Stop UK Mega-Dairies

This is important - Follow this Compassion in World Farming link on the perils of mega-dairies proposed for the UK.

Apart from the cows never seeing the light of day, there is also human cost to these and they are a disaster for diversity: I have spoken to French farmers who are already suffering from being out-priced by Dutch mega-dairies, and for several years it has no longer been possible to find local butter in the UK, as ALL UK butter is made in 2 giant dairies, and small producers can't compete on price. Local, individual, unusual dairy products will disappear or only be available to the wealthy.

If you care about:

• Nice food
• Cows
• Not having all money from dairy products going to a very few rich businessmen rather than normal farmers.

...then please take literally a minute to fill out their email form to send to your MP. The link to send the form is at the bottom of this page.

Beer Bread

I am brewing some ale. Today, I siphoned it out of the fermentation bin, leaving the velvety sludge of yeast behind. The sludge smelt so incredibly delicious, filling the senses with powerful beery, yeasty, malty fumes, that I couldn't bear to chuck it all away.

I used a couple of dollops in with wholemeal flour, a spoon of malt extract, slosh of fermenting beer, pinch of salt and some milk, to make bread. It was a complete experiment, because I had no idea if the yeast would work well enough to make the bread rise, or what it would taste like.

Toasted beer bread, buttered

It was a brilliant success! It smelt like a dream bakery from a century ago, as well as a bit of pub carpet (in a good way). Honestly, though, it was such a wonderful smell. Tasted damn good, too! It had a really full flavour that was miraculously similar to the smell.

One slight draw back; my bread had a bitter aftertaste. With butter and jam or cheese, the bitterness wasn't noticeable, but the beery flavour still was. Next time, though, no actual beer, and more malt extract.

The yeast took longer than packet yeast to start working enthusiastically, but after a couple of hours it was really going for it. I kneaded it again, made it into a twisty loaf, left it under cling film to rise again, and then baked it at 180˚C for about 20 - 25 minutes. It came out with a moist and crumby texture, and you know the rest.

I left the lovely, pretty beer loaf on the kitchen surface, and when I went back to take photos, this was all that remained. Which must be an excellent sign.

Bread remains :)

Now, what to do with the rest of the sludge... There's way too much to use just by making another non-bitter loaf. Any ideas?