Pie, princess pony and hot cross buns

The week started with a pie. I'm not much of a pastry maker really (I'm more of a bread person) but I occasionally have the whim to make a pie. The pastry recipe I use is Delia Smith's cheese pastry from the turkey flan with leeks and cheese recipe in the first of her Christmas books. That pie is known as Boxing Day pie in this house and the pastry is for the underneath crust but it works just as well as a lid too. The inside of this pie was Sunday's leftover roast chicken dinner and gravy. H10, R8 and I ate the exclamation mark and the right hand end. Brian ate the P, the I and the E and everything around it. Men love pies.

The postman arrived with a big surprise this week too. H10 avidly enters all of the competitions in her Pony magazine and this time she won. She had to complete a tie-breaker which was to say what she would call a book about Exmoor ponies. Her answer was 'Exmoor the merrier' and her prize was this bright pink Katie Price Equestrian rug for Itsy.

These two spend lots of time together and are best friends. Now they are even starting to dress alike. Neither has heard of Katie Price but both think the rug is very lovely.

It's definitely a rug fit for a pony princess.

Itsy looks very glamorous in it.

I think she likes the monogram!

It's hot itchy work being a pony princess.

That's better!

Today is Good Friday so I made some hot cross buns in honour of the day (and to continue my slow but sure progress in baking all of the recipes in the River Cottage Bread book). R8 doesn't like dried fruit so instead I added 100g of dark chocolate chips and orange (in the form of a tablespoon of my recently made marmalade) to the mixture, forgetting that the warm milk I added at the same time would melt the chocolate.

What we had instead was dark chocolate and orange hot cross buns. Delicious hot from the oven spread with butter and homemade marmalade. Happy Easter!

Still baking

I'm still baking. I haven't mentioned it for a while but my bakeathon through the River Cottage bread book is ongoing.

Okay, I'll admit I cheated a bit. My self-imposed rule at the beginning was to make EVERYTHING, one by one. That was fine in the chapters on normal bread, but then there were vetkoek (yuk) and a whole chapter on Bread Made with Wild Yeast.

I lovingly made and tended my sourdough starter. I made a loaf with it. My family tried it. Hated it. I think sourdough is the Marmite of the bread world; it's either love or loathe. They, my eaters, loathed. Me, I loved it, especially toasted with Marmite on, but even I'm not woman enough to eat my way through an entire chapter on sour dough breads single-handed. I may go back one day and make pumpernickel, but not yet.

So I skipped on to the Bread Made Without Yeast chapter. I baked, we ate and I forgot to take pictures. Here, in a nutshell, is what we had and the verdict (in brackets): Soda bread (a regular anyway, we love it and make it often); Walnut and honey bread (how much honey???!!!! Sweet, chewy, delish with strong cheese, probably won't make it again though); roti (another regularly-made already recipe, we adore it); tortillas (number one favourite from this book until I made the flatbreads which are even better. Still love these though, great for lunch); then Bannocks:

The Bannocks were more delicious than they looked.

Bannocks are thick, hot oatcakes, lovely eaten while still warm from the pan with thick vegetable soup. They looked uninspiring but were quick, easy and delicious. Just the sort of thing to knock up while you make the soup (actually they're so quick the soup wouldn't even have to be home made you could make these while opening a tin).

Yummy baked doughnuts

Next it was straight on into the fun stuff: Buns, Biscuits and Batter Breads (the chapter my children have been looking forward to most). First off was doughnuts but NOT, definitely NOT deep fried (the vetkoek put me off that for life). So I baked them, 10 minutes at the oven's hottest temperature then about seven minutes at gas mark 4, dabbed them with a bit of melted butter and tossed them in a bowl of cinnamon-spiked sugar. They were a big hit, little doughnutty-flavoured fluffy buns without the stink and palaver of deep frying. Perfect.

Meanwhile Brian finished a bit of DIY. We have a dresser but it's too tall for our low ceilings and too wide for our narrow railway carriage-shaped kitchen. In disgust I chucked it out into a barn a while ago (having tried and failed to live with it in various rooms). Instead I longed for a plate rack but funds didn't allow and the big white empty wall in my kitchen sulked plate rackless. Then, brainwave. Hang the TOP part on the wall, plate rack-stylee. Bingo! I rescued it from the barn, scrubbed it and bleached it, waxed it and Brian used coach bolts and mirror brackets (belt and braces) to hang it on the wall.

Dresser with dog in catalogue pose.

The box underneath is an ex-toy box Brian picked up for a song (he got three - one for each of his girls). I'm going to wax mine to match the dresser and then keep my toys cake tins and baking trays in it. I might even make it a comfy cushion for the top (no, not for the dog though!)

The ridiculous and the sublime

I found something in the River Cottage Bread book that I didn't like. Vetkoek (pronounced 'fet cook' meaning fat cake in Afrikaans) are basically deep fried bread rolls. Nothing fancy about the dough, just fried not baked.

I hate deep frying - it makes your house, clothes and hair smell like a chippy - but I was willing to try in the name of the Big Bread Bakeathon.

Fresh out of the pan they were almost acceptable - crispy on the outside, soft bread within.

Vetkoek. Hot, crispy, glistening with vet.

Two minutes later, once they were cool enough to eat, they had the taste and consistency of a squash ball. I cooked seven and we all tried one each (with three spare for the hens). I used the rest of the dough to make some very nice white rolls. Never again. The vetkoek were odd, like a tasteless doughnut, and as chewy as a car tyre. There are doughnuts and churros later in the book and for them I will have to contrive some method of cooking that does not require hot oil.

Next in the book was Flatbread, a Turkish bread a little like pitta made with yoghurt in the dough and cooked in a dry pan and then under the grill.

They were divine. We tried the first hot from the pan sprinkled with cheddar cheese and the rest (seen here) we ate with a Moroccan-inspired veggie stew the following day having kept the dough overnight in the fridge (which, if anything, made it taste even better). These were soft pillowy breads with a useful pocket like a pitta but fluffy like a naan. They are really intended to be eaten with taramsalata and hummus and I can see me making more of these in the future.

Next should be pizza, which I make most Saturdays (so that one is done) and then barbecue breads. I thought about barbecuing in November and postponed that one to next summer. Instead it's full speed into the Bread Made with Wild yeast chapter and sourdough.

Half term sucked

I was looking forward to half term. A rest from making packed lunches at 6.30am, a rest from "where on earth are all the school socks?" and a rest from the school run, fraught with "have you got your lunch/clarinet/sports kit/my marbles?" angst. Instead we would do fun things and go on nice autumnal trips wouldn't we?

No.

On day one H9 was sick. On day three R7 was scratching her scalp. On investigation I found some rather grown up head lice and many, many babies. Bugger. Oops.We haven't had head lice for ages (years) but I constantly check because there's the threat you will be asked to remove your child from school should they be found to be infested. The week I ran the Cardiff half marathon I forgot to check. Bugger. Oops.

They're all dead now (not the children, the head lice) but I'm paranoid they'll come back. I chase, brandishing comb, while my offspring run away shrieking "no mummy I have NOT got head lice," with me in hot pursuit (and gaining because I can still outrun my children...ha ha) wailing "but that's what you said last time and you DID!"

Meanwhile it rained. Biblically. Everywhere is ankle deep in slippery mud. The small dog goes out, absorbs it all in his wiry fur and shakes it all over the kitchen floor. Then he wipes his face on the dining room carpet drawing big muddy stripes. The carpet is Scotchguarded but I'm not sure this sort of treatment is entirely good for it. Perhaps I should put down canvasses and sell the results as canine art?

This Monday it was a school inset day (and payday - yippee!) so we went to Tesco. When we arrived the CR-V was doing an excellent impression of being on fire. I sniffed at the smoke - it was steam. A broken radiator. I left it simmering while we shopped and it calmed down enough to be topped up with coolant and driven home. Another bloody big bill. Sigh.

What can a woman do in the face of such (relatively minor really) adversity? Bake, that's what.

What we have here is brioche (bread bakeathon #15), Halloween cupcakes, bagels (bread bakeathon #16), naan bread (so easy to make and heaps cheaper than bought) and green tomato chutney.

Bread bakeathon #14 and sheep

The next instalment in the River Cottage Bread book bakeathon is bread sticks. This is a dough similar to focaccia but is a simple enough thing. Mix it together, leave to rise, go for a five mile run, return (wearing the contents of a puddle courtesy of a Land Rover), roll out the dough, cut into strips, spread with oil, sprinkle with seeds, rise for a bit and then bake. They are shepherd's crook shapes because as you lift the strips of dough they stretch and become too long for the tin. I quite like the shape.

We ate them with what I call 'Trail soup'. It's a vegetable soup based on a recipe that I originally read in 'Trail' magazine, hence the name. Chop two carrots, a slice of swede, a leek, onion, garlic and a potato into smallish cubes and leave to sweat in a tablespoon of olive oil with a teaspoon of butter added. Then wash the horrid sauce off a can of baked beans and add those along with some stock or water and maybe some green leafy bits like Savoy cabbage or cavelo nero and a chopped tomato. Add a handful or two of tiny soup pasta shapes and cook until everything is soft. Adjust for seasoning and serve with grated Cheddar cheese and bread sticks. A bit of pesto is lovely stirred into the soup too. Next bread: Brioche.

This afternoon's task was to sort the sheep. They've been quietly eating grass in the fields over the summer and now we need to sort the ewes from the lambs, check the ewe's teeth (if they've got no teeth they can't eat enough to rear lambs so they have to go). The ones we are keeping also get a dose of worming medicine at this time of year. We're organic but this has the blessing of the Soil Association.

In the race they go, two or three at a time. We check they've got ear tags and replace any as necessary. The rules on ear tags change annually. A year or so ago they had to be tagged in each ear as lambs. Now it's one tag but they're plastic and are a real bugger very difficult to insert in the ears. Ewes and ewe lamb replacements are drafted through the gate to the left; lambs for meat and cull ewes go to the right.

Toby the cat is there purely in a supervisory capacity. He chose the wrong place to sit as shortly after I took this picture he was bounced on by a siily lamb. After that he supervised from inside the building.

A purple dot of marker spray shows that this ewe lamb is being kept and will go on to have lambs of her own. The dot also means we can tell the two groups apart which is lucky because when we thought we had finished and were herding the ewes out to the field again the lambs made a break for freedom and the whole flock got mixed up again.

I'm afraid I may have lost my temper a little (a lot!) at this point. We managed to herd them back into the yard, with a bit of shouting and chasing (there's always a stubborn one. I chased it, furiously. It being temperamental, stupid and intractable, flattened mum into a pile of sheep poo before we rounded it up. I hate sheep.) I redrafted the dots from the non dots, then we tied the gates really tightly this time and now (phew!) the ewes are on the hayfields, the cull ewes and lambs for fattening are on the field by the house and the ram and the pet sheep Chops are (noisily) in one of the little paddocks.

Bread bakeathon #13 and winter planting

The next bread from my recipe-by-recipe bake through of the River Cottage Bread Book was ciabatta. It's a bit of a palaver to make but the results are well worth it.

It's a really wet dough involving a mix of flour and semolina and you ferment it for three hours. Every half an hour or so you add a slug of olive oil and fold the dough up, lovingly, like a big soft blanket. This gives you a silky soft dough which is pretty impossible to handle. The only way to deal with it is with prodigious quantities of semolina to stop it sticking to your hands, the work surface and the dog. Daniel Stevens talks of bake stones, linen cloths and the like but when I tried that last time I lost all of the air from the dough transferring it between them. This time I proved it on the tins and it was more successful.

The result is six lovely little loaves, delightfully crispy on the outside and pillowy soft within. We ate the first ones hot from the oven, torn open, drizzled with a little olive oil and stuffed with grated mature cheddar and sliced home grown cucumber. The next meal we had them sliced into fat fingers, dipped into extra virgin olive oil and then into home made dukka. Divine. If I wasn't baking my way through this book recipe by recipe I'd make more ciabatta but I have an agenda and next on it is breadsticks.

The Delfland Nurseries Organic winter plants arrived on Tuesday all neatly snuggled into two brown cardboard boxes. They consisted of the winter vegetable selection (nine star broccoli, spring cabbages Duncan and spring hero, calabrese pacifica, perpetual spinach, bright lights chard, giant red mustard) and the winter salad selection (winter purslane, corn salad, land cress, lettuces winter density and Arctic King and wild rocket). Today with children out and husband working late I dodged biblical rain and headed into the polytunnel for a planting session.

After a bit of determined dibbing we now have neat rows of winter food - brassicas at the back, little salads at the front - all lined up like soldiers in the new big polytunnel and ready for the worst winter can throw at it. A polytunnel is quite coddling for some of these varieties but past experience has taught me that they hate the wet we get here no matter how good they are at surviving the cold.

My mini cucumbers are still going strong - astonishingly considering it's almost November - I think they like the new polytunnel too.

Guilty cake, bread bakeathon #12 and a lovely thing

This is carrot cake but it's also a guilty cake too. I made it yesterday after a particularly shouty morning before the school run. Brian's been on early shifts this week (why can't criminals stick to 9-5? Then he could work normal hours...) which left me outnumbered. On Friday after a shower interrupted by BANG, BANG, BANG on the door and MUMMMEEEE and then getting dressed which involved the door being slammed back on its hinges so the other one could go MUMMMEEEEE at me, starkers, and complain about the previous one I got, shall we say, a little stressed.

It ended with the eldest saying "calm down Mummy" in an irritating Michael Winneresque way (is anything guaranteed to have the opposite effect to calming?) But we made friends, I took them to school, then I made cake.

It's a honey-soaked carrot cake from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Everyday and I've just had a great big slice of it for Saturday breakfast. Breakfast is the best time of day to eat cake. Your appetite is unblunted by previous meals and you've got the rest of the day to use up the calories and there's not much difference between cake and toast and marmalade, except this particular cake's got nearly a pound of carrots in it which makes it one of your five a day.

While the cake was baking and as it was a chilly day which makes it a good idea to have the oven on (since turning on the oil-fired heating is Banned) I made the next instalment in my Big Bread Bakeathon. This is focaccia from the River Cottage bread book and is something I make regularly because it's so lovely with a bowl of veggie soup. I'm not sure mine would come up to Paul Hollywood's exacting standards on The Great British Bakeoff but it's delicious and is a big family favourite. We ate it with roast butternut squash soup which is, basically, autumn in a bowl.

While I was baking the postman arrived with an unexpected parcel. Inside it was a 'Peter's Seedling Pot Maker'. You use the top punch part to wrap newspaper around and then press it into the die part with a little water which fixes the base of the pot. This is perfect for seedlings as you can plant them out in the pot (which then degrades) without disturbing the roots and checking the growth.

The lovely thing about it is that it was made by my Dad who has taken to woodturning at his new home on Mull and the even lovelier thing is that the top part is made from wood from a tree that grew here on our little farm on the Preselis. Paper potmaking can now be a nice indoor winter activity for me ready for the spring sowings. In the meantime it is sitting in pride of place on the mantelpiece.

Bread Bakeathon #9, #10 and #11

This blog should be sub-titled 'end of the second chapter of the River Cottage Bread Book'. I've baked the Basic Loaf and now I have baked everything in the Variations on the basic bread recipe chapter.

The final three included monstery bread (heavy with oats) and hazel maizel bread, a lovely concoction involving maize meal, apple juice and nuts which made for lovely crusty brown rolls - both of which I forgot to photograph (but they just looked like brown rolls).

The last bread in the chapter was Empty-the-shelf bread, the opportunity to use up tail-ends of whatever bags of flour are to hand and anything else that might be leftover, like nuts or muesli (but Daniel Stevens advises against empty-the-Hoover-bag bread...)

My Empty-the-shelf bread included maize meal and apple juice from the previous bread, a handful of wholemeal flour, white flour, a handful of porridge oats, walnuts and sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds with a bit of walnut oil for luck.

I was bored with rolls by this point (and had been watching Lorraine Pascale's Home Cooking Made Easy on BBC2) so when it came to shaping we got a pain d'epi (at the front) and a fougasse. The latter is a lovely shape for tearing and sharing with a bowl of soup and is a shape I think I'll be making a lot in the future. It bakes well too and gives lots of lovely crust.

So having baked all the basics (and I think my bread has improved in the process) we now head off into the realms of 'Beyond the basic loaf'. This promises such delights as focaccia, ciabatta, brioche, bagels, muffins and pizza, all of which I have cooked before, but also includes Vetkoek (which are deep fried. I NEVER deep fry!) and barbecue breads at not really a barbecuing time of year. This should be interesting!

Bread Bakeathon #6 and #7

I haven't forgotten the Bread Bakeathon, I'm still working my way, recipe by recipe through the River Cottage Bread book.

Number six was a malted and seeded loaf. This uses granary flour and a mix of sunflower, pumpkin, linseed, sesame, poppy and a few fennel seeds both in the dough and as a coating. Packed with seeds, a lovely chewy bread and utterly delicious.

Number seven was breakfast rolls. These are made entirely of wholemeal flour but with the addition of milk as the liquid and butter as the fat in the dough. I used to find wholemeal bread leaden and heavy but (following Daniel Stevens' breadmaking method to the letter) these were soft and light and, yes, perfect for breakfast.

Next: Festival bread.

What's your word?

What's your word? I ask because I am currently reading Eat, Pray, Love (One Woman's Search for Everything) by Elizabeth Gilbert.

EPL is one of those books - like One Day - which has sold millions and everybody has read. A copy found me and I interrupted Stuart - A Life Backwards because I was so intrigued. (I'm always doing this. I will read Stuart, eventually. I currently have three books started and not finished but I usually do finish them.)

I've just reach the point where Liz is in Rome and Giulio has asked her what her word is.

"Don't you know the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn - what is the word of the street?" Giulio says. He affirms that Rome's word is SEX (Liz uses upper case for the words, so I'll follow suit). He goes on to explain that the Vatican's word is POWER and Liz suggests that the word for New York is ACHIEVE and the one for Los Angeles is SUCCEED.

What was the word in Liz's family when she was growing up? FRUGAL and IRREVERENT.

Then Giulio asks her: "What's your word?"

What a fabulous question! Liz cannot answer (if she could there would not have been a book, I presume.)

Can a single word define a person? I love words, their power is awesome (which is a rubbish word, by the way but it would be a good word for a person - what's your word? AWESOME. I like that but I don't think it's me.)

Of course I put the book down to think what my word would be (I was sitting on the laundry bin in the bathroom assisting my children showering. My role is to adjust the temperamental temperature of the shower and avoid scalding sensitive skin.) At that precise moment my word could have been MOTHER or it could have been EXASPERATED. The two words are inescapably connected but they are too specific.

Would I be a noun or a verb? Sometimes you meet someone and they are so complete that if you cut them in half (you wouldn't, obviously) like a stick of rock they'd have their word running through them in big, pink minty letters. Like ROCKSTAR (Freddie Mercury), POSH BOY (David Cameron) or TOSSER (Tony Blair). The Queen (as opposed to the lead singer of Queen) would be MONARCH. Bankers would all be W... well you get my drift.

My word might be ENIGMATIC. I'm going to try it out for size and see if it fits. Meanwhile, what's your word?

The Big Bread Bakeathon #5: Oaty Wholemeal

These wholemeal rolls were supposed to be rolled in a coating of three different types of oats - pinhead oatmeal, medium oatmeal and oat flakes - which would have meant buying, and then being left with the tail-ends of, three different types of oats. Instead I used rolled oats, linseeds and sesame seeds, which were not strictly correct but made a lovely coating nevertheless. These are my favourite type of rolls; unapologetically wholemeal and crusty with virtuous seeds.

They didn't last long. Their word was: YUMMY!

Next: Malted and seeded loaf.

Anniversary and the Big Bread Bakeathon #4: Spelt

It's our wedding anniversary today. I'm not one for big, soppy displays of affection (I'm the one who forgets our anniversary, not Brian!) but we did buy this bottle of Glengoyne malt whisky on our honeymoon and we've saved it up to drink a tot of it every year.

The level is dropping a bit, so we must have been married a long time (she says, taking off shoes and socks to help with the sums). Thirteen years this year.

There isn't a traditional UK gift for the 13th wedding anniversary, but the US suggests lace (traditional) or textiles or furs (modern). Hmm. I think I'll stick to the single malt, thanks.

Glengoyne is an unpeated malt. We enjoyed a heady day visiting the distillery sticking our heads into vats of fermenting gorgeousness followed by a tasting. Brian was driving so I (apparently) had everything he was given in addition to my own. I suspect I wore a fixed silly grin for the rest of that day. Strangely my memories are slightly hazy.

Anyway we bought this bottle in the shop at the distillery. I don't remember how much it was but it was a bit of a stretch for two journalists' wages. When we've finished it we'll have to go back and get another one.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I'm on loaf #4 in my bakeathon, cooking my way through the River Cottage Bread handbook. Spelt is a new one for me, but apparently it's an ancient relative of modern wheat and the Romans used it for their bread.

It worried me slightly as a breakmaker. I don't think I have ever baked a loaf using an entirely different kind of flour own its own.

Daniel Stevens reassures in the recipe's intro that you just have to knead it a bit longer - an extra five minutes - and prove it in baskets or make smaller loaves.

I don't have proving baskets, but worked out that a similar container could be a colander lined with a linen tea cloth, sprinkled liberally with rye flour, so that's what I used.

The result was two round flattish loaves. I assumed they'd be heavy, leaden bricks but the crumb itself is surprisingly light. They have a nice flavour too, like a good wholesome wholemeal. My sternest critics tested it and gave it the verdict of (a somewhat surprised) "yum!" so my fears were unfounded.

I have also been playing with my new DSLR and continuing my annual obsession with taking pictures of the fennel seedheads. This is a single floret. I love the way the individual drops of rain each contain a reflection, upside down, of the rest of the fennel plant, the blue sky and the dark hedge behind. This was cropped and a little bit enhanced using Photoshop Elements which I have for a 30 day trial and am loving. Geek? Moi?

Birthday, Bank Holiday and the Big Bread Bakeathon #3: White

It was my birthday on Sunday. I was 45 and I celebrated by going for a nine mile run, which felt mathematically correct. Then I watched the Belgian Grand Prix happily clutching my birthday presents which included lots of lovely books.

I wonder if all Virgos are the same? All I need on my birthday is a gadget (my new secondhand DSLR), books (on gardening, sewing and food), gift cards (Virgos aren't great with surprises - gift cards are very welcome), something pretty (Cath Kidston plates for cake), sport on the TV (always the Belgian GP), chocolate (Thorntons Viennese truffles) and a glass of wine or two. You can keep your noisy parties thanks. Happy day.

Mr and Mrs Common Blue - ahem - having some private time.

The August Bank Holiday Monday is usually on or around my birthday and this time we were in the fortunate position of having a generously sized banknote and the order (courtesy of Brian's mum) to spend it on ice cream. So, in the afternoon, we headed off for a quick seal-spotting walk at Pwllderi (we saw one seal, briefly and some lovely common blue butterflies) followed by ice creams from the van (actually it's a bus) that sits in the Goodwick car park between April and October. This is proper stuff, none of your soft whipped piped swirls, this is scooped yumminess in chocolate-dipped wafer cones. I had mochaccino with toffee fudge, the girls had double toffee fudge and Brian had lemon cheesecake topped with cherry yoghurt. 

Mr Common Blue. A handsome chap.

Also on Bank Holiday Monday I made the next bread in the Bread book: White. It is, according to my bread guru Daniel Stevens, far harder to make good white bread than any other kind of bread.

Fortunately I started making white bread longer ago than I can remember and certainly before I knew it to be a tricky thing. This time I made rolls and I followed Daniel's advice to use half and half yoghurt instead of all water. In my head I think it's the additional protein in the yoghurt which makes the bread so fabulous, but I might be wrong. This is the type bread I make most often, but I might sneak in some wholemeal flour and a handful or two of sesame seeds and linseeds. Next: Spelt bread.

The Big Bread Bakeathon #2: Malted Grain Bread

Recipe number two in the River Cottage Bread book is Malted Grain bread. Daniel Stevens says it is 'like candlelight or a soft-focus lens, it is flattering - the Don Juan of home baking'. Don Juan or not, it did seem to be a well-tempered dough. I had time to rise it twice which improves the flavour. This time I divided the dough into two, one for my new 800g tin, the other to be baked on my trusty paving slab.

We scoffed it fresh from the oven with bowls of homemade spicy lentil soup. It got a resounding thmubs up again, especially for its really tasty crusty crust.

Next: White bread.

The Big Bread Bakeathon

I was reading the lovely Village Fate blog a few days ago where Kitty announced she was cooking her way through Pam Corbin's River Cottage Cake handbook in a sort of Julie/Julia project. Ah ha! I thought, I'd like to do that too. I don't have a copy of Cake (although I'd dearly love one) so I can't exactly join Kitty but then I do have River Cottage Handbook No. 3, Bread by Dan Stevens. Genius! I'll cook that.

Me and Bread are good friends and I have cooked quite a few recipes from it already but in the interests of this bakeathon I plan to cook all of them, in order, including the vetkoek and doughnuts which require (shudder) deep frying.

Bread is a good book to choose because you have to start it from the beginning. In fact Dan warns you, should you dare to enter the chapter entitled 'Beyond the basic loaf' that if you skipped the 'breadmaking step-by-step' chapter 'you need to go back and unskip it'. Ciabatta mustn't be attempted until you've had a certain amount of practice, he scolds.

So I began with the basic bread recipe that I make regularly, but one slips into sloppy habits so I went back and followed it through, step-by-step. Dan's very detailed about what each stage of the alchemy of breadmaking entails and I have found that if you follow each step exactly, the results are amazing.

The basic recipe gives you options, it's the technique that's all important here. So my options were: Flour - two thirds strong white, one third strong wholemeal; liquid - water; extras - sesame seeds; fat - walnut oil; coating - sesame seeds with a few cumin seeds tossed in for interest.

I baked it on my bakestone (a paving slab from Wickes) and these three loaves were the result.

I made a vegetable soup for dinner and we ate this loaf with it. Delicious.

The next chapter is variations on the basic bread recipe which begins with malted grain bread.