New Blog Site

I know I rarely use this one, but there is a new blog starting up at our new venture - http://www.zenbaker.co.uk/

It is the start of what we hope is a beautiful, holistic baking business - the stuff we make and sell is local, wholesome and traditional.

On the new website we are preparing a new blog which covers the philosophies behind why we have chose to do this, along with thoghts about where the business, and more importantly, the food should go next.

Please take a look, subscibe, rant, feedback and enjoy.

The hunt for the veg.

Has begun.

We are off to a Christmas farmers market tomorrow to start the stock of the Christmas day dinner. We are having a ham cooked in cranberry and apple juice and it will be roasted. Usually I use honey and coca-cola. I love Christmas ham. I could never be a vegetarian.

Veggies so far - roast potatoes (done in goose fat - much higher temps result in much crispier on the outside and fluffier on the inside tatties!), soy broccoli, honeyed carrots and parsnips and two stuffings (one normal and one gingerbread). So these all have to be bought, although I am leaning to sourcing the meat at the Farmer's market and then going into town to find the veggies closer to the day.

Christmas pud. I havent the stones to make one from scratch just yet - the whole stewed fruit in a bag thing looks waaaay complicated. I will be buying a little one and probably be getting a sponge pudding as well (christmas pud being the aquired taste that it is!).

Stuff I will be baking - a wreath cake. I found a mold that puts a sponge into a wreath shape, but the wreath itself is segmented into portion size - put them together like a jigsaw to make the cake look like a wreath! Does that make sense?

Black cake - this is a Jamaican traditional cake, heavy fruited with all the fruit being marinated in lots of madiera and rum for anywhere between 2 weeks to 6 months. First year I am going to try it as I had an open bottle of madeira that needed a use. Will let you know how that turns out!

Whats on your list?

Birthday Baking!

Its my birthday today and I have been suprised by a large amount of brownies done for me by the hubby! they are fantastic and a joy with the horlicks ice cream. Thank you so much!

I also recieved the gift of a Union Jack tiered cake stand from my mate Vax - the brownies look spectacular on it and I can see its a gadget that will be used very much from here on out.

Such a great day :)

Vital Cookbooks

I really should be writing more in here.

I havent done a great deal of baking this past week - but I did knock out a batch of cranberry muffins (Craisins ROCK for this), some cookies and a loaf of bread.

If you havent already have a go at the basic white loaf in the River Cottage Family Cookbook, its really straight forward and turns out really well. It has a couple of good tips in there - high heat for the first ten minutes of baking, then down to moderate, then turn the loaf upside down in the tin, high heat again and brown the base off to finish it.

I picked up the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook as well and it is phenominal. Loads of lovely tips in there - a four week guided plan for creating sourdough starter, and a guide to making croissant ferment. So many things to try, with the croissants being top of the list.

So much to do! So much to do!

But its all good for the Soul ;)

So my eustress trigger is baking. Like you didnt know already.

There are two different kinds of stress - Distress and Eustress. We feel distress when we are unhappy, agitated or anxious about an activity or event, we feel eustress when we are uplifted, focussed and driven by an activity or event.

Something that I teach in my meditation classes is to chronicle your stress levels via events and activities. This can be done over a day, week, year or lifetime. Whatever you need to do in order to get a handle on what consitutes a stress trigger for you.

So - take an average day, average events and figure out a timeline. With each event, give it a stressor indicator from 1 (being not stressful) to 10 (being very stressful). Next look at the type of stress that has occurred. Is it something that has caused distress - anxiety, friction, anger, worry, or eustress - anticipation, excitement, happiness, achievement.

By looking at these things you will begin to figure out what consitutes stress triggers for you. Obviously everyone has different ones, so figuring out what yours are is a valuable exercise. When you hit on a stress trigger, and you are aware of it, you have a greater control over your reaction to it, and thus a greater control over your stress level. If you know that a certain event or situation will set off a distress trigger you can pre-empt your mental and emotional response to it, and diffuse your reaction. And the flip side is that when you recognise your eustress triggers you can encourage and activley enhance the uplifting experience that comes with good stress.

From a daily stress trigger examination, punch it up to weekly, yearly and lifetime. Take all the time you need. You are examining your past emotional and mental responses to stress in order to control your future ones, to allow for a clear-headed response to all levels of stress.

Stress is a part of life. But it doesnt have to be a bad part.

Baking Withdrawal

I thought after a flurry of recipes and foodie reports I should have a look at the reasons behind why we do this. After all there are some aspects to being in the kitchen that arent nice - the cleaning up for one.

But the main reason to do all of this is to feel connected to what we need to survive. Food is obviously the fuel that we need to live, and in a basic human kind of way, what we need to thrive and ultimatley once thriving, continue the species.

So in that respect, food, cooking and baking become something primal. Something necessary. Vital.

Maybe that is why baking appeals and can trigger, emotional reactions. There is always the reminder that not only we need this action in order to survive, but with baking in particular, there is a connection to memory and to home.

Most people learn to bake from their parents or grandparents. Usually its from a Mother. The emotional connections with baking encompass the relationship you have with (one of) the most important people in your life, and certainly (for the majority of us) the most important person in our childhoods.

I was taught to bake by my Mam, who was taught by her Mam...And on it goes. That being said, my Dad was a professional cook, and worked for many years in an industrial bakery - but he didn't teach me cooking, in fact I never witnessed him cooking anything other than cheese on toast (that was what I needed to get better when I was ill) as in retrospect, he would have been pig sick of cooking for people by the time he got home form work.

Still the emotional connections of baking take me back to being a child - so maybe thats a trigger for me, and no doubt, many others, as to why it is such a calming, soothing, warm activity.

As an adult the activity of baking is something I find to be meditative. There is a specific action and reaction with baking, exacting measurements, solid process that is completed in order to produce something valuable and beautiful all at once. Meditation is the same way. With this concentration, focus and determination, you achieve a higher awareness of self.

Im sure I will ponder more on my own (and others) emotional connection to baking, but for right now the baby needs some porridge.

After the ecstacy....The laundry.

The Alchemy of Baking.

So I thought I would start this up as over the years I have become ever so slightly obsessed with baking. Not just the recipes and the better tastes that you get with home cooked food,  but moreover with the effect that it has on people. Why does baking give that warm fuzzy feeling? Why does it cause people to talk more freely, laugh louder and be more relaxed.

The experience of creating something from diverse ingredients to somehow add an emotional value and resulting in that effect is something that intrigues me. And I guess I would like to find out how that comes about.

The Alchemy of Baking...

This mixture of food and emotions to create better (best?) flavours and sensory experiences is encapsulated in this act. And there are two sides to the story as well, because the creation of the food is an all out experience for the baker too - a moment of meditation, a realisation of sustenance and somehow because of that, survival. It speaks to the core of us all.

A truely holistic experience for all involved. So here we go - I will babble on like this throughout this blog, no doubt, and will throw in the recipes and emotional results of the baking.

Thats the plan, anyway - see where we go from here.