More about bread

I have heard from Hovis about why they use small quantities of palm oil in their loaves. Apparently they justify it by saying that it's a good replacement for animal fat (ie lard) which used to be used by bakers. Sunflower/rapeseed oil etc is too liquid it needs to be a hard fat to stop too many bubbles bursting at a critical moment during baking. If the bubbles burst, it gives a texture to the bread that is too open. (Their answer is much longer and very technical!)

Still waiting for responses from Kingsmill and Warburton, I will have to follow up my enquiries through their website contact form with a snail mail letter expressing how disapointed I am with them.

I've now got a book on breadmaking now (ordered that one from Amazon), it's supposed to be the definitive guide to breadmaking and how odd that they don't mention the necessity for hard fat instead of oil; all their recipes use sunflower oil.

But the big discovery of the last few days on the bread front has been palm oil free bread from the Co-Op. Their 2 part baked baguettes which you finish baking yourself uses rapeseed oil and their truly irresistable ciabatta uses extra virgin olive oil. It makes a great bread to eat with the chilled carrot, ginger and lime soup, plus I've also made a big roll with ham, tomato and chutney yesterday which was lovely. The texture of the ciabatta is indeed open but that didn't detract from it for me.

I'm still working on the stock problem so the soup, whilst very very nice, is unacceptable to me once the Swiss Marigold Vegetable Bouillon runs out. I can't seem to find out on-line who makes Vecon so I'm going to have to look at the label again next time I'm shopping and get the manufacturer then.