Lammas day itself is on the 1st August, its name deriving from the medieval English name “hlaef-mass” or “loaf-mass”. The Anglo-Saxons referred to Lammas regularly in chronicles as the “feast of the first fruits”. With the number of wonderful fruits now in season you can see why! Going back to loaves though, this first harvest was for the grain and it was customary to reap the first of the ripe grain on this day and bake the first new loaf of the season. Often country cooks would make the bread into wonderful shapes - plaits, sheafs or bread resembling a corn dolly. Impressive!
In this vein I've been trying to make better bread. I get the ingredients mostly right, but am really rubbish at kneading. You can't make do with any namby pamby folding of dough. You have to work it properly, like you really, really don't like that bit of dough. With 12 whole minutes of dough bashing, apart from it feeling very therapeutic, my bread came out something like this...
Not bad? maybe a bit crusty, but it made lovely cheese on toast!
