I love bread, any bread, just the sound of the word is instantly cheering! I made some last week that I've been threatening to do for ages... focaccia. Arthritic hands (god, I hate getting old!) mean that actual kneading is out of the question, so I enlisted the help of my trusty bread machine for the hard work; I just joined in at the end for shaping and slapping it in the tin.
I used this recipe by Paul Hollywood. I imagine Paul would get sniffy about me using a bread machine, but there again he gets sniffy about most things.
I reduced the flour to 400g and adjusted the other ingredients accordingly, mainly because I only had a 23cm square tin. We really enjoyed it - lovely fresh from the oven with soup and a chunk of cheese; I could easily have eaten the other half but, showing admirable restraint, I froze it. At the weekend I warmed it briefly in the microwave and served it with this BBC Good Food recipe for Bean and Halloumi Stew. A really nice easy meal.
As a side issue, I discovered that my "new" oven, which is in fact six years old, has a proving setting! Just goes to show I should have read the instructions in 2017... duh!
I won't comment on the various pantomimes going on in the news. Suffice to say, I think everyone has lost their minds. Collective insanity seems to have taken over - I may well be the only sane one left.
