… go at making some bread in the air fryer this afternoon. A couple of small bread rolls.
And it wasn’t actually a success. Not because the air fryer didn’t do what it was supposed to do – in fact it seems to have baked them quite nicely – but because the dough didn’t rise very much at all, and I’ve no idea why that would be.
It’s true to say that the bread that I normally bake in a conventional oven doesn’t rise very much either even though I follow the recipes carefully and knead the dough for quite a while. I just think that the air fryer is simply amplifying the defects in whatever it is that I’m doing when I’m trying to make bread.
But I won’t give up. I’ll try again at some other time and see if there’s any improvement.
After all, the batch of pizza dough that I made today was delicious and did everything that it was supposed to. Tonight’s pizza was delicious and there are two more lumps that are now in the freezer that I hope will be just as nice for the next couple of weekends.
So what I might do is instead of using 500 grams of flour, I’ll use 600 grams and see if the extra 100 grams would make some nice bread rolls instead.
But that’s for another time. Right now I’m more concerned with what happened today.
Last night I was in bed at a realistic time but once more I had the stabbing pains in my legs and feet that awoke me on a couple of occasions. In fact, I could have been up and out of bed at 07:00 or thereabouts this morning but on a Sunday? You must be joking! 10:30 is much more like a reasonable time to stagger out of bed into the kitchen on a Sunday.
There was quite a bit of stuff on the dictaphone from during the night. At one point I was supposed to be going on holiday. I hadn’t packed anything and there was about half an hour before my plane so I grabbed hold of my suitcase and began to throw stuff into it. I couldn’t find half of the stuff that I needed so in the end I gave it up as a bad job and went to work instead thinking that when I return home I can pack and be ready for the next morning to go again. Next morning the situation was the same. The house was an absolute tip with stuff everywhere. I hadn’t cleaned it. Again, I couldn’t find half of the things that I needed. I thought that I can’t possibly leave the house in this kind of condition. The cats needed feeding. 2 boys came. They were talking about the pads that cricketers wear and what sizes they are. I tried to explain to them that the more proficient you are the bigger pads you have but for some reason they didn’t seem to quite understand. Then they said that they would feed the cats for me etc. I said that it’s my job and I have to do it anyway so I’ll go to torture the poor devils with this horrible food that I give them. They tried to insist that they could do it but I just wasn’t getting anywhere with this stuff that I needed to pack. Rosemary had long gone. I thought “this is it, really. My journey may as well be cancelled”. At one point I found what I thought was a stash of all the stuff that I needed but when I began to rummage through it, it was all old stuff, single gloves etc none of which would be any good for what I wanted at all.
And then I was still searching for this missing button. It was nearly time for me to go to work so I was hunting around quickly. I came across a load of dried cat’s food that the cats hadn’t eaten. I opened the door and shouted. One of the cats came in but the other was really taking its time about it. I gave them some food anyway. Then a fuel tanker pulled up at the petrol station. The driver was wandering around doing a few things. Then he climbed back into the cab ready to leave. I thought to myself that I ought to be leaving soon too because of all the things that I had to do and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.
There was also something happening about some kids’ entertainment that was taking place while I was fuelling up a motor scooter with fuel but I awoke in the middle of this and it immediately evaporated. I couldn’t remember anything more.
A short while later I had to create a new department for doing a certain kind of work as a support for someone famous and well-known in political circles. I had to write out a little speech to set everything out and then make some comments about it. Having written out what I thought was important, I went through and wrote in pencil over the top. The pencil wouldn’t show through very well. By now I’d gone to do this work outside and was sitting in a nice, comfortable place by a bit of a lawn where a group of small children was having a party. I decided that what I really needed was a fine-point red felt-tip pen that could write over the top of what I’d written. It wouldn’t obscure what was underneath but you could see my comments over the top quite clearly. I told these 2 girls that I’d left my papers there and that i’d be back in a moment. I ran back to my office to try to find one. Then there was something of a gap in whatever was happening. It merged into something much later where there was my new boss and probably one of his assistants discussing particular American politicians in some not-very-welcome or friendly terms. I suppose that I should have taken part in this discussion but I was far more interested in guarding my tongue so I didn’t say anything out-of-place but in the meantime listening carefully to what they were saying so that I could work out which way the wind was blowing and what was the lie of the land if I was going to be working with them
Once I’d gathered up my wits (which, seeing how few wits I have these days, takes much longer than it ought) and had some food and coffee, I made a start on one of the two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing tomorrow. And I did so well that apart from the final track and the speech that goes with it, one of the programmes is finished already.
It won’t take me long to finish that and then I can start on the second one. That shouldn’t take too long either because the text is already written and dictated. I dictated them before I went to bed last night in a mad fit of enthusiasm.
Apart from that, I did the baking that I mentioned, and my pizza for tea really was delicious. Cooked to perfection, which is a surprise given the inconsistencies of my table-top oven. I can’t wait to have a decent one up and running in due course but that will have to wait until the new apartment, whenever that will be.
So right now I’m off to bed for an early night ready for an early start in the morning. Dreaming of making bread in the air fryer, I suppose, but that’s not going to be anythign sustainable because it’s only a small air fryer and probably three bread rools is about the limit of what can fit in there.
But at least it works, and it opens all kinds of new doors for me, as I suspected that it would. What’s going to be next on the air-frying menu?
