Wholemeal bread

We have tried several bread recipes, but this one is so simple and great that it has become a favourite!

You only need:
500 gr wholemeal flour
400 ml lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon active dried bread yeast















Step1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt.


Step 2. Add the water and mix for 1-2 minutes.

Step 3. Pour the mixture in a loaf tin and leave in a warm place to rise by about a third. This should take up to an hour.


Step 5. Bake at 200C for 40 minutes.


Step 4. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack - this is important, otherwise the crust will become soggy. Wait 10-20 minutes and then have a slice or two with a bit of butter, it tastes wonderful hot!



Variations: You could add some seeds, I use pumpkin and sunflower seeds. You could also add some dried herbs or spices for flavour, i've tried adding a teaspoon of paprika, it works really well.

If you make this, let us know how you got on! ;)

This recipe is from Baking by Martha Day. But if you want to get technical and see variations to wholemeal bread, here's a good link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jun/10/how-to-bake-wholemeal-bread

Painting with acrylics

I started painting again (i've hardly done any art since school) last January. At that time, our white walls were in dire need of some photos/paintings. While walking around the sale section of one of the home decoration chains, disenchanted with everything we saw, Dan says to me 'you said you'd like to paint, why don't you make something?'

So I gave it a go and it actually worked well, some paintings look decent enough to hang in the living room. What i've learned so far is that painting... is incredibly relaxing! And very rewarding once you start decorating your house with your own work.

I thought it is a good idea to start reproducing paintings I like, so i can learn the technique, and it has been working really well. It will be a while till i gather the courage to design a painting on my own :)

I actually started with watercolours (see an example on the 'About' page of the blog), but i found acrylics to be far more suitable for beginners. They dry fast and have great covering power, so you can easily cover any mistakes. Here are some examples of what I've done so far:

This is a loose reproduction of 'Thin ice' by Paul Burnsall, a British naive painter.


















And this one is inspired by Bela Ivanyi-Gruwald's 'Drying clothes' (1903)