So the alphabet date game continues; and this week it was my turn.

I wanted to think outside the box with the letter B so I looked into a few things, including but not limited to:

• boating (but I decided it was too chilly)
• beekeeping (but apparently this is a Spring/Summer thing)
• Boris bike day (again a little restricted by the awful weather and the thought that my hands could legitimately freeze to the handlebars)
• bowling (too predictable).

Eventually I settled on the idea of Bread making – we’ve never done it before, we get something to eat at the end and it seemed like a laugh.

At first I researched some artisan bread making courses and found them to be hilariously expensive (about £70-100 per person for a day of making bread). So I thought: how hard can this be? [At this point I think it’s important to note that everyone who I spoke to about this told me that it is extremely difficult and that we probably definitely wouldn’t be able to produce anything that even nearly represented bread]. So I decided to turn our kitchen into a bakery for a day.

First thing’s first we needed Breakfast (which conveniently also starts with letter B) and so I made Bacon Pancakes. (which reminds me of a great song).

 

Then it was Bread time – and we were following a secret recipe passed on to me from Peter, a colleague. It’s a “no knead” recipe which is handy because kneading seems like a lot of faff.  Instead there was lots of folding in oil, then leaving it for 10 minutes, and repeating. And then we left it under a tea towel for 45 minutes to pop to Homebase for some pliers (not bread related).

When we came back we discovered some kind of monster bread slug but, assuming that this is what is supposed to happen when you leave a small lump of dough under a tea towel for three quarters of an hour, we slapped some flour on it and chucked it in the oven.

40 minutes later and we took out what looked, and tasted, like a genuine loaf of bread. So to all the ‘haters’ who told me that bread was too hard, and that it would never come out right, and that we couldn’t do it – step off (another great song).

I made us chorizo, grilled pepper and baby spinach sandwiches (fancy) and it was real tasty.

Then we were supposed to continue the B theme and go to Windsor’s version of Winter Wonderland for Bavarian Bratwurst and beer but we didn’t fancy it (and neither of us especially like Bratwurst). So instead we swapped plans and headed to the cinema to see Bond (still fits with the theme albeit loosely).

Best bit: Eating the bread that we had made with our own bare hands (and it actually tasting like good bread).

Worst bit: Getting dough stuck to our own bare hands.

[And also when Daniel Craig seduces a woman who looks young enough to be his daughter in Spectre – very weird].

B is for Breakfast, Bread making and Bond.