Baking Day

I cannot help feeling hugely virtuous today, baking day.

I do a lot of my own bread - mix in the breadmaker, bake in the oven - but was feeling guilty about all that wasted space in the oven, so had promised my wife to make better use of the energy. Witness today then a vegetable lattice pie and two strawberry tarts (the allotment is a strawberry factory at the moment) as well as two loaves. Have no idea how to do the fishes.

Grans did baking days. My mum did when I was a little kid, before she went back to teaching. Now I have. Doing my usual thing and guestimating the costs, the loaves about 25p each maybe; the veg pie basically using up left overs, but with butter (and to be honest lard) and an egg in the pastry, milk and cheese in the filling sauce, and some bought veg included it must have been pushing £1. The strawberries were plot freebies, but the jelly to set them and the butter, egg and sugar again in the pastry mean again a profligate 50p each for the tarts. And 10p of lentils for the blind baking of the cases. Admittedly this extended my lunchtime and in theory cost me money - the opportunity cost for any economists reading this was getting some paid writing done. But the cost benefit analysis shows... sod that, I had fun, we ate well tonight, and I was fed up with staring at the same article on my screen. All work and no play makes Jack a heart attack victim at 35 and divorced for the second time at 40.

Per the blessed Delia btw the secrets of crisp pastry are baking sheet under the pie dish, and only metal pie dishes will do, never glass or ceramic. Worked for me. Greeseproof paper over the empty flan cases, lentils on the paper. Brush the flan bases with beaten egg and cook for another five minutes to seal them, then the filling won't soak in. Bought pies with their mysterious fillings don't come as chock full as the veg pie, and these days when I do have the guilty pleasure of buying industrial food it often tastes funny. Which is no laughing matter.