Chickpea bread

You know, surprising even myself, it seems to have worked...

From the mess in the last picture, I kneaded it again and left it to rise again (because I only have a very vague grasp of the basics of breadmaking) and it looked like this, which looked almost bread like:

Then I put it in the oven at 170ish degrees and left it til I could smell it (about 15 mins), and it came out looking like this:

Sliced, it looks like:

It's never going to win bread of the year - it's very dry and tastes a lot like you'd expect chickpea bread to taste like. But it's certainly edible, albeit mostly as an accompaniment to savory things. It's definitely got a chickpea taste to it. I don't think you can make chickpea sweets, though I suppose you might be able to make a baklava type thing. Maybe I'll give that a shot next... This bread might go fairly well with honey, now I think of it.

Anyway, I'm calling this a success. It's certainly better than nothing!

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Sunshine and bank holiday weekends

Sun and bank holidays have combined forces and ensured that I've been utterly incapable of posting anything here. Having friends over has meant we had to tidy - our house is spotless, and I've even mopped. Me, with a mop. I can hardly believe it myself.

My experiments into wheat-free cooking continue - I'm trying to make bread out of chickpea flour today.

The dough:

The dough sitting in the warm sun to raise:

I have my doubts, but we shall see what happens - it might work... I shall be sure to take photos of the finished product for you.

While we're looking at photos, this is the best view in the world. It's from the bar I drink coffee at in the afternoons.

You can also have some pretty pictures of flowers - the roses are out in bloom here, and I liked what Beaulieu have done with their roses around the big trees in the park. (We walk through it to go to the supermarket sometimes.)

And one of the large red flowers that grows in the street between here and the bakery:

(All photos taken with my mobile phone, so apologies for any quality issues...)

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