Easy bread
Everyone secretly believes they would be the kind of person who would bake their own bread … if only, if only, if only. Bought bread is such a convenience, and so cheap. I spent decades freezing sliced loaves of Hovis Granary and popping them in the toaster as required. But, in the same way that vegetarians lose the memory of what meat tastes like, and decaf drinkers kid themselves that it tastes like the real thing, bulk produced, accelerated yeast improvers and the Chorley method don’t lie: once you’ve made your own bread at home there is no going back. By comparison supermarket loaves taste gluey and bland, and they sit in one’s stomach long after eating, generating wind and bloating and a general air of dissatisfaction. A proper loaf, of real bread, is dense and chewy and full of whatever you put in it – and nothing else! Whether wheat, spelt, rye, corn, oats, seeds and nuts and fruit, a basic loaf is just flour, yeast, salt and water. Mix them together, add time (no