Salt

I didn't post or bake yesterday as I was entertaining guests, and this left me with a cake-less lunch box this morning. I did have a short lie-in as a consequence, but I would have preferred cake. So this evening I baked another sponge, but this time there was thankfully some oranges on hand to grate the rind from, so I made my sponge of preference; the chocolate orange. This is simple and just requires adding some orange rind and cocoa to the normal sponge recipe, as mentioned at the end of the previous post.

While I was starting my bread for tomorrow I thought about salt, which is a compound that has come in for a bit of scientific and media scrutiny recently. In the recipes that I have given I have usually reduced the amount of salt from the original recipes or popular proportions. Salt is required to prevent the bread from tasting very bland, as anyone who has accidentally left the salt out will know (though my wife quite likes this), but it is surprising how little one needs to achieve this. Bringing the salt content down over time is also effective in making the change less obvious to the palate, and I often use half the quantity of salt stated in even my adapted recipes. In these times of careful diets, and especially for those on low salt diets, this is worth considering and experimenting with.

I'm off to eat cake.