It's been a long time...

...so. to cut a long story short I shall declare just these following missives.

I got through Christmas well.  I allowed myself some treats, but didn't get carried away.

Since then I have come to the conclusion that yeast is not a big problem for me.  I mean eating it. So, I've started to eat slow-risen breads like ciabatta, which have no added sugar (which remains the devil).   

The BBC Good Food website is an enormously useful resource of simple and easy to adapt recipes.

Oh, and I have a few new recipes to write about.

I want Marmite!

Apologies for the lack of promised recipes; have been mega-busy recently (conferences, writing, etc) and now I've got a filthy cold and hacking cough - oh joy! Just taking a few mins out to see if I can garner any thoughts from you, dear readers, about Candida and Marmite.

When I was little, the fail-save cure for all that ails you in the Djinn household was Marmite on toast, with a nice cup of tea. And, of course, that's just what I'm craving now. As I've previously described, I'm relaxing the diet, so might a spot of Marmite on sourdough toast be okay? After all, it is extracted from an entirely different yeast from Candida albicans, and is packed with B vitamins, which - given the hideous PMT I've been suffering from recently - I clearly need. And sugar is really my problem, right?

Dammit! I'm going to do it. I'm going out and buying a (small) pot of Marmite - hurrah!

Check out the Marmite website, and in particular, the 'hate it' sandwich suggestions. Genius!

Adventures in Sourdough

I recently read somewhere (a link I sadly lost) that the Candida Society now recommends that sufferers just avoid sugar where possible, as the prohibitions of the hardcore anti-Candida diet make it too difficult to stick too - there could be some wisdom there! Anyway, while I was at home over the summer, I ate a great deal of sourdough bread (leavened with 'natural' yeasts) with no significant 'side-effects', so I decided - as a little diversionary project - to 'grow my own'. :)


The website I used was this one. It gives easy to follow instructions on how to create a sourdough starter and how to bake with it. Unlike a lot of other websites and recipes I found, this recipe does not use added yeast or sugar as a booster. All you need is rye flour (chosen because it ferments more quickly than other flours), wholemeal strong bread flour, water, salt and a lot of patience.

Day one

I probably chose the wrong time of year to start my...er...starter, so it took a little longer than it might usually to get nice and bubbly. I only have a tiny (shared) kitchen, so I chose to keep the starter in my bedroom where I could control the ambient temperature more easily. But, the fact it is a rather chilly room, probably retarded the starter, so the whole process described on the website took around twelve days, before the starter was ready to bake with.

Hubble, bubble...

But, as you can see, it was well worth the wait! My first loaf of (yeasted) bread - I'm so proud. :)





The proof is, of course, in the eating. The verdict? Not too bad for a first go. The bread is nice and crusty, although the texture is quite dense. I suspect this is down to one of the inherent disadvantages of wholemeal bread flour, and the fact the starter was commenced with rye flour. Over time, hopefully, my starter (which is dormant in the fridge at the moment) will improve to produce a more flavoursome loaf that is lighter in texture. Oh, and I could have done with adding a little more salt to the dough methinks.

With a bit of olive oil spread and St Dalfour apricot jam (sweetened with fruit juice) as a treat!