Input your search keywords and press Enter.

Nothing tastes better than home-made food

 I have had neither the time nor energy for lighter outings.
I devoted my week to experimenting with sour dough. In particular sour dough ciabatta. Ciabatta is the distinctive Italian ‘slipper’ bread but its been a long time since one could buy a good loaf in Harare. Some Spars offer something very soft and floury in the flat slipper shape, but a far cry from the authentic Italian, which has a hard crust and a centre characterised by large holes. The Italian Bakery was once the place for good ciabatta but along with the cinemas has been displaced, and I don’t know anywhere else in this city to find anything approaching authentic ciabatta.
I decided to try my own – and as I wanted to use sour dough instead of yeast – had to start last weekend! I am a fan of good bread and have been an experimental home baker for years now. When it was impossible to buy an ordinary loaf in a shop without queuing for hours, I got into the habit of weekly baking as long as there was still flour in my hoard – but I was using yeast – in those days usually spirited in from South Africa.
Sour dough was unfamiliar to me, other than from old frontier stories. It involves mixing flour and water together and allowing fermentation. Seems simple – but in practice there is this live organism in your kitchen which after a couple of days starts bubbling and which needs consistent attention.  Every 12 hours it needs to be ‘fed’ – with more flour and water – and when optimum is doubling in bulk every 12 hours! This can be a substantial quantity.
On Friday – the day before I planned to bake – this starter which had been growing contentedly for days and behaving just like the google site said it would, suddenly looked dead. Not a bubble to be seen and no expansion!  Avoiding panic, I threw half away to bring the quantity down to something manageable, stirred vigorously, added some more flour and water – and went to bed hoping for the best.
And in the morning it was alive again. What a relief.  A this point I abandoned all reference to the internet site and decided that I knew enough about baking bread to trust my instincts and proceed!  Ciabatta needs a wet dough –  which makes it more difficult to knead, but at intervals throughout the day I stretched and folded it, left it to rise in the warmth, and then stretched and folded it again.  It seemed happy – and the process was  leisurely and relaxed.
Traditionally ciabatta is baked in a wood-fired oven  at a high heat.  My gas oven is not quite hot enough – but all the same I was pleased with the end result – pleasantly sour, with a good crust and certainly better than anything I can buy here. If anyone knows differently – please be in touch.
And on Mother’s Day an unexpected invitation did take us out – for succulent piri piri chicken at the Cais Cais, which was doing a roaring trade on mothering Sunday – and honouring mothers with individual roses and a complimentary glass of amarula. Sweet.  
Sunday evening – we enjoyed homemade ciabatta. And I will begin feeding the starter again ready for another trial.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com