Update

Don't know how much cooking I'll be doing in the next few weeks, because as the picture suggests, I've decided to go out and fracture one of my fingers.
That's not actually my x-ray, and to be 100% honest I didn't really do it on purpose. But it's only the little finger, not one of the important ones, and I'll just have to do my best and live without pinky-swears for a couple of months. But it will be hard...

Pain Au Vin

A girl at work lent me this cookbook which is something I totally hate because I always end up wanting to keep it and then end up buying myself a copy. I seriously need to go on one of those TV shows all about curbing the ol' impulse purchasing and saving up for retirement. I kept this book for waaaay too long because there was a particularly tempting recipe at the back for Pain Au Vin which requires you to produce your own sourdough 'starter' and that takes around a week. I used this method, http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm
which suggest that you grow this stinky bacteria as a kind of pet in your fridge! (join me in saying eeeeeew to that metaphor)
You basically mix together a cup of flour and one of water in a clean jar, add a little of the mixture to it every day to 'feed it' until it grows into a beautiful, bubbling blob of fungus. Yum.
The book is written by a blogger, and like Lebovitz, she's continued with the blog and is dating some guy who won a James Beard Award a couple of days ago... so yeah, food.
She suggests using a blend of flours so I've got Strong White Bread Flour, Wholemeal Flour and some Buckwheat Flour I bought on a gluten free kick.
This recipe is really easy, just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and leave covered for 12 hours, it will be really runny but you're meant to scoop it out, fold it somehow on a floured board and leave for another two hours under a tea towel to rise some more. Looks like this. I saw this photo and immediately thought of blob fish, mmmm blob fish...

You finally bake the dough in a hot, covered pan, in a very hot oven for almost an hour. I don't have any very good bread experiences, it's always too tough and brittle, burnt and tasteless - so imagine my surprise when I saw this.
Result: It rose quite well, but I was a little put off by the slightly hard, dark crust. And then I cut in to it and took a bite. It's amazing! So light and fluffy, with a good chewy crust. As soon as I tasted it I wanted it make more, and the next one was even better! I couldn't really taste the wine in the first loaf, so used water for the second one, and added more buckwheat which gave a a wholesome nutty taste.
I'm not much of a bread eater, but this was gone in one day, it's that good. And easy, basically 410g of mixed flour, 250ml liquid, 250g starter, a tablespoon of honey and a pinch of salt. Leave to rise for 12 hours, fold, cover, rise for another 2 and bake in a 220c pre-heated oven, covered for the first half an hour and uncovered for the next last 10 minutes. Do it now.