We Grow Our OwnWhat we grow, what we cook, what we eat …

Bread is a fundamental part of our diet: 99% of UK households buy bread and 74% of us eat it at least once a day, whether it is a quick slice of toast before we rush out the door to work, or the essential part of that hangover curing bacon sandwich.

Unfortunately, the majority of households buy the tasteless pap created by the Chorleywood Process, that is sold by supermarkets up and down the land.

With that in mind, if you make one New Year’s Resolution this year, it should be to make your own bread.

The Chorleywood Bread Process, which was introduced in 1961, produces bread of phenomenal volume and lightness, with great labour efficiency and at low apparent cost. It isn’t promoted by name. You won’t see it mentioned on any labels. But you can’t miss it. From the clammy sides of your chilled wedge sandwich to the flabby roll astride every franchised burger, the stuff is there, with a soft, squishy texture that lasts for many days until the preservatives can hold back the mould no longer. If bread forms a ball that sticks to the roof of your mouth as you chew, or you can scrunch a slice of it into a white pappy little ball, this is down to the Chorleywood Bread Process – but don’t dwell on what it will shortly be doing to your guts.

Have a look on the ingredients list on the back of one of these loaves, and there is a list of ‘improvers’ and ‘additives’ as long as your arm.

I think sometimes people get scared of making their own bread, because they hear bakers using words like ‘sourdough’, ‘ferment’ and ‘sponge.’ In fact, it couldn’t be any simpler. With just flour, salt, water and yeast, you can have a fantastic tasting, additive free loaf of bread on your table within hours. Also, if you are that pushed for time, you can do a loaf of soda bread from start to finish in under an hour!

Once you have mastered the ‘basic’ loaf, if you look in books produced by great bakers such as Richard Bertinet, Dan Lepard and Andrew Whitley, you will see that with just a few small tweaks, and the addition of some other ingredients, these four ingredients can produce an infinite amount of yummy things!


If you want to take it one step further, join the “Real Bread Campaign” which is co-ordinated by the charity Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. The Real Bread Campaign is a not-for-profit initiative that brings together bakers, independent millers, cereal growers, researchers, activists and anyone else who cares about the state of bread in Britain.

So make make your own bread at home. As I mentioned , you only need flour, water, yeast and salt. It is as easy as falling off a log, and I can guarantee that once you have tasted your own homebaked bread, you will never go back to eating what I consider to be the tasteless, mass produced pap that masquerades as bread in supermarket the length and breadth of this land.