Mr. France is making Bread .

Although it's me who does all  the day to day cooking and baking
When Mr France decides to cook, he always chooses  much more adventurous recipes than I do.
 Especially now he's showing his talents in baking.

He'd said he wanted to learn to cook/bake, so our daughter bought him a recipe book

'Cook with Jamie'

by 

Jamie Oliver.
which he always uses.

and  he never chooses what I call simple things to bake. like a sponge cake.

The 1st. cake he ever made was an American cheesecake, it was delicious,

This last week he made a heavenly Rich Chocolate Rum & Almond Cake.
recipe by Rachel Allen
thankfully it's a cake that keeps well, so we could limit our selves to small slices
and save the rest for afternoon tea and cake when visitors popped in.

We've seen several cooking programmes on TV where they used Kitchen Aid mixers,
with a hook attachment to make bread. Mr France liked the idea and said
 'I could make bread, if we had a mixer like that '
 Thinking this could just be a fad and knowing how expensive the machine was,
 I asked did he realise how much this mixer cost..?


Our friends were going back to England for a few months and asked if we'd like to borrow their bread machine to see if Mr France would actually enjoy making bread.
  He gave the machine a try during the winter months but was never satisfied with the finished result.

A few weeks later we had a publicity catalogue delivered in our post box
advertising a special offer on Kitchen Aid Mixers.This was too good an offer to let slip by.
We read the description and decided we would choose the red model, which had an even better reduction .
Evidently red mustn't have been a very popular colour in France.

So we got ourselves a real bargain.

and now he's making bread.

 .

This is the flour he uses, all the measurements and instructions are on the packet.
This mornings bread had a slightly different texture & I commented on it
He said 'he'd just tweaked the recipe a little to make it easier to handle'
I'm loving this New 'Mr France'.

So our nice red mixer has pride of place on the work top in our kitchen area..
and Mr France is using it regularly to make our bread.
We do pop to 'La Boulangerie' now & again for a crusty baguette.

I'm setting myself a challenge to do  more watercolour painting and sketches.

This is my impression

of  Mr France's freshly baked  Pain Multi Céréales.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian