New website, new recipe!

Scottish BannockI dreamed of making some new recipe that would tie into my upcoming release, The Kidnapped Bride, so I decided to adapt a recipe for Selkirk Bannock. This upcoming novella is set mostly in Scotland. While the end results were tasty, my baking did not go well, reminding me that there is chemistry involved in the process, and if I ignore the fact that my intermediate results went bad, the end result will not be perfect.

What did I learn?

If the yeast doesn’t behave, my baking project will not magically turn out perfectly at the end. It was supposed to expand and mine didn’t, even though it was fresh and I followed the package instructions. Gee, I shouldn’t have been surprised when my dough didn’t rise. And yet, I was. Next time, I will not give Active Dry yeast a shot, but use the kind that can simply be mixed in with the dough.

Don’t just blindly follow the oven time the recipe says. Every oven behaves differently. Yes, the outside of my loaf looked pretty, but it didn’t sound hollow when I tapped on it, like it was supposed to. Ergo, the dough was raw instead. Tasty, but raw.

And yes, if you put in an entire stick of butter, your food is going to be fattening. My bannock is not a diet food. Which leaves me hesitant to make it again and do a better job. Because if I can eat the sorry results of attempt number one, you know I’m going to positively inhale the results when I get it right!

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