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Carl Legge:recipes, thoughts, ideas

  • Rhubarb cake recipe with polenta, ginger, spices, almonds

    When I posted this picture on Twitter, I really wasn’t ready for the reaction. It seemed that the idea and view of such a creation was quite attractive to many people. This made me laugh: …god that cake looks good. I just licked the laptop screen… I also had a fair few requests to post…

  • How to make sourdough bread – update

    In January I posted this article on how to make sourdough bread. I was amazed at how much attention it generated. I was so pleased at how many people contacted me to say they’d started baking sourdough bread as a result. You’ll see by the button on the right that I’m now a member of…

  • Nettle and Bacon Risotto Recipe

    Don’t we all just love things that don’t cost a penny? Foraging for wild food is a way to do this. March is the ideal time to pick nutritious nettles which are jam packed with iron and Vitamin C. You’ve no doubt seen loads of recipes for the ubiquitous ‘Nettle Soup’, which is, of course,…

  • Book Review – Knead to Know, the Real Bread Campaign

    This well designed book is subtitled, ‘The introductory guide to success in baking Real Bread for your local community’. How well does it fulfill its remit? How far along the line from interested or amateur baker to community purveyor of Real Bread can ‘Knead to Know’ take you? In my view, The Real Bread Campaign…

  • French baguette – high hydration bread

    I’ve been keen to make ‘proper’ french baguettes for years now. At last I’ve found recipes and techniques that work. There’s still room for improvement as I’m learning as I go. All ‘high hydration’ means is that there’s relatively more water in the dough than a lower hydration dough: ‘wetter’ doesn’t sound so glamorous. More…

  • How to make sourdough bread

    In this post I’ll show how I make sourdough bread at home. The recipe and technique is an amalgam of Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall (River Cottage Everyday) & Dan Lepard (The Handmade Loaf) plus some other stuff I’ve read online and my own experience. Stop press: 31st March 2011 I’ve posted an update with some lessons…

  • Pizza Recipe with Oak Smoked Flour, Proscuitto and Olives

    I would like to deliver on a promise. I posted some pictures on Twitter yesterday of an olive and prosciutto pizza I made with Bacheldre Mill’s Organic Stoneground Oak Smoked Flour.  It was a 30cm (12 ins) deep pan style – the base was a great fluffy texture with a nutty taste.  The topping was…

  • Harvesting & Propagating Willow

    The bad weather had prevented the planned pruning of trees so far.  It’s important to wait till the winter when the trees are in their dormant phase and the sap is down.  However, we didn’t want to start making cuts in trees when things were still freezing.  However, we’ve got a lot of pruning to…

  • Chitting – not just for potatoes

    According to my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ‘Chit’ comes from Middle English chithe, to shoot or sprout, corresponding to the Old Saxon kith.  So the word has roots (sorry) that go back 1200 years or so.  Certainly, it wasn’t a new concept even then. Chitting is a form of ‘pre-sprouting’ of seeds before you plant…

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