Did quite a bit of cooking today. First I made a rather nice curry, and to go with it some hand-made chapatis and some paneer. While all that was cooking away I set some bread dough off in my bread maker.

The paneer was very easy to make and quite surprising. All you do is curdle hot milk in a pan using lemon juice. As soon as the lemon juice is added, that most horrendous cookery mistake happens – the milk curdles and separates into white lumps and yellow liquid – the curds (lumpy bits) and the whey (runny stuff). All that remains is to filter the lumps out and press it into a solid mass. It has a very smooth and clean flavour, not unlike mozzarella cheese.

For a bit of variety the bread I made was made from malted wholewheat flour, with a handful of sundried tomatoes added. I would have included some pictures, but I was too busy eating it all Making bread in a bread machine is a bit of an art, trusting the mix to the machine and hoping you end up with a loaf, and not a solid mass of hardened flour, or a sloppy mess. I like to watch the dough mixing to begin with, just to make sure everything is correct. Sometimes it sounds a bit too sticky, needing extra flour, other times it sounds too dry. Other times bits of half mixed flour will stick to the sides and not get incorporated correctly, needing a bit of help with a knife. Pay attention to your bread machine at the beginning, it prevents bad bread.