Last night it was GBBO’s ‘bread week’. What? Well, for the uninitiated GBBO is the BBC’s unexpected hit show the ‘Great British Bake Off’ which is now on its fifth series. It is simply a baking competition where contestants bake each week, but somehow it is more than just a ‘competitive’ cooking programme.
I’m not a big telly person, but this is my guilty secret not least as I love baking cakes and, well, anything sweet! Sweet, yeasty breads such as Chelsea buns, cinnamon brioche and stollen are all personal favourites, but last night only one person made a sweetened showstopper loaf. I guess with all the recent fuss about sugar being so bad for your health savoury breads were considered the safer option. Anyway, following a batch of chocolate hazelnut cookies last week I have restrained myself and baked a few granary rolls.
We share the “guilty secret” of the GBBO … can’t quite pin down why I like it so much as I rarely bake now!
Watching it does make you a bit peckish though, doesn’t it!
Go you! I have never had much success with yeast cookery. I end up with bread loves that are more like door stoppers. Last weekend my cousin did sixty pizza bases, yes sixty! For her mothers 89th birthday party. Cooked in a wood fired oven in the back yard. I didn’t help, I just ate
Wow – that is true pizza commitment, but, perhaps mostly a daughter’s appreciation for her mother I suspect?
My cousin has an exuberance I can only dream of emulating. She lives in Italy,her mother in Australia. At best, she can hope to visit once a year – as per last weekend. So you get people trying to catch up with my cousin, auntie turning 89, sisters, children, grandchildren, great-grand children, back yard pizza oven, juke box playing anything from tarantella to macarena to hip hop, various women stretching pizza bases and topping them, various people wandering around saying which one has the chilli because they (a)can’t get enough of it, or (b) it gives them the hiccups, two year olds hogging the bathroom until mummy comes to clean them up, just finished being two year olds hiding under the table with the best part of the cake, people speaking Itlesh, or Englitalian, in all round general chaos. Just another Saturday afternoon in the life of your regular Italian – Australian. It was great.
Haven’t seen the show although many BBC hits make it to our TV so perhaps it will arrive soon. Unfortunately I’ve avoided gluten for 10 years (arthritis)and gluten free breads that are enjoyable are few and far between…enjoy although I think you already do!