Now I know it's not the prettiest loaf, but believe me it was the easiest bread I ever baked. It's soda bread. That means no yeast and hardly any kneading. See here for the recipe. Admittedly Hugh's recipe did not say to dust the dog with flour, but I'm a messy cook in a small kitchen.
While the bread was in the oven I made my back-of-the-pantry soup, which means using whatever vegetables are lying around. Lovely to have hunks of warm fresh bread to dip in! The bread tasted slightly sweeter than most breads, and the texture was more cakey inside the crisp crust.
Last week I made another recipe from Hugh's programme, Butternut and Nut Butter Soup. I'd made butternut squash soup before, but the addition of peanut butter, fresh ginger and coriander gave the recipe a lot more flavour. Sorry Hugh, but I did omit the lime. I took a batch of this soup to work and my colleagues enjoyed it too.
Although I miss being in the garden once autumn comes, it's nice to be in the kitchen a bit more doing the kind of cooking I don't tend to do in the summer. Now I have to go and do a pile of washing up, so I'll leave you with a picture of sunset over suburbia.
