After many weeks of sweet treats and sugar I decided to off-set the scale with savoury and plenty of salt. I haven’t made bread in a while because, while the steps are simple and the ingredient list short, proving is time-consuming. However I had some time over Christmas so I could wait the hour it took for my dough to double in size. I felt like a proud parent watching their new born lift their own head for the first time when I peeled back the tea towel and saw the surface made smooth with its own expansion; I’ve tasted motherhood and it’s all olive oil and salt.

In my baking videos I’ve now learnt to tie my hair back in mermaid plaits otherwise you get the end of my hair dangling like spider legs into the shot. My hair is long and thick. Sometimes when I’m trying to twist the strands around one another it’ll catch on one of my rings, or the ends will get knotted together, or I’ll accidentally merge one strand into the other until it’s just one big section with nowhere to go. Then I drop the whole thing, comb it with my fingers, and shake the ache out of my arms before starting again. I’ve become more successful with practice and I’ve started wearing it around like that. One day I was at work and my colleague said that she liked it and she wished she could do it, and I said that maybe she could have if she had girls (she has two sons). She said, ‘I won’t blame them for that’ and I thought it was humourous. Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about boyhood and how I have no idea what that’s like. I have a sister and no boy cousins who aren’t millions of miles away in Japan. I went to a girls school and in primary school I only had girlfriends so I wonder what it’s like to be a boy child. Not male at any age but to grow up playing football matches in the park on a wet Saturday morning while your mum stands at the edge huddled under an umbrella. Or to have scraped knees that bleed and scar coolness for all your mates to see on Monday, and to play violent video games where you shoot people while swearing into a headset then throw the controller down in anger after you die. That’s how it seemed to me growing up from the outside looking in. But I know I don’t know anything about it because those are all incredibly narrow-minded, stereotypical depictions that I’ve probably seen in an out-dated coming-of-age film. I’m sure being raised as male for many people isn’t like that at all, but I just wonder what it’s like and if it’s fun and what do you talk about at sleepovers? What I do know is that there’s boyhood, and girlhood, and childhood, and all those things are not the same. 

I really enjoy running now and I run far and often and fast and slow and over and under and all around and I love it. I’ve also started cycling to do my food shop and I adore my bike. I worry about my bike getting stolen as it would be a difficult loss for me. Not because I wouldn’t be able to get to the Lidl with the good bakery, but because I would miss the joy of riding my bike. I only started to venture into running when I was nineteen and I’ve never much played team sports apart from forcing my friends to play volleyball in the park with me during Covid. It’s hard to understand because I could have done it growing up, sure, but it felt too out there for me. And sometimes I feel sad that I didn’t/don’t do more of that stuff. Not exercising or sport, I mean just being more uninhibited and doing things that are physical, adventurous, and playful. I think you can miss out on that being introduced to you when you’re raised in girlhood. Obviously boyhood is out of reach for me to experience as a twenty-four year old woman. But it’s just something I think about, even though I do love being a silly little girly girl getting my nails done, plaiting my hair, being emotional, and tightening a stranger’s bra straps in the pub toilets*.

I got a new apron from Muji and I am obsessed with it because it’s so cute and has inside and outside pockets! I’ll have to show it in a post one week. This focaccia was the first time I wore it and wowweee it was a bake worth the apron. The dough is soft inside while crusty on the top and the fresh rosemary is my favourite. I had to use granulated sea salt instead of flaky salt which was a shame but only for the look because the taste is the same and that taste is salty salty yum. I used a BBC Good Food recipe for this one and won’t link it here, they don’t need more site views the greedy fucks.

Goodbye for now.

Watch the reel

*I know these aren’t necessarily ‘feminine’ things, they are just some things that help me personally feel girly.