Isn’t that just pizza dude?

I’m turning 30 this year and I’ve started to notice certain lifestyle changes; baking bread, growing herbs, socialising at dinner parties. I’m a pretty dull guy. That’s not to say that sex, drugs and rock and roll featured prominently in my twenties, but they did at least seem like more pressing concerns.

Lately the wife and I have become part of the dinner party circut. If you are in a relationship, don’t have kids and recognise brand names like Waitrose, then you’ll be familiar with this scene. The evening begins at around 8pm when you and your partner arrive to find the hosts nervously stirring a giant pot of stock made from the gizzards of French organic chickens, stuffed with virgin shoots of blue mountain tea and a generous cup of extra virgin olive oil pressed by the thighs of Fidel Castro’s youngest daughter. (All ingredients can be sourced from Waitrose.) Everyone drinks too much cheap Australian cabernet sauvignon, smokes Marlborough Lights and somehow $40 worth of Sardinian sheep’s cheese is forgotten about and quickly turns rancid on the coffee table.

So, this is where I am now socially, and I wanted to prepare a few flashy loaves of bread that I could store away in my freezer and then magically conjure up to impress my middle class chums. I opted for Richard Bertinet’s recipe for olive oil bread, stuffed with tomatoe, garlic and basil. I was suitably humbeled by my last disaster so I choose to follow the recipe as given.

Tomatoe, Garlic and Basil Bread

My review
Appearance: It looks fantastic. Bertinet uses a slightly unusual shaping technique to help ensure that the ingredients are spilling out from the centre.
Crust: Nothing much to speak of but that’s kind of typical of these olive oil breads. Perhaps a little salt would have improved the flavor.
Texture: About medium. Like a normal sandwich bread.
Taste: A bit dull to be honest. The semi sundried tomatoes, basil and caramalised garlic are all delicious but the bread itself is nothing to write home about. I’m getting a bit bored of all these gimmicky breads. I could buy something just as tasty and superficial from one of the crazy local bakeries like Breadtalk.

Brother in Law’s Review
BiL: “This bread has got…..stuff in it!”
Alec: “Ermm, ……yesss???”
BiL: “There’s too much garlic”. (Poking at a clove of garlic with his knife.)
Alec: “Oh, the garlic was roasted for 40 mins before I added it to the dough. You’ll find that the flavour is quite sweet and mild.”
BiL: “Humph!” (By now, examining his slice of bread like a pathologist examining a decomposed liver on CSI.)
BiL: “Look! This bit is damp and gooey. Has it been cooked properly? Is it safe to eat?!”
Me: “That is a drizzle of olive oil”.