My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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To make beer with bread waste may sound like a preposterous idea,but 900,000 tonnes of bread waste fills British dumpsters every year, so why not try a different approach? Bread is a basic foodstuff we simply don't cherish like we used to. Most of us are used to mass-produced loaves from big bakeries, and perhaps because it's so easy to find, we no longer value it. We just buy it, eat it and bin it without a second thought. How we treat bread is a useful barometer of how we deal with our food generally. We're often attracted by the look of food, without questioning its quality. This banana isn't curved enough. That tomato is just the wrong shade of red. This loaf of bread is a little squashed, or has lost some of its springiness. We look it over, and if it's not pleasing to the eye, we throw away a perfectly good loaf of bread. After all, it's cheap enough to replace. Emma March, head of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, run by the UK government's waste advisory body WRAP, says: “Bread is a favourite on our plates and in our lunch boxes, but sometimes if we don't finish a loaf, it goes stale and ends up in the bin. There are simple things we can do to use it up or store it differently to reduce food waste and save money.” Perhaps bread waste recycling doesn't sound all that appealing, but cookbooks are full of recipes that find uses for stale bread. Bread and butter pudding wouldn't be so appealing if the bread hadn't lost some of its freshness. Meatballs can be bulked out by using soaked and squeezed bread slices. One-day-old sliced bread can be turned into breadcrumbs in the blender, and toasted breadcrumbs will add oomph to your pasta dishes when used instead of parmesan, adding bulk to the sauce, and flavour when sprinkled on top. Perhaps the most interesting use for bread waste has been found by award-winning craft beer maker TOAST ALE. Based on an ancient recipe, their ale is made using bakery waste – disposed-of bread from supermarkets and, strange as it may sound, sandwich makers, who discard the crust end of loaves because we consumers find them less appealing. Only after the bread waste has been rejected for redistribution by food charities is it used to brew the TOAST ALE. TOAST ALE uses a combination fresh bread, oat husks, hops, yeast and water, and with a little patience it can even be brewed at home – but you'll need lots of bread! A project like this can give you a new perspective on the question of food waste. Nothing should be lost, everything can be recycled Comments are closed.
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AuthorI love cooking, and when it comes to quality I'm quite fussy. Archives
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