Again a weekend full of bread flavours and smells. The best thing to be done when all you get outside is rain, rain and more rain. In fact the weather was so bad that our Dutch Santa, the famous ‘Sinterklaas’ , did not pay us a visit on his birthday yesterday. So I turned out the first mince pies (with cranberry compote filling) of the year to lure in the Christmas season. Not a Dutch tradition at all but I just love making them. The sugar loaf is also a very rewarding piece of baking. You won’t believe the amount of sugar that goes into it. Hence the name of course. I tried to make it with less sugar, like I tried to make raisin buns with less raisins, but in these cases less is not more. Sugar loaf really needs all the sugar you can cram into it. Ed is now so trained in making his Pains Rustiques that next time we will see if he can do them blindfolded. If you want to see how the does it, watch out for the ‘soon to be released bread movie’.

This Frisian Sugar Loaf was not so professionally cut by me in a jointy angle

Six times ‘Pain Rustique’ – the maximum capacity of our bread oven

No, they are not from Mrs Miggins’ pie shop…

A Cappuccino as a reward for all the ‘hard labour’ – still trying to perfect the late art