Pickled veges revisited

Back in my first week of doing this challenge, I made some spiced vinegar and used it to pickle some vegetables. These had to be left for at least three weeks before I could use them. The three weeks are long gone and for the past month or so, I've been thinking "I really must try those picked veges sometime".

The problem was, I had no idea how you are supposed to eat pickled vegetables. Do you eat them on their own, or put them in a salad or something? In the end I decided that it would be best to go basic and have them plain on fresh bread.

Which meant I had to make some bread. There's no recipe for the wholegrain kind I usually eat, so I went for the next best thing: wholemeal bread (p25). Of course, the yeast I'd bought for my hot cross buns had expired, so I had to go and get some more. This done, I sprinkled the yeast over a lukewarm mixture of water, milk and honey, and waited for it to froth.

The frothing took quite a long time - much longer than the 10 minutes indicated in the recipe. Finally I was happy that it was frothy enough, so added it to the dry ingredients and mixed up the dough. A bit of kneading, and I set the dough aside to rise.

It took ages for the dough to get "double in size" but finally it had risen enough and I kneaded it down and put it in a loaf tin. I'd put the oven on to warm when the dough was partly risen, but it'd taken so long the oven had been sitting on for upwards of half an hour with nothing in it. I was glad to get the bread in the oven. That was, until I checked the recipe again and realised I was supposed to let the dough rise one more time before putting it in the oven.


I took it out again (luckily it'd been in there for less than a minute) and set it back in the sunny corner again. Half an hour later, though the dough hadn't really risen "to the top of the tin", I decided to put it in anyway. I was tired of waiting and the oven had now been on 'to warm' for well over an hour.

40 minutes later I had my loaf of bread. It was very crusty on top, but lovely and soft inside, with that sweet yeasty flavour you get with homemade bread. It was very tasty, but with all the waiting, it had taken me most of the afternoon to make. I'd say this is a good recipe - as long as you have time to make it!


I got out my pickled veges and had a few on some bits of bread. They were nice, but you wouldn't want to eat too many at once. It's odd that some of the veges, like the cauliflower, have absorbed the spiciness as well as the vinegar flavour, but others, e.g the capsicum and the beans, only taste like vinegar. The cauliflower is lovely - I far prefer it over the vinegary ones. If I were to make this again, I might well do it entirely with cauliflower.

Of course, my veges-on-bread idea didn't make much of a dent in my jar of pickled vege. I'll have some more for lunch today with the leftover bread, but I'm still left with nearly a full jar of these pickled veges and no real idea of how to use them. Any ideas?