There is a movement to celebrate ‘Real Bread’. It is encouraging people to buy bread from a local, traditional master baker that bakes real bread or even for people to make their own bread. For those interested, you can find out more from the Real Bread Campaign.
Making your own bread is easy. People often think it’s very time consuming, but that’s mostly the time needed for proving the dough. Basically that’s when you leave the dough to do its own thing, rising in a warm, humid place.
I’ve been making bread since I was 19 years old. I spent the year before I went to university employed in the labs attached to a flour mill and part of my work schedule was to bake bread three times a week.
Over the years I have experimented more and more, and, I as I like nuts there have been more and more nutty loaves of various shapes and flavours.
And, of course, I can’t finish without mentioning the influence of the Great British Bake Off, along with judge Paul Hollywood, which has done so much to promote yeast cookery for the home baker. I would never have ventured into Italian breads without seeing it on the GBBO and it has been well worth it. Olive breadsticks are a bit tricky (and sticky) but absolutely delicious and well worth the effort every time.
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Agnes Ashe 
I have what I think is some sort of posh bakery just over the way from our back garden. It’s very intimidating because the bread is all behind them, where they stand behind their counter, so you can’t really go in and have a browse. I did try. As a result I’ve not been back.
All your stuff looks very impressive. Bread is not something I’ve really succeeded at, baking wise.
Gosh I don’t understand why a posh bakery would be precious about their bread. Can you imagine how that attitude would go down in France or Italy!!!! Don’t they want to sell their bread?
The knack with a basic bread dough is not too wet and certainly not too dry – after a while you get to know the feel, but to begin with I think slightly wetter is better. Beginners often don’t realise how dry flour can be and what initially seems too wet becomes about right as the water gets absorb during the proving. As I know you are a scientist at heart there’s lots of detailed chat online from the bread baking ‘shed’ (sorry should say forums) about accurate measuring and precise ratios between flour, water and yeast and that’s before you hit the ‘sourdough/starter dough’ debates! 😉
I used to make our bread quite regularly. Now it’s just the two of us, not so much. Can’t get through it quickly enough, and whatever they say, I don’t think it freezes well. I think I should just take the bull by the horns and get a sourdough starter going again. That extra life-force inhabiting our home was just so much fun.
I must admit coming to breadmaking from the food lab route, I’ve always used fresh bakers’ yeast (easy for accurate measuring and comparisons) but so far haven’t tried growing my own natural yeast. As I am about to move again time and space to nurture a sourdough starter is currently very 😐 unavailable.
Definitely. Good luck with the move. Stressful times.
😊 Thank you.
I learnt bread-making in Home Science at high school, but when I moved to England in my early 20s I could never get the yeast to develop, even though I ran around the bedsits plugging up every draught I could track down. I made a lot of loaves of bread that were good door-stoppers. It left me with the conviction that I am a failure at yeast cookery, and I haven’t tried in years. But I have been receiving Facebook posts from an acquaintance who is a member of “Bread Making and Baking Addicts” and it does look tempting to try again. Back to that “time” issue we were talking about last week. Yours look yummy!
Maybe you could get your friend to do a spot on your TV programme to talk about https://wordpress.com/stats/day/agnesashe.wordpress.com#the benefits of making your own bread – not least the ability to significantly help reduce salt in your diet.
Interesting idea. The Good Life producers are not filming every month at the moment. Putting out shorter segments and plenty in the can already. But I’ll certainly keep it in mind for the future.