I have purchased exactly one loaf of bread this year. The fact that it’s May is kind of amazing for this…. and it’s not as if I haven’t eaten any bread – I love the stuff. I’ve been making it.

Relatively recently, I bought a bread machine. It’s a breville and was only a couple of hundred bucks. The idea behind this was to still have bread when I was feeling too lazy to do everything by hand (or was time pressed).

I have discovered the following:

The 750g loaf is a bit small, the kneading can end up missing some ingredients in the corners of the bread machine. the 1kg loaf is fine, the 1.25 is freaking huge.

The area of the bread (as in how big a slice is) is much larger than any of the bread tins I use in the oven.

The crust on the side of the loaf is usually nicer than on the top (top isn’t as thick and crunchy).

To avoid using bread improver, instead use the juice of an orange (or I’ve also used about 1/3 cup of fresh orange juice). This gives lovely structure and texture to the bread without adding anything artificial.

Some recipes say add some milk thing, i’ve just ignored it and done fine.

Waking up to fresh bread smell is amazing.

We put on a friends bucks night last weekend, and in the afternoon we did food at a friends place. Sort of a lunch/dinner thing to keep us going with the nights drinking and general revelry. I baked 3 loaves of bread and it went down really well (10 of us finished all 3 off). Got lots of compliments for it too :)

Of course, the majority of bread from everywhere else now just tastes shit (because it is). If you’re going to buy bread – buy it from a *really* good baker. Or, take the hit – buy a bread machine and do it. Cost per loaf for yeast, water and salt is approximately nothing and bakers flour is cheap.

Join the war on bad bread, bake your own today!

Wasn’t feeling like spending a lot of effort on cooking last night, but still wanted something fresh, delicious and quick to prepare. So… I just made a nice, simple stir fry. I here try to reproduce what I did from memory.

Started by heating some oil in a wok, adding a teaspoon or two of mustard seeds. Leave until the mustard seeds start to pop (that gives the oil a nice flavour).

Add a finely chopped onion, a finely chopped chili (this is all the chili i used in this, adds nice flavour, a tiny bit of spice and it’s certainly not too much) and some crushed garlic (I used 2 cloves of some good organic garlic… may want more or less depending on the strength of your garlic).

Basically, you want the onions to start going clear… I also added a tiny amount of turmeric.

I then added some finely chopped capsicum, then some carrots. It’s about now that I added some light soy sauce. Keeps things moist and adds nice flavour.

In a mortar and pestle, I ground up some sesame seeds, cumin and cardamon (not much of each, the aim is to add subtle flavours) and then add to mix. I also added some roughly chopped swiss-brown mushrooms (button mushrooms would work too, I just felt like the swiss-brown as they have a nice flavour). I also added a bit more of the light soy, just to keep things moist.

I also added finely chopped broccoli and at the end snow peas.

Served on rice, delicious.

Was interesting for me as I usually end up using tofu and creating some sort of sauce to go over a stir fry. This was flavoursome (Michael also thought so, ended up coming over for food before we all went out), filling and there’s left overs :)

(I also used my Microwave’s wonderful “Rice” button… I love that. Obviously, put the rice on *FIRST* before you start any prep for the stir fry. Both were ready about the same time.)