I’ve had an inauspicious start to the culinary year. I’m only mentioning this as Dave maintains that this is both Interesting and Character Building. I’m not sure on either count…

On Saturday I attempted to make Dan Lepard’s Garlic Bread. This used a very wet dough, something I’d always avoided, but it looked extremely yummy so I thought I’d give it a go. The dough itself wasn’t a problem. I found it very easy to handle and it looked exactly as the picture in the book indicated. What was problematic, was the filling.

The idea was that you should braise peeled, blanched cloves of garlic in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, caster sugar and rosemary to give additional depth of flavour to the filling. To knock your socks off, you might say. I duly measured out everything and started on the filling. The first thing I noticed was that the syrup was much darker than the pictures in the book. The second thing I noticed was that it wasn’t reducing much and certainly wasn’t becoming a sticky reduced glaze on the bottom of the pan. After I’d simmered as much as possible off, I poured it into a bowl and then noticed the last thing….. I now had garlic toffee. It had set completely in seconds. The pictures in the book didn’t show this at all!

I was doomed from this point onwards. I’m still wondering about the colour differences. The garlic in the book ended up a pinky brown, and mine was chocolate/mahogany brown. Maybe it came down to the balsamic vinegar? I did use my very best one…. maybe they used a cheap one?? Very dispiriting.

The dough also ended up going downhill. The method stipulated over 5 rises and I think that this wore the yeast out. By the 5th rise, it was barely moving at all and was far from being a “lively, supple and elastic dough”. Okay, it was supple and elastic and looked fantastic, but it wasn’t moving upwards at all.

And thus, when I eventually came to enfold the filling in the dough, it was a disaster. The dough just couldn’t support itself and wouldn’t rise. Instead it oozed sideways and quite frankly, looked like someone had sat on it. Admittedly the finished product tasted quite nice, but it looked awful. So much so, that Dave hasn’t tasted it yet and he adores Garlic Bread.

This is the second failure that I’ve suffered from Dan Lepard’s book. I’m really, really disappointed. I think I’m going to burn it on the BBQ. Eric and Ursula’s book can join it – I’m still too irritated with that book to describe the Triple Chocolate and Hazelnut bread debacle. Grrrr.

So, Character Building or Embarrassing? You decide Incidentally, I did try some of the garlic toffee before I melted it in the oven – it was astonishingly nice. I may try making a batch of it and hunt out some willing vic…tasters!