I bought a book: The Vegan Boulangerie

The Vegan Boulangerie is a lovely collection of French breads and patisserie. It has everything you could ask; cakes, croissant, baguettes. All begging to be cooked.

As it turns out The Vegan Boulangerie is not a begginers book. I'm okay with that. I'm slightly past my beginners stage and I'm over ambitious. Basically if you know how to caramelize onions, the correct amount of force when knocking back and how and why to steam you oven it shouldn't be a problem for you. Otherwise you might want to pair it with another book or google.

The other problem is the typical vegan recipe book one: it's cramped (even at A4) and the pictures are not very appetising or instructive being black and white with an annoying edging. Still the content is great. With sweets, savouries and eve sandwiches to tempt.

I though I'd best have a go at one of the breads. Brown Onion Bread seemed deliciously different enough than my usual baking. The instructions where easy to follow and it made an excellent loaf. All the better toasted.

Of course I couldn't go on not having tried the Alsatian Pretzel. Full of salty goodness. The recipy was easy to follow but there is a mistake in it. The mixing, shaping, salt sprinkling that's all fine but the recipe end after steaming your oven before telling you how to cook it. I went for 250C for 16 mins. Which worked. The only problem being my noob shaping.

Again my shaping failed me but the chocolate twists where still delicious. And - just like the book said - perfect dunked in hot chocolate.