The Archived Ingredients Bread challenge

The finished loaf, plus tiny bread rolls.

This has been the week when the reality of the situation properly sank in. I think what did it for me was the cancellation of a food festival we were planning to go to in September. The realisation that the tentacles of this thing could stretch that far was depressing, to say the least. Add to that the sheer amount of thought and planning which needs to go into obtaining food in these locked down times, and it hasn’t been the best of weeks. Thank God for the National Theatre’s decision to broadcast One Man, Two Guvnors as a livestream this week. I needed a good laugh, and that delivered. But, back to food. We were out of bread, with no delivery on the immediate horizon. Time to make some. Except my remaining stock of bread flour yielded just two rather small bread rolls. An investigation of the cupboard turned up half a bag of spelt flour, marked Best Before September 2012. Ah. A quick calculation suggests to me that this bag of flour has moved house with me at least twice, and possibly three times, slipping through the net of using things up/chucking them out every time (even though it would already have been out of date at the time of the last move). Flour, your time has arrived. I found a recipe online here, and started kneading (spelt bread, it turns out, needs a lot on kneading). The first rise was distinctly disappointing, and I feared I had a disaster on your hands, but I pressed on, and after a second rise, was able to put a respectable looking loaf into the oven. The final verdict? It’s pretty good. It’s quite dense, but that’s how spelt bread is, so I’m chalking that one up as an archived ingredients win (and will be ignoring best before dates much more in future).

This has been the week when the reality of the situation properly sank in. I think what did it for me was the cancellation of a food festival we were planning to go to in September. The realisation that the tentacles of this thing could stretch that far was depressing, to say the least. Add to that the sheer amount of thought and planning which needs to go into obtaining food in these locked down times, and it hasn’t been the best of weeks. Thank God for the National Theatre’s decision to broadcast One Man, Two Guvnors as a livestream this week. I needed a good laugh, and that delivered.

But, back to food. We were out of bread, with no delivery on the immediate horizon. Time to make some. Except my remaining stock of bread flour yielded just two rather small bread rolls. An investigation of the cupboard turned up half a bag of spelt flour, marked Best Before September 2012. Ah. A quick calculation suggests to me that this bag of flour has moved house with me at least twice, and possibly three times, slipping through the net of using things up/chucking them out every time (even though it would already have been out of date at the time of the last move).

Flour, your time has arrived. I found a recipe online here, and started kneading (spelt bread, it turns out, needs a lot on kneading). The first rise was distinctly disappointing, and I feared I had a disaster on your hands, but I pressed on, and after a second rise, was able to put a respectable looking loaf into the oven. The final verdict? It’s pretty good. It’s quite dense, but that’s how spelt bread is, so I’m chalking that one up as an archived ingredients win (and will be ignoring best before dates much more in future).