On bags of flour in UK supermarkets the words “strong white” and “plain” – and occasionally the ridiculous “strong plain” label courtesy of Waitrose, doing their bit to discourage all home baking – is emblazoned on the packs as if it meant something. Now when I write a recipe and in the ingredients ask for “strong white flour”, all I mean is go and buy a bag of flour labelled “strong white” and use it. If you push me, I‘ll explain that in the UK, strong flour is typically flour for breadmaking, and plain flour is flour for cakes and biscuits. But to be really honest, the truth is much more complex as I frequently use plain flour for bread recipes, and strong white flour for cake recipes.

There’s a thread on our forum about home baker Jack Lang’s exceptional baguettes made with plain flour, and over on moneysavingexpert.com there’s a thread about using low grade flour for a great result. So when forum member Blue posted recently asking about strong white flour I thought it’s time to start unravelling the mysteries. As I started writing this I’ve realised that it will be the first in a series, as there is so much to explain about the flours we use. (more…)

Listening to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning I was overwhelmed by the news that President Obama’s healthcare reform looks like it will be passed. If you’re reading this in the US you might not be aware of how supportive many of us around the world – in countries that have some government healthcare available – are with your move to make individual healthcare for 35 million Americans a reality.

The boost to the economy by getting sick workers back and active will be a blessing, and though it’s essential to reduce the total number of citizens that need government health insurance in the long term, one way to do it is to ensure that the population is as healthy as possible.

Good food and nutrition are essential to achieving this, and this is where baking usually comes under fire. I’m talking cookies, cakes, bread: the whole delicious gamut. There is the undeniable truth that if you consume a diet that’s very heavy in carbohydrates (flour and sugar primarily) and fats (butter and oil) you’ll find it nearly impossible to keep your weight down and the belly fat off unless you can burn off all the calories like a Olympic champion. (more…)

It’s finally the official ‘end’ of the Marmalade year for me, and as I’m one of the patrons and judges at the World’s Marmalade Festival held in Cumbria every February, the beginning of my year gets taken over by it. Fortnum & Mason held this grand breakfast for the winners of the Artisan Producer category last Monday and it was loud with chat.

Jasper Conran was seated to my right and Emma Bridgewater on my left, and the conversation got onto design rather quickly. For all the emphasis on the preserve inside, so many of the artisan producer entries arrived in jars with ugly, carelessly designed labels that took your attention away from the contents. I should be clear here: when we judge, the preserve is spooned out onto a plain white plate so we don’t see the jar or the maker, only the category. But afterwards, looking over all the entries, we saw some nasty samples of graphic design. Jars that you would have to decant onto a plate.

everybody chatting

This was much less a problem in the home-made classes where there were so many beautiful entries, clearly prepared with some love and attention even if they sometimes drifted towards gaudy. But when a commercial producer wants us to spend £4, or €5, or $6 on a jar then I want that jar to be the dog’s bollocks. I understand, really I do, that keeping the quality high – from the cut of the peel through to the design of the label – is hard to manage when you scale up from one jar at home to thousands in commercial production. It’s just that maintaining that quality ‘is’ the job. There were some entries where the peel looked like it was chewed apart by dogs.

Let me put it another way. We must remind the food producers we support not to abuse the relationship by thinking that any element of the production process is beneath them. Money is tight for everyone, and in that climate it matters even more. You will have experienced the same thing at some time, whether it’s from a bakery or a supermarket. That feeling that surely someone in the company is having a joke. Or expecting a TV camera to pop out from somewhere and… ahhhhh… it was just a prank to see whether you’d fall for it. No, no joke, and that will be £4 please.

Low rent companies fall under the radar. The quality of a 20p jar of jam, a 7p loaf or a 15p doughnut doesn’t offend me and, if your needs really drive you to buy only the cheapest you possibly can, then design – rightly – won’t be high on your agenda. But those of us who are able to buy a bit better must demand that it is made with care and attention, and occasionally remind food producers of that.

It gives you such a boost to see really fine packaging around thoughtfully made food. Last night about 9pm, just as David and I were settling down to watch Somers Town on DVD (quite good, though like CousCous, it just suddenly ended abruptly. Yes, I’m getting old.) my neighbour Sarah rang our doorbell with two jars of preserve a friend of her’s, Koula, had made; one was a jar of Quince Jam, packed with chunks of tender quince set in a rosy pink jelly, and the other a jar of Medlar Jam – and you don’t see that often. Koula, I’m told, is looking at going commercial and wondered what I thought. The jams? Extraordinary, really. And the labels? Clear and smart.

The week’s highlight: A sweet radio programme about the marmalade festival was on BBC Radio 4′s Food Programme last Sunday. And my mum’s birthday this Sunday.

I’ve been experimenting with a bread machine, a Panasonic, trying to work out whether it’s a dependable piece of essential kitchen equipment or if it’s another gadget like the juicer and the yoghurt maker that sounds like a good idea at first  - “just imagine, fresh bread in the morning” – but actually becomes another needy machine that has to be understood, tweaked, waited patiently over and cleaned in the name of simplicity and ease. I’m getting to the limit of my machine tolerance, so David has taken over and started writing his own bread recipes for it while I’m working through bread machine trials of different breads and dough for a review we’ll publish later.

This bread machine is wooing me much more than I thought it would, and it has some curious benefits that I didn’t expect plus a few really annoying points that they gloss over in the ads, but I’ll save all that for the review. (more…)