For anyone who uses a bread machine the thing we all understand is the ping. It takes hours of sitting on the side and doing its stuff quietly then eventually, the house fills with extremely yummy smells and it goes “ping”. This signifies that you can open its lid and remove a loaf of bread. It’s a miracle. You put in a pile of ingredients then out comes a fully-functioning loaf. Bloody marvellous!

Occasionally we curse the wait for the ping. Usually that’s when we forget to put the loaf on until it’s too late for the ping to happen in normal “awake” time. Sometimes this means a grumpy period when we sit resenting the bloody machine until it finally finishes its stuff then the ping happens and we heave a sigh of relief, remove the bread from the machine and go to bed. One thing that the manufacturers could improve is to make it so the bread doesn’t go leathery if you don’t get it out in under an hour.

Last week we went to the gusher with a loaf on timer that was going to ping at 11pm – it was messy, at least for me, we hung around in the pub while we were waiting for the bread to ping and that was the problem. DM sensibly went onto coffee instead of having 4 pints of Jail Ale. I, however, drank the Jail Ale and ended up a bit sozzled.

Today we put the bread on “in time” to ping at 10pm. We went to the gusher again but this time DM was on top form and didn’t want to go home so we ended up staying until 11pm (late for us) and the bread had pinged an hour before we got to it. Leather. Mmmmmm yum (not).

This is the inside of the bread machine after I opened it to release the bread. It was magnificent as usual. The fact that the hatch is closed indicates that there are no goodies in the bread. By goodies I mean seeds – pumpkin, poppy, pine nuts, linseed, sesame etc. Not in this loaf – it was a non-adulterated loaf of mixed wholemeal and refined bread flour. It still looks really yummy and will make fabby sandwiches tomorrow.