Measure your muffins

I do tend to bang on a bit about the importance of measuring accurately. The bakers in Bread of Heron, the community bread making group at Heron Corn Mill, laugh at me about it.

Most people like to check their bread is on the right lines by how it feels. If it's too wet, add a bit more flour. If it's too dry, add a bit more water. Eventually it will feel right. Well... yes, but... a slightly more scientific approach is required if you really want to nail it.

I used to do everything by feel, and I got quite good at making bread that I knew was going to be fine because it felt right. The trouble was, if anything went wrong, I couldn't say for sure what the problem was, because I didn't know exactly what I had done. And if anything went much better than expected, likewise I could never be sure what I'd done that had made the difference.

This all became much more of an issue when I started trying to get on top of sourdough. With sourdough, every bake is different for one reason or another. There are so many variables that troubleshooting becomes a bit of a black art. You are constantly guessing what made the difference this time. It's only by removing as many variables as possible that you can be reasonably sure what was actually different.

Once I had decided to be rigidly strict with myself about weighing everything - including water - down to the last gram, things started to look up. I realised that by far the most important thing to worry about with sourdough was the liveliness of the starter. If that was anything short of rampant, the bread would invariably be dull and uninteresting. Those big bubbles so loved by sourdough fans would not materialise, and the final proving would always be disappointingly lethargic.

I've had to remind myself about this recently, because the successful rises we had on Sourdough Saturday at the Heron Corn Mill have been eluding me again. Thinking about it, I realised that the main difference is that before Sourdough Saturday my starter was fed every day for a month, and since then I have "only" been giving it one feed two days before baking and then several feeds the day before baking, to bulk it up. This just isn't good enough! You can't get that high level of activity in the starter without giving it a really good run of regular feeds.

In future, I think I am going to have to feed at least every day for a week - and feed aggressively too - if I am going to get my starter properly into condition. In a real bakery the starter would be fed lavishly at least once every day. And if I finish up generating more starter than I need, I'll just have to use it up in pancakes or pizza. Sourdough pizza - now there's a thought.

But what about the muffins?

When we had some really bad rain recently, I cancelled a bake at the Heron Corn Mill on the grounds that I didn't think it was safe to go to the mill in flood conditions. I challenged my bakers to have a go at something different at home instead of coming to the mill to bake. My suggestion was muffins, and I am a little ashamed to say I have only just got round to trying them out myself.

Working from a recipe in the Hugh bread book, scaled down a little as I am the sole muffin fancier in our house, I made up 400 g of flour, 260 g of water (65% hydration - fairly firm by my standards), 6 g of salt (quite a lot for me, but much less than the recipe), and 2 g of yeast (much less than the recipe). I have plenty of time for my bread to rise, so I don't mind at all using less yeast and giving it more time to rise. It also allows me the chance to knock it back a few times and feel the progress of the dough over 24 hours or so.

This morning it felt very smooth, though still quite firm compared to my normal wetter dough. Time to make some muffins. I rolled the dough into a sausage shape, and cut it in half lengthwise. Then I repeated the process with each half, and again with each quarter. You'd think that halving a roll by eye would be reasonably accurate, wouldn't you? I certainly did, but I thought I'd just check by weighing each muffin-sized lump of dough. Here are my surprising results -

My largest lump was twice the size of my smallest lump. Surely some mistake? Apparently my guesswork is not as accurate as I thought it was.

After a happy few minutes equalising the size of my lumps, I shaped them and dusted them with semolina.

These lovely little things then had a couple of hours to rest again, which didn't make much difference to be honest - they just puffed up a little. What did make a difference was to put them into a medium hot pan on a low to medium gas. They started to swell up quite fast.

After about a minute, the bottom side starts to form a crust, and the top is starting to swell up quite noticeably. At this point you need to turn them gently over to arrest the second side and establish the basic flat shape of the muffin.

Then each side gets about 5 or 6 minutes on a moderate heat, just till it's lightly brown on both sides, and soft all the way round. I must say it's quite a good turn out.

The soft edge all the way round is important because it means you can rip the muffin open rather than cutting it. Ripping is strictly required by tradition, as it creates a rough side for maximum butter absorption.

So there we are - muffins. Surprisingly easy to do, and definitely very pleasing to eat. There is very little comparison between these and shop bought muffins. Morrisons used to do reasonable ones which they bought in from a bakery in Salford. But since they started making their own, the standard has fallen off considerably.

After trying these at home I don't think I will ever buy shop muffins again, unless they are properly home made by the shop. Elizabeth Botham's shop in Whitby used to offer home made muffins one day a week. They were good. But I think mine are even better.

And finally, at the age of 62, I think I have produced something that can reasonably be compared to my mum's "cobs", the spiky white roll-like creatures of my youth. How we loved them! I think I would have loved these muffins as a kid too. Happy days.

Inflation: bread imagery in chapter 7 of Ulysses

You may have heard me mention Ulysses. Once or twice. It's been a part of my life for the last twenty years or so, and I am not usually more than a few feet away from a copy. Rather like bread making - it's just part of the landscape.

At the moment I am in the middle of reading chapter 7. I say reading, but it doesn't really work like that. Every chapter of Ulysses is a little world of its own, and you sort of step in at the beginning of a chapter, and eventually you emerge at the other end, usually with a whole load of new things that you only just realised. Also, this time I am reading the manuscript rather than the printed version, so it is a very slow process indeed. Again, the similarity with bread making comes to mind here. You won't get anywhere with Ulysses unless you embrace the idea of a long slow fermentation. The plot moves forward almost without you noticing, and slowly, slowly over time, a network of connections emerges. Just like a gluten network, slowly inflating with the gas of a long slow fermentation.

The story has two main strands - the poet Stephen's day, and the advertising canvasser Bloom's day. They start off separately, and progressively intertwine through the book, finally coalescing in a ritual cup of cocoa in chapter 17.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Stephen's day and Bloom's day start off (in chapter 1 and chapter 4 respectively) with a fried breakfast. There's no reason to see any significance in the fact that that both breakfasts involve bread - not yet, anyway.

This is Stephen's breakfast in chapter 1 -

Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him... Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey... Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey... Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf... He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife. ...as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf

Bloom takes his wife breakfast in bed in chapter 4 -

He ... fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.

And he then has his own breakfast in the kitchen -

Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf... Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth... He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth.

Two breakfast scenes, both involving bread. Surely just coincidence, if even that? The thing is, you soon learn that nothing happens by chance in Ulysses.

Chapter 7 is where the two story strands start to come together.  Bloom has come back from a funeral, and is in the newspaper offices to talk to the foreman about an advert. Stephen is chatting with the editor and various cronies in the back room. Almost imperceptibly a series of bread-related images starts to appear.

The foreman offers to give the advertiser a bit of free publicity, and Bloom says 

I'll rub that in

like a baker would rub the fat in to the flour.

Next Bloom notices the machinery all round him.

Thumping. Thump... Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught... got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away.

He's actually talking about the printing press, but this certainly sounds like a dough mixer to me.

Even the foreman looks like a loaf -

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown. 



By a series of mental leaps, Bloom is reminded of a picture he saw in the National Gallery - Jesus in the house of Lazarus and Mary. Lazarus, of course, is famous for rising again - how bread-like, and appropriate straight after a funeral! Bloom even gets in the old joke about Lazarus -

Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.


This is the picture he had seen at the National Gallery -

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Breughel junior and Rubens 1625-40
In the painting, Martha is moaning to Jesus that Mary is sitting around leaving her to do all the hard work. Traditionally Martha is identified as the bread maker. Here's another version of the same scene -


Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Vermeer, 1654


And in this older version, she is actually making bread, and kneading so hard her arms are back to front -

Mary kneels before Christ, Martha prepares food. Vergilius Master, 1410



The whole chapter is called "Aeolus", the god of the winds. And all the verbal imagery is related to air one way or another - wind, smoke, gas, hot air, rhetoric, journalism. If Bloom and the foreman are like bakers putting together the ingredients, the editor and his literary friends are like the yeast, producing lots of gas to get the dough to rise.  When we first see him, the editor is smoking -

Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.

His friends are making fun of a high-fallutin' speech that is reported in the paper.

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on:
--Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbleson its way, tho' quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumblingwaters of Neptune's blue domain, 'mid mossy banks, fanned by gentlestzephyrs, played on by the glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows casto'er its pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants ofthe forest. What about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of hisnewspaper. How's that for high?

That's certainly enough hot air to raise the bread! And the final proof is that the speech that is being reported was made by Dan Dawson, a well known baker whose nick name was Doughy Daw. Joyce is clearly plaiting together the two strands of his story with bread making images. Now skip to the beginning of chapter 17 where Stephen and Bloom are walking home arm in arm for that cup of cocoa. Just to make absolutely sure we haven't forgotten all that earlier bread imagery, the first place they come to is a bakery -

<Bloom> inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said.

And how like Joyce to give us the key to all this at the end rather than the beginning. He even wraps it up like a crossword clue -

O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said.
"It is said" is crossword speak for "2 words which sound the same". And of course because everything Joyce does is literary, there is a quote from Merchant of Venice -

Tell me where is fancy bred,Or in the heart or in the head?

And you won't be surprised to hear that throughout the book Bloom is often associated with Shylock.



It's a well baked loaf alright!