Zed's bread

 I finally started to make bread regularly again.  It was the price that did it.  One day I bought a very good sourdough loaf and it cost £4.80 and, next time I needed bread, I went to a good independent bakery in the town and a non-sourdough wholemeal loaf cost £4.00.  It didn't even have seeds in it.  So, much as I like to support small businesses, something in me switched.  Although prices have risen horribly over the past couple of years, the ingredients I used would still cost me well under £1.50 and the Aga is on anyway.  I've made a loaf about once a week ever since.  Having, shamefully, let my sourdough starter during the year after Tim died, I'm just using yeast.  With a mixture of white (the good unbleached stuff from the whole food shop), wholemeal (sometimes one of those fancy ancient grains) and rye flour, plus a range of seeds, it tastes better than anything I buy, even on the occasions when it hasn't risen as much as I'd expected to - and it's never as light and fluffy as bought bread and I wonder why that is?

Actually, neither was Pete's.  In fact, he was the reason I let baking go.  He made bread and some pastries once a week and sold them at the Thursday market for several years.  And his stuff was genuinely homemade.  Fluffy lightness wasn't the point.  Flavour and goodness was.  In fact, I like my bread even more than Pete's.  I bake it and, the next day, slice and freeze most of it and take it out as I need it (no darlings, not as I knead it, it's the dough that you knead, not the bread).

Anyway, once in a while I buy a pizza from a small independent company from either the deli or Jonny's farm shop.  They're two different makes, but both are trustworthy in terms of ingredients.  Yesterday, the pasta dish I made for dinner featured mozzarella, but I only used half of it.  Today, I realised I needed to use the rest because I'm out for dinner tomorrow and I don't want to have to throw away the mozzarella.  I also had some leftover tomato (with onion, garlic and peppers) sauce and some basil.  So I made pizza.  

Honestly, it was the best pizza I've eaten since the last time I made pizza, several years ago.  I'm an entirely adequate cook, but not the best, by any means.  The fact is, home made is best.  I don't even know why, but it is.  Dammit.  I can't cut corners any more.  I usually leave most of the dough, but this was too good.

I do go out to eat regularly and I usually choose something I'm unlikely to make myself.  I don't suggest I cook better than a professional chef, because I know I absolutely don't, but there's something about mass production.

Anyway, to finish with the food theme, I did call in at the deli today and bought cheese.  They have a cheese of the month and, this time, it was one I didn't know, called Shadow Flower (I think).  I was given a sample and it was fabulous.  I asked about it, it's Bavarian and from the same cheesemaker who makes Alp Flower, which is also delicious, but its rind is covered in a thin layer of crushed mixed peppercorns.  While I was about it, I bought Roquefort, which I adore but don't often buy as I usually opt for local cheeses (or British, anyway) and some local Baron Bigod.  I ate them with homemade bread.  I had great difficulty stopping and had to force myself to put them away.