Most people know that I love to make bread. Trouble is, I have managed to get into the habit of only making what I know, a rustic white loaf which, although delicious, is not very exciting. I tend not to experiment in case it goes wrong and I have to feed it to the animals or, worse still, throw it away but today, I was in the mood to do a bit of experimenting with my bread dough. I wanted to make some bread sticks. I had seen some lovely looking ones in the James Morton Bread book that my daughter gave me for Christmas and I really wanted to give it a go so, I made up a batch of basic white dough and after the first rise, I chopped 4 bits off the lump, rolled them into sausages and plonked them onto a floured baking tray. I didn't actually follow the recipe in the book because by the time I had remembered that there was a recipe in there, my hands were covered in bread dough and I didn't want to spoil my lovely book and basically, I was too lazy to wash the bread dough off my hands! I have to say, though, they turned out brilliantly. They were crispy and chewy and soft inside and although they looked ..... shall we say ...... a bit "rustic", they were absolutely delicious and I will definitely be making a whole pile of them tomorrow. I might even be brave and add some garlic and herbs to some of them and maybe some cheese to some of the others.
I also found out that James has a website and a blog so I shall be following him on there so I can get some more recipes and some new ideas. If you want to have a look at it, his website is here. There is a lovely recipe for a pizza pie which looks amazing and may well be something I try on a rainy afternoon when I have nothing better to do.
