I'm prone to elevated blood pressure.

Posted: 22/12/2009 9:46:02 a.m.

But you knew that from careful reading of my last post. This mystifies the tar out of my G.P who is normally a pretty astute chap. We've been seeing each other for eons, he and I, and after years of being subjected to his full repertoire of standard medical procedures, it's safe to say he knows me through and through. He gets that I'm calm. Unflappable. A veritable Rock. Not to mention extraordinarily stoic under intense examinational scrutiny. So he discounts a stressed-out disposition as the cause of those readings being so off the sphygmomanometer. I'm restrained with the Maldon and full-salt soy sauce, take strenuous, heart-healthy trots around the park most days, maintain a within-range B.M.I and don't drink over-the-odds for my size. (Actually that last bit is shameless fabrication, but my Campari habit is staying right where it belongs. In the cupboard under the sink behind the detergent bottles.) Other than inheriting a few dud genes from somewhere he's not quite sure what reason to suggest for my being in this unhealthy, far-too-wound-up state.

I feel guilty he's so flummoxed because there is something (other than my predilection for a daily aperitvo or three) that I've been keeping from him. And I have a hunch it could be behind my escalating hypertension. Its' my weekly visits to the supermarket. They are causing me high anxiety and we're talking By The Bucket Load.

Now supermarkets have done my head in from way back. At times I've coped with them better than others- those singing/dancing/psycho Big Fresh farm animals back in the '80s, for example, marked a definite low point for me. Call me a non-conformist but I've always thought that if there is a Hell, its' a large, barn-shaped kind of a place, crammed full of jars and packs of mass-produced foods shelved in neat, sign-posted aisles, where fridges bulge with slabs of insensitively-raised meat and freezer cabinets are chockers with just the kind of products that keep childhood obesity in the newspaper head lines. My version of Hades isn't shadowy and full of demons as is the traditional view but rather it burns wattage like it's going out of fashion and is trolled by appallingly-paid staff dressed in ill-fitting polyester ensembles and bad versions of the baseball cap. Very bad. I won't even start on what I envision the mode of transport to be in The Inferno but I'm thinkin' it's something horribly collision prone, impossible to steer and, just to keep frustration levels stoked at fever pitch, never available in sufficient numbers.

I realise that in this age of post-subsistence agrarianism, the supermarket is a necessary abomination. In an ideal world we'd all be beavering away at home, cottage-industry style, churning our own butter, smoking our salmon, distilling our own Spray 'n' Wipe and siphoning our milk straight from the cows' udder into plastic bottles. But realistically we'd need to resurrect Serfdom for this scenario to fly and I can't see that happening any minute soon. In the meantime even I have better things to do with my time than thresh wheat and grind the neighbours' olive crop into the finest Extra Virgin. So we need to provision ourselves from somewhere and, at this moment in our historical evolution, that place just happens to be the supermarket. Understood. But I just wish the experience wasn't so soulless. And I wish it involved more foodstuffs that actually enhanced peoples' cooking and dining experiences instead of plunging them down to the most dismal common denominator. Floury apples? Herbs in tubes? Chicken Tonight? Canned asparagus? Frozen prawn medley? Rice milk? Margarine? Compound chocolate? TINY TEDDIES? It's the Devils' work, all of it, and I'm struggling to comprehend how I could have messed up so badly in my former life that now all I deserve is weekly subjection to such pure, unadulterated evil.

It doesn't help either that I've actually what heaven looks like. It's the food hall at the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) department store on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and if you ask me it's Kingdom freaking Come. It's another world in there- serene, stylish, spacious. The air hangs heavy with the smell of proper, made-from-scratch baking (salted pretzels, rye loaves, exquisite pastries), freshly roasted organic chickens and an eye-popping range of prime-condition cheeses. The sausage selection alone blows ones' mind (we're in Germany remember) and the gleaming fruits and fresh, perky vegetables do something very similar. Ladies attired in head-to-toe elegance seek respite from their shopping exertions by perching at the Verve Cliquot bar then sipping themselves into quiet oblivion over a plate of gleaming French oysters. That's my kind of pit-stop. Ukrainian mafia types drop 6,000 Euros on Baccarat bottles of the finest Hennessy cognac and while one mightn't approve of their day job, should you want to meet a man with that amount of dosh then clearly this would be the place to do it. Every day, produce is air-freighted in from far corners of the globe- antelope ham from South Africa, chantarelles form Morocco, mahi-mahi from the Indian Ocean and bison entrecôte from the Canadian wastes. The displays are dazzling, the staff really know what they're talking about and the pork actually has some fat. Utopia.

Meanwhile, back in blood-boiling bloody reality, I'm offended by one product on the supermarket shelves more than any other. I've alluded to this before so if you were listening up, you'd know it's the bread. (Milk with added Omega 3 and the marshmallows declaring themselves 'fat free' are right up there too. Marshmallows have always been fat free. And since when was dairy milk a type of fish.)

But back to bread. One of the oldest, simplest and most satisfying of foods known to man and it's been buggered up beyond belief. Back in The Day, bread involved nothing more than flour, salt, water and a little yeast, either wild-harvest or, as in more recent times, that out of a packet. Add some time for fermentation (the more hours the deeper the flavour) and a bit of therapeutic kneading along the way and you've got bread. Proper bread. Bread that actually goes stale and that you have to learn to cut yourself with a serrated knife. Bread that doesn't greet you with a rush of sour chemical smells when you lay it out on the bench to make a sarnie. Bread with texture and flavour and with actual differentiation between crust and crumb. I could go on.... and by now I think we all know I'm disposed to it. Modern mass-produced bread disturbs me so much it has driven me to make my own; the only other option is spending seven bucks a pop on hand-crafted boutique-style loaves but the Scots blood coursing through my veins put paid to that idea years ago.

I happen to know there is general faint-heartedness out there in Baking Land when it comes to cooking with yeast and that most people's terror of it is up there with public speaking and death itself. The misconception seems to be that yeast is tricky, temperamental and difficult to work with- but really it's not. That actually better describes me. Yeast is a more forgiving organism than we give it credit for and it's really rather girlie. Give it just enough food, the right cosy environment and (once the flour's added) some good, vigorous man-handling, and it's as happy as Larry. If things get too hot you'll kill it; it activates best at blood temperature and that's human blood not snake, by the way. If it gets a chill yeast won't die but rather will slow activity right down to a sluggish crawl - and don't we all under those circumstances? You can even freeze uncooked bread dough for several weeks and the yeast won't kark it.

I use Lowans dried yeast because it's easier to source than the fresh sort and keeps forever in the freezer. Edmonds' Surebake is probably your closest equivalent. The bread recipe I use is one I have adapted from Nancy Harmon Jenkins' excellent book The Essential Mediterranean (Harper Collins, New York 2003). Nancy is a great authority on all things Med and writes well-researched, well-considered recipes. She's not someone I necessarily associate closely with baking but her Classic Mediterranean Style Bread recipe on page 106 is a winner. Except I've messed with it no end to make it conform to my eccentric habits so now I really consider it mine and not hers at all.

My bread making regime is spaced over a few days. First I make a flour and water starter that's got just a tiny bit of yeast in it; no need to over do things at this stage I've discovered. That sludgy goo sits utterly neglected in a quiet corner of my kitchen and over time it starts fermenting. After 24 hours or so it's bubbling and plopping and percolating away until it resembles a little piece of Rotorua but without such an awful pong. Granted it has acquired a real tang by now. But if it whiffs sulphurous I know some nasty feral microbe has slunk in uninvited and I need to chuck it out. Luckily this rarely happens so when my gloop is sufficiently active and tart, I weigh it up into 5 equal portions and use each as the basis for a loaf. I add water, flour and salt, just a little more yeast (not much -about a half teaspoon) to each then let the Kitchen Aid slap the stuff senseless for about 8 minutes to work up that gluten. I let the kneaded lumps rise at ambient room temperature for 3-4 hours then, just before my fledgling loaves have grown big and smart enough to make a jail break, I shape them and shove them into oiled tins. They need another rise and this one I let them do slowly in the 'fridge for added flavor development. When they're nice and puffy I get the razor blades out, slash their tops with great gusto then bake them 'till they pervade my kitchen with the sorts of homey aromas that have been known to sell real estate for much more than it's worth.

As I extract my golden, crusty loaves from the oven and turn them out of their tins I experience something akin to an endorphin rush that I swear is one removed from la petit mort. This is deeply satisfying stuff, bread making. It's so simple to do and requires very little hands-on work. The results taste just amazing and freeze so well I never need to run out. If this isn't Domestic Bliss and the Meaning Of Life all rolled into one then I truly don't know what is. Unhappily I can't give you the recipe for my bread as making it has proven to be something of an inexact science. Weather, humidity, the mood of the flour, my frame of mind and the alignment of the planets all seem to affect ratios and timing so it never presents the same experience twice. Sometimes the dough is a bit wetter then others; some days I sling oats in . When I can lay hands on it I use terrific spelt flour from Parkes and that changes the equation slightly. On other occasions I let the starter get a bit doddery and then the dough needs more yeast. I haven't yet worked out how to weave all the variables into a word count that's shorter than Tolstoy's War And Peace but if there's a critical mass of you who would like the recipe then let me know, gimme a few weeks and I'll put something together for you. Promise. In the meantime, as it's the season for goodwill toward all and I'm feeling generous, I'm attaching a sweet bread recipe I make for breakfast on special occasions. Such as Christmas.

I'm sure there are doubters and dissenters among you who, as we speak, are thinking that this bread-baking lark all sounds terribly romantic but really, why bother when one can so painlessly buy the stuff? This is rather a pointed question over here in Oz at the minute because, on top of all the other crud they heave into our bread (emulsifiers, vegetable oil, enzymes, soy flour) they've started adding folate. It's a policy called Mandatory Folic Acid Fortification and folate is now in all breads and bread-type products (crumpets, bagels, buns, pizza bases) whether we like it or not. And many of us happen to not like it. We want our bread unadulterated thanks so much- but realistically we're years too late for that. The reason for the folate is to boost levels in women in their first trimester of pregnancy and also those trying to conceive (folate reduces the risk of neural tube defects). So now in the interests of the great Australian baby boom, we all get more food additives. Fabulous. Arguably however, folate is among the least of breads' worries. Lest I descend into angry soap-box mode, let me recommend to you instead a far more lucid apologist than I'll ever be for all that ails modern bread- the Englishman Andrew Whitley. His sensational book called Bread Matters (4th Estate, London, 2006) is not only full of fantastic bread recipes but has erudite commentary on the evolution of modern industrial baking practises and their depressing implications for us all. I urge you to buy this book - or at least check out the website http://www.breadmatters.com. And while that PC's fired up, Google 'The Chorleywood Process' and get yourself up to speed on large-scale commercial baking principles, avoiding, if you can, the industry propaganda. Thus informed, if you care at all about good food, you will no doubt start hearing the sound that I am so accustomed to by now; that of blood pressure on the rise. It'll send you straight to the doctor. I just hope your G.P's as nice as mine.

Almond and Orange Babka
Adapted from a recipe by Beth Hensperger (Bread, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1988)
Makes 2 (one for you and one for the neighbours. Love thy neighbour.)

200ml blood-temperature milk
3 teaspoons dried yeast
75g (1/3 cup) caster sugar
4 egg yolks, at room temperature
2 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Finely grated rind of 2 oranges
600g (4 cups) plain flour
200g unsalted butter, softened
Icing sugar, to serve
Almond filling
250g good quality marzipan, chopped
100g ground almonds
50g unsalted butter, softened
1 egg

Combine the milk and a large pinch of sugar in a small bowl. Sprinkle in the yeast then stand mixture at room temperature for about 8 minutes or until foamy. Combine the yeast mixture, sugar, egg yolks, eggs, vanilla extract and orange rind in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir to combine well then gradually add the flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt, stirring with a wooden spoon until mixture becomes too firm to stir. Turn out onto work surface and knead dough to work in remaining flour and until smooth. Return to the bowl and fit machine with the dough hook. Continue kneading the dough at a low speed for 10-12 minutes, gradually adding the butter. Dough should be soft, smooth and elastic. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap then stand dough at room temperature for about 50 minutes or until doubled in size.

Knock dough down then turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide into two even sized pieces. Combine all the filling ingredients in the bowl of the electric mixer then, using the paddle attachment, mix for 2-3 minutes or until smooth. Working with one piece at a time, roll dough out on a lightly floured work surface into a rectangle about 25 x 40cm. Spread half the almond filling evenly over each rectangle, leaving a 2.5cm border around the edges. With a long edge facing you, roll each up firmly to form a log. Grease and lightly flour the insides of 2 x 16cm kugelhopf tins then place logs in tins, pinching ends together to join. Press surface gently with your hands to make surface even if necessary. Cover with a kitchen towel then stand at room temperature for 40-50 minutes or until dough has risen to the tops of the tins. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180C. Bake babkas for 35 minutes, covering them with foil if they brown too quickly, or until a cake tester withdraws clean. Cool in tins for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool to room temperature. Serve with icing sugar sifted over. Babkas are best served on the day of making but will freeze, in an airtight container or zip-loc bag, for up to 1 month.