My take on homemade bread!

One of my favourite items to make is bread! Its a real comfort food and there is something extremely satisfying about pulling a few basic ingredients together and creating something wholesome, filling, tasty and unique. It truly is a versatile food. You can add all sorts of flavours, incorporate different texture with nuts, seeds and fruit. Its a food item that has evolved through the ages and has even triumphed in the face of adversity – such is our love of this staple, that even those of us with considerations of wheat and gluten (for example) have been able to take a basic recipe and adapt it. There is an enormous range of flours available to us to create our daily bread that our taste buds cannot fail to be amused and fulfilled.

If you have children and would like an activity to keep them occupied – bread making is a fun introduction to cooking. It uses skills important to everyday life – measuring; counting; estimating. It teaches a bit of chemistry, its very tolerant if things go a little awry, and the joy that everyone feels when a homemade loaf is ready from the oven, just can’t be beaten! On top of all that, the cost of producing a homemade loaf of bread is between 12p and 50p depending on the ingredients used and electrical supply costs.

I strongly urge you not to give up and really get hands on with this fabulously diverse and pleasing activity. How wonderful to come in from a chilly time in the garden and help yourself to some ‘still warm from the oven’ bread or to share it with friends over dinner?