Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown...

...and some gave them plums. F's tree fruits heavily every other year, and this being an other year, we had a phone call from her: "I'm going away for the weekend. I've eaten and cooked all the plums I can face, and I don't want to come home to a garden full of windfalls and wasps. Come on Sunday and gather plums in my absence."

• So on Sunday we dined on porc à la vosgienne (well, I'm not entirely convinced that F's little yellow plums are mirabelles - but close enough).


• I made a batch of plum compote, half of which I froze, and half we ate - it took perhaps twice as much sugar as I expected to produce a soft, intensely sharp-sweet compote; perhaps I should have persevered for a thicker if not firmer set, and called it jam. The half that comes out of the freezer will certainly go into a baked dessert of some kind.


• After that, I was nervous that the plum and almond tart (Jane Grigson's recipe, and she called it a tart, although it has a lid) would be sour and inedible, but it was delicious - it looked a mess, but the taste was great. I'd do that again, but maybe use not quite such short pastry, as it was impossible to handle.


• I found a plum mincemeat recipe in a collection of recipes from Farmers' Weekly: plums, cooking apples, sugar, vine fruits, candied peel and almonds. I halved the quantity of cooking apples, and used a higher proportion of currants than I intended, because we seem mysteriously to be out of sultanas, and the bag I thought contained raisins was more currants - and I spotted the missing ingredient, and gave it a good dose of armagnac. Some went into an oatmeal-mincemeat slice, and the rest is in the freezer. I know in theory I shouldn't need to freeze mincemeat, but I have no faith, and anyway this has stewed fruit where the genuine article has suet. That's got to make a difference.


• I ate some, just as they were. Nice enough, but not the best eating plums.


• We had the last handful, stewed with the leftover apples, for dessert tonight.

Meanwhile, I continue to bake bread, We checked the scales against durham_rambler's fancy electronic scaled, and an unopened pack of butter, and established that they were perfectly accurate, and then durham_rambler cleaned them and moved the adjustable counterweight, and I didn't notice, so there've been some random elements, but I think we're back on track. Briefly, then:

The plain wholemeal loaf was much enlivened by the addition of a handful or two of sunflower seeds. That's worth doing again.

The oatmeal and rye loaf that I made from the Tassajara recipe was a nightmare to handle. The dough wasn't sticky, which is the usual complaint, but the opposite - not dry, exactly, but refusing to cohere, prone to cracking (see above, scales, maladjustment of). I made a small loaf in the pan with 'LOAF' on the side, and four good-sized rolls, and it was probably the best texture I've achieved yet, pleasantly springy. Next time, either omit the molasses, use less, or save the bread for eating on its own.

I'm wondering whether I was so afraid of not giving the dough time to prove that I was leaving it too long. Cutting the proving time seems to have worked for the oatmeal and rye loaf, so I did it again today, with the loaf I made from the granary barley flour I bought at the market because I want to try making the barley flatbread with it), and that seems to have risen impressively, if rather lopsidedly - I don't usually bother with the cutting the top of the loaf, because it doesn't usually rise enough to show. This one might have been the better for it.

And the proof of the loaf comes at breakfast time.