Children of Bob

Bob has had babies! Twins, in fact.

I shaped the loaves late last night, slipped them into their proving baskets (Tim had said to line the baskets with clean tea towels, but those are hard to come by in our house so I used a pillow slip), tucked them safely up in a black bin liner and just about managed to resist the urge to read them a bedtime story. This morning I woke up before my alarm with a head full of bread, and crept downstairs feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.

In the black bin bag in the kitchen I found two voluptuously, extravagantly swollen loaves. One was so big that it was threatening to flow over the sides of its basket, so I switched on the oven, waited impatiently for it to get hot enough, flipped the loaf clumsily onto a baking tray (one pillow slip between two proving baskets suddenly not seeming like such a great idea), slashed its surface, sprinkled it with flour and slid it (carefully, carefully) into the at-last hot oven.

Forty minutes later - my first sourdough loaf! It was a bit wonky looking, and my housemate Charlotte said it smelled funny, but nothing could dent my maternal pride - and when I took it and its as-yet unbaked sibling in to school to show Tim, he said they looked lovely. He showed me how to brush water around the sides and top of the second loaf to soften the crust while it was baking and allow it to expand as much as it wanted to.

Not much left now, and there's no better compliment than that.