Cheese and bread

On Saturday, Diane and Laurence came round to sew up the felted poinsettia bits and wire the stems so they are ready to twist into a wreath. I put on a spectacularly bad display of my sewing skills and managed one flower in more time than it took Diane to do 3 but that's another story. I'll do a post about the wreath once we've added the yellow bits to the centre of the flowers, and for now they remain in a vase on my dining table looking very pretty.

Jane made soup so I decided to get my hands sticky and make some bread to go with it. The larger loaf is olive bread made with spelt flour, and the rolls are malted wholegrain - I think they were my favourites, I'm still unconvinced about the shorter texture you get with spelt. Both very easy recipes from the back of the flour packet. The flours were excellent, and it was a textbook demonstration that good flour makes good bread. Check out Doves Farm website, lots of info about flours and grains etc and plenty of recipes.




Unfortunately there wasn't time for a trip to Mellis cheesemonger in St Andrews, but I went a bit mad at the cheese counter in Tesco instead. This is the start of cheeseboard season, and we were nibbling away for the rest of the evening even though we weren't hungry! Diane brought along some yummy home made oatcakes which went beautifully with the cheese, and also some tasty smoked mackerel pate. For me, the top cheese award went to the Strathdon Blue (top R). It's quite soft and squidy but very tangy and blue at the same time, not a million miles away from gorgonzola. The stinky unpasteurised brie de maux was good too, oozing all over the place.