwheatenbread.blogspot.com/2011/02/honeyed-porridge-bread.html

I think everyone should have a go at making their own bread at least once. Trust me, you'll be hooked!