Busyknitter

I’ve been baking bread for nearly 10 years now. Personally, I blame Worthing. We moved there in 1996 and found that there was nowhere, just nowhere to buy even half decent bread.

I think I’ve come to realise that Worthing is more typical of the situation in England as a whole and I’d just been fortunate up until then. Growing up in Brighton, we used to buy our bread at the incomparable Raven’s bakery on Ditchling Road (mmmmn, those almond slices….) . At uni in Newcastle and after that living in London for a few years, there were always plenty of decent sources of bread (actually Fenwicks Food Hall in Eldon Square, Newcastle was always good, they used to be supplied by a Polish baker based in Gateshead). The North West is not too bad as well. Our local supermarket stocks breads from the Village Bakery in Melmerby, Cumbria and also the best rye bread I’ve ever come across which I think is made in a Ukranian bakery in Bradford.

But Worthing, oh Worthing! The problem was that there was nowhere to go but large chain bakeries and the mega supermarkets. And what do you get? Wholemeal bread that you can’t slice because the loaf squishes into a pulp whenever a bit of pressure is applied with a knife. And white bread that’s no use apart from as a substitute for cotton wool to take off my mascara.

So I started making my own. For a while , I used to bake 3 or 4 times a week, so we didn’t have to buy any extra. Now that we’re back oop north, that’s dropped off a bit, but I still bake a large batch at least once a week.

Bread books
The classic work is Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery (see link on the side panel). Lots of history and a whole chapter on the use of salt in bread! It describes methods of making differnt breads, but doesn’t give many recipes as such.

Recipes galore in my other book, The Sunday Times Book of Real Bread, published in 1974 and now long out of print. I spotted it in a second hand bookshop and it’s a brilliant source of ideas.

But my basic white bread recipe is from my battered, old copy of Delia – slightly amended over the years to make larger quantities.