Ken L

I confess to many bread making failures before I adopted high hydration doughs as my go to method. I've not done it for a while because I'm on a fairly low carb diet ATM but results were edible and consistent, just using ordinary plain flour.

I've done a few no knead recopies using high hydration dough and they work reasonably well but take quite a bit longer than normal because you're using extended proving to stretch the gluten. I got marginally better results by increasing the hydration a little more to the point where I could actually stir the dough to stretch it, then bring the flour content up and make it into cobs. It'd work even better with a stand mixer and dough hook but I don't got one.

I'm mostly using Vitalin at the moment with hemp and pellets and occasionally flavourings added. I always prepare it the night before by pouring boiling water over it in a small cool-box, so everything is nice and soft.

Sorry to hear you're not well Elton. I'm working through this and two colleagues in my small team have been ill with it so far and are slowly making a recovery. It's been a crappy ride for them! Sadly, two people on the team have already lost relatives. My extended circle of friends includes several in healthcare, including a consultant anesthetist at a major hospital and they are having a rough time right now. I had to fight to get basic safety protocols adhered to at work, so if anyone else is still working in a non-healthcare area, I've linked the cleaning guidelines below - they are not optional for employers. Government guidance for employers is to: “frequently clean and disinfect objects and surfaces that are touched regularly, using your standard cleaning products”. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/guidance-for-employers-and-businesses-on-coronavirus-covid-19 Government guidance to employers also states that: “All surfaces that the symptomatic person has come into contact with must be cleaned and disinfected, including: objects which are visibly contaminated with body fluids all potentially contaminated high-contact areas such as bathrooms, door handles, telephones, grab-rails in corridors and stairwells” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-decontamination-in-non-healthcare-settings/covid-19-decontamination-in-non-healthcare-settings

A nice little tribute. With a rolling 12 month licence, there doesn't seem much point in buying one at the moment though, so buying a licence will be on my to do list as soon as lockdown is eased.

I did read that a medical fetish site donated all of its inventory of masks to the NHS. No. I can't get the images out of my head either.

GDP took a huge hit as a result of the 2008/9 financial crisis, so real terms spending on the NHS is the way to go.

The attempts at political point scoring are pathetic.

Alas there will be no more reviews from this poster as Harvey Weinstein can't access his Amazon account any more. Veet for men reviews always used to be worth a gander.

But as we've said before, a high tax, high social services economic model is not socialism/communism and also only works if you limit provision to citizens.

Was in the post office yesterday and there was a terrible panic when three blokes came in through the door wearing masks. Then one of them said "This is a robbery" and we all calmed down a bit.

The weird thing about socialism/communism is that no matter where you look, no matter how many millions of people have starved to death, no matter how many are murdered or shipped off to gulags, it never seems to have been implemented "properly" anywhere. It's advocates always seem to think that they will be able to achieve their utopia with just a little more crushing of individual freedoms or perhaps a few million more rotting corpses.

Weird that....

Chocolate seems to be the latest thing for hoarding. In Morrison's today, there were people with trollies loaded up with the stuff - all egg shaped.

Over here, we decided to prevent recreational anglers from taking a few bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) for the pot so that the French could hoover them up with pair trawlers just prior to spawning.... Makes sense to me....