Sadly the rain it raineth every day here at the castle today. What this means for us is that we are getting wet. What this means for the bread is that it is taking longer to rise because it is about 10 degrees cooler in the castle kitchen today!
At 05.30 Max was already in full swing making coffee, cooking eggs and having his first cigarette of the day. Megan who, the night before, said she would meet me at 5.30 was actually there waiting for me which was great. It’s nice to have an assistant in the wee hours. Note to Felix you sleepy head.
We used the flour and yeast that we got from the village baker (thanks Tobias for carrying all 12 kgs of it) and we started the process of mixing the dough by shredding some old dough from yesterday’s bread into some warm water. We then added 1 kg of flour and some yeast and some more warm water to help it proof.
Coffee was required.
A container of buttermilk provided the remainder of the liquid and that, with a bit of salt, completed our dough. Megan kneaded like a trooper for a good 15 minutes, afterwhich, the dough went back in the bowl and I went back to bed! Rainy and cold does not mean a little chat on the balcony, no, no, no.
The only drama was provided by the oven that went off for an unknown period of time during the baking process (the oven fuse blows when the dishwasher goes on) but Max saved the day (and the bread) and it is beautiful and gorgeous as you can see from the photo below.
Centre stage this morning, it sat humbly among the amazing, incredible, and inspriational speakers (Jonathan MacDonald, ESOOU, Thomas Goetz, WIRED, Adele Waugaman, United Nations Foundation, Enrique Tames Munoz and Aape Pohjavirta, Ympyra) who taught us about some of the ways mobile is being used to change the world for the better – including teaching math to poor children in Mexico.
Incidentally, did you know there are more mobile phone handsets in the world than toothbrushes?
