This loaf of bread has just come out of the bread machine and by the look of it, it almost climbed out by itself. It was stuck to the inside of the lid when I opened it. It’s huge because it has my (non) patented extra zingy riser included in the ingredients – the water that was used to cook potatoes in yesterday. This is truly a win-win. The flavour of the bread is enhanced, its rise is superb and any water-soluble vitamins that leeched out of the potatoes during cooking are now going to be eaten rather than tipped down the sink. How great is that?

I remain incredibly narked about the subject of bread. I find myself ever more incensed by self-diagnosed “wheat intolerance”. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re a coeliac or have a diagnosed allergy then that’s one thing but self-diagnosed wheat intolerance is quite another. After all, as a species we have been eating bread in one form or other for 30,000 years and until very recently the term “oh it’s not that I’m actually allergic, I’m just intolerant” had never passed the lips of the worried well. Anyway – I’ve banged on enough about that in the past so today’s “evangelical in support of bread” rant is this…

There is an ad on our TVs at the moment (if you live in the UK that is) where a chap makes his wife some toast and uses it to improve his standing after a falling out the night before. I have no problem with that. It seems like an admirable thing to do…other than I firmly believe he should have made it the night before so they didn’t go to bed on an argument but that’s another story. The problem is this. The co-op (who made the ad) go on to say “we know how important bread is so that’s why we’ve made it so cheap”. That’s the problem. Cheap bread is bad in two ways – firstly to make it cheap, you have to cut corners and costs and therefore make it nasty. Then there is the problem that something that is cheap is seen as valueless so it’s OK to buy more than you need and throw it away. I was horrified recently to be at a barbecue recently where a small boy was taking a roll, eating one mouthful then lobbing the rest over the fence, whereupon he picked up another roll and did the same again.

Food should not be cheap. It’s its cheapness that’s getting us all into trouble. I realise that’s an incredibly controversial point of view but it’s one that I’m unlikely to be swayed from.