Dementia is coming?

Bread batch No.644 ran into trouble earlier in the week.

The dough weighed in normally at nearly six pounds. The first knead, first rise, second knead and second rise were all normal, with the dough finishing just about level with the rims of the two tins, which is presently where it is thought that it should be on entry to the oven. The more rise the merrier is no longer the tune I bake to and too much rise is now considered to be a bad thing, likely to result in large unsightly bubbles or, worse still, total collapse. Into the oven, pre-heated to 200°C.

45 minutes later, nothing much seemed to have happened, beyond a crust starting to form over the collapsed dough. I then noticed that the oven had been turned off, and thinking that I had nothing much to lose, turned it back on, and left the loaves for another 50 minutes, the extra 5 minutes being allowance for the oven coming back to heat. Had the brain wobbled and got me to turn the oven off when I put the loaves in?

45 minutes later, nothing much seemed to have happened. At this point I started to think that maybe there was something wrong with the oven. First thought was to chuck the lot, but BH dissuaded me and I moved one loaf to the much smaller top oven and tried cooking it there, with an overhead heating element (which doubles as the grill) and no fan. Not very optimistic.

But while it did not rise again, it did cook - and so I cooked the second loaf.

The crumb was rather odd, rather like an albino pumpernickel. A bit chewy, but it went down well enough, flavoured with a spot of Lincolnshire Poacher.

Further inspection confirmed that the bottom oven was not getting hot, although it did seem that some heat was getting through. And it had been working that very morning. So buy new or repair? DIY or cooker man? This all seemed terribly complicated at 19:00 and further consideration was postponed to the following morning. But BH did hunt out her copy of the very last Argos catalogue, perhaps to become a collectible in years to come.

The cooker was a Zanussi electric, model ZCV66000WA. Cheap enough from John Lewis, but it has served well for seven years or so, for which see refence 2. Then poking around on the Zanussi website, we found that what we thought was the right heating element  - we had a choice of three - cost around £30. It didn't look that complicated to fit the thing oneself: remove the cover plate at the back of the oven and off you go. Might even be a 5 minute job.

But then we discovered that Zanussi offer a fixed price repair service, complete with an online booking system and the trimmings one expects from a large company, now owned, as it happens, by Electrolux, who had snapped it up at a time when Zanussi in particular and Italy in general were having a spot of economic and financial trouble. So for £150 or so I could book a slot and they would send someone to fix it. Which I did. It might be a touch dear at around a third of the current purchase price, but it does save one all the bother and risk of plucking a cooker man off the wall. A cooker man who might or might not answer his phone, who might or might not turn up.

So far so good, with the only fly so far in this particular ointment being gmail finding the confirmatory email from the cooker man in Chelmsford to be suspect. Yellow warning bars! Do not click on anything!

We will have to ask him how many miles he expects to do in the average day, with this laptop saying that it is around 40 miles from Chelmsford to Epsom.

In the meantime I fret about how long it took me to work out that the heating element had gone. Or worse still, that it hasn't gone at all...

Three quarters of the first loaf now tucked away. Next batch pencilled in for Tuesday.

PS: can't tell from gmaps whether the overgrown house noticed at reference 2 has been redeveloped. Clearly time for a return visit.

References

Reference 1: https://www.zanussi.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/08/zanussi-or-bust.html.

Zanussi rules again

Following the disaster reported at reference 1, our cooker now seems to be up and running again.

The Zanussi repair people put this particular repair out to the new-to-me appliance repair operation called Respond Services, to be found at reference 2 and who cover a large chunk of the eastern Home Counties. They turned up when they said they would this morning and in fairly short order replaced the element at the back. There is clearly something very wrong with the old one, snapped above.

And at 2,500W perhaps best to leave installation, simple though that might be once you have done it once, to the expert.

The oven has now been tested with cheese scones, which cook at the high temperature of 210°C, and we thought a reasonable test, before returning to the charge with bread batch No.645 tomorrow morning. The first tray is snapped above, with the second tray from the lower shelf, with a further six scones, appearing a couple of minutes later. The round one, left centre, was the ball of dough left at the end of cutting out proper scones, using a cutter which I believe dates from my childhood, so maybe seventy or more years old. As does the cooling rack under. Half an hour or so later the fifteen scones had shrunk to one, and I dare say that one will fade away in the course of the evening. 

And while there may be no sugar, what with the butter and the cheese, I dare say also that there were plenty of calories. BH cheese, as using fancy cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy didn't make a difference that we could taste,

The dough was wetted with a mixture of milk and water, far less than the recipe calls for, but still too much, so I had to add in some more flour. But the scones still worked - unlike concrete where catching the driver adding water after mixing, perhaps because the concrete had been mixed too dry in the first place or because it had been too long on the road, was sufficient reason to reject a mixer load.

The only fly in the ointment was this message from gmail. No idea what prompted it.

And, lastly, having mistakenly given them our land line number rather than my mobile number, which meant that text did not work, I had phoned Respond Services at around 08:30 this morning to ask when I might expect them. They answered my call after very little in the way of recorded messages and the helpful lady was able to give me my three hour window.

An altogether satisfactory service.

PS: the two loaves of reference 1 were much better eating than I had feared. Rather good in fact, in a chewy sort of way. The second loaf will be finished off for breakfast tomorrow.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/03/dementia-is-coming.html.

Reference 2: http://www.respondservices.co.uk/.