New Photo Competition & Baking Bread

New Photograph Competition

Well following the great success of our last photo competition, what better than another competition? This time it’s Amazing Constructions. It can be a shed or a greenhouse or anything constructed to do with gardening.

What I never expected was our lovely forum member babe popping up with a fence and keep out signs around her pet carrot, Terrence. Just one word of warning, never name your vegetables if you’re going to eat them. The children sat crying around the table “I’m not eating Peter the Potato!”

It’s all just a bit of fun, I’m throwing in a copy of my book as a prize or if the winner prefers, my review copy of Valentine Low’s One Man and his Dig. A book I enjoyed greatly. Photo Competition – Go on, have a go!

Baking Your Own Bread

Over on the main site, Val & I have put up some articles on making bread. It really is easy and you don’t need a breadmaking machine, although an electric mixer with dough hooks does make things easier.

There are three articles on baking bread, an introduction with some reasons for making your own bread, an instructional guide to baking your own bread and one on shaping your loaf. The fourth article in the section is about the Chorleywood process of making bread as used by the large bakeries to supply the mass market with cheap bread.

I researched the article on the Chorleywood process in some depth and there are a number of people making the link between the introduction of this process and the increase in Coeliac disease where people are unable to tolerate gluten and between the process and an increase in yeast intolerance. If they’re right, then it’s pretty scary because bread is such a central part of our diet.

What isn’t disputable is that modern bread contains additives and an excess of salt to compensate for the lack of flavour caused by the speed of the process. You decide what you want to eat.