Nothing is so close to the heart as the home-made loaf. Perhaps it is no coincidence that heart and hearth are so close phonetically…the hearth being where all bread was once baked, and that hearth and home were once synonymous, that threshing of the grain was indeed done on the threshold.

I know, images of door-stops/bricks/soy-based concoctions easily come to mind.

But then the triumph of the first perfect loaf…a perfect moment as well.

Once one has the “knack” its good bread from there on in…with of course forgivable digressions from the path and the occasional slip of the mind…happens to professionals as well, don’t worry. 

It is said that in the traditional village, in the before time, the residents knew what the(usually skilled) baker had been up to as soon as their gaze struck the fresh new loaves…the bakers wife left to receive quizzical glances in the morning hopefully amused, but also with the sharp glance im sure, when the baker and his crew got into the cider…or worse during the bake. These loaves being a bit more sour, if a sourdough, or flatter and not well risen, perhaps left to prove too long or too fast; the bakers dreaded pancake loaves…too crusty to boot, burnt edges even, which of course many relish. But always edible, this is the “character” in bread, the extreme in this case, but its characteristic variation, now hard to find as even artisan bread is so formulated…the bakers character really, and its crunchy bits!

Home-made bread similarly has your own character stamped into it, however daunting and revealing this may be.

Sometimes it is one's own anguish one must confront at home when the bread doesn’t work. Hopefully we benefit from zen-like realisations about the dough getting too cold or the water not being warm enough, or simply that we don’t pay enough attention, which filter into us. It is said to be therapeutic to make bread - on a more visceral level, it is certainly easier to digest and relish well-made bread. 

There may be a question about whether to make wholemeal or white? Either really, because making your own gives you the choice. There is nothing more delicious and homely than the wholemeal loaf, provided it is not damp and heavy! The sweetness of good wholemeal wheat even eliciting rapturous comments from hardened critics such as Elizabeth David, who favoured the soft wholemeal of Tipperary. This soft flour requires a minimum of preparation, not requiring long proof and vigorous kneading, and wont be a high-rise, but will be a memory cathedral of flavour. Strong wholemeal such as Canadian or Kazakh are not suited to this particular homely loaf . The soft wholemeal of home or a cooler climate is best, as this loaf is not architectural, more thatched cottage.

But when the home-baker wants a nice white bread to best carry the seasons berry jams, this is easy and rewarding because it is not the soft wooly white bread of commerce, but stands up to skilful toasting for that quintessential crunch, a flavourful palate for the raspberry jam you have just made or purchased at the farmers market.

 The home baker can also mix wholemeal and white to various proportions for the best of both worlds, well beyond what one can purchase. The adventurous can also mix in some chestnut or rye flour and approach gastronomic triumph!

The home-made loaf is there for days if you have baked enough (and the hordes have not descended) to be swooned upon when  freshly baked, warm and crusty with butter, later with the suitable stew, the next day as sandwiches of delight and the following day as bench-mark toast. A German visitor  to England during the Elizabethan era commented that English toast was really a master-piece, clearly not done in his homeland, and carefully done in England of yore before the fire which roasted the other famous skill of the English, roasting beef and other meats.

Clearly toast is not regarded as a gastronomic triumph today…except perhaps in the homes of those who bake very good bread,  who have learned to make a larger size loaf so the slice is greedily large and perfect under a grill.…to become a butter-glistening honeycomb of benchmark toast.

 The Italians really take toast to the edge with bruschetta. The simplest version is made by rubbing a raw garlic clove into the freshly toasted bread as soon as it is out of the toaster, then applying good sweet butter or EV olive oil. Nothing more is needed. Or it can be eaten  topped with ones own indulgences, mine being the fresh heirloom tomatoes from my garden.

 Bruschetta sorts the wheat from the chaff in that it cannot be made with inferior bread. Try rubbing a garlic clove into a supermarket white sliced…it doesn’t work. The process needs a strong well aerated “hard” bread, well-made sourdoughs being perfect…home-made bread or at least not industrial. For garlic lovers, this IS garlic bread!.

The classic pre-industrial English loaf easily made at home makes exceptional toast, the taste/flavour/aroma are gene-spliced with us, deeply delicious and satisfying As the owner of a few bakeries I have seen many swoon as they enter, the air filled with roasty wheaten aromas, mouth-watering bearing  the promise of soul satisfaction….and I must say, quite different to the aroma of in-house supermarket bakeries, or even their bread section, now replete with almost unidentifiable aromas. After one organoleptic session in a supermarket I concluded that the bakers had somehow incorporated old hessian bags in the process, so un-identifiable was the smell and unlike bread. What DO they do to make the breads smell so un-breadlike?

Not so the home-baked loaf, the classic cartoon of the whiff filling all space for quite some distance comes to mind, with the hapless lured into the kitchen by the siren of foods.

It is also economic to make ones bread, with the “economics” including sensory welfare as well as monetary, not to mention nutritional. The rival store-bought loaf with all its soft appeal cannot rival the home-made-loaf, unless we include water as nutrition! 

Water is a major component of factory bread, cleverly chemically bonded with minor amounts of flour and larger amounts of added gluten and other glues to bond it all. Nutrition also includes ones ability to absorb nutrients from said food, with factory bread not only being impossible to chew, one must simply swallow the wad. Descending into the tummy, desperately assaulted by our digestive-juice army, eventually calling in air-strikes from whatever liquid will flush it all down, it is hardly digested, simply moved along.

 But this can be the fate of the home-loaf greedily consumed by the unwary, with aphorisms of old about waiting til the loaf is “cured” taunting our sore tummies. Indeed and seriously, sourdough bread of all really requires to at least cool, but is immeasurably better the next day - the exception being the crust which may be torn and devoured warm, even turned into an art form by the wily French bread-lovers. The loaf of crust, the baguette, able - indeed expected - to be eaten immediately after baking.

The tinned bread is perhaps the staple of the home-baker. Their art is crusty bread, which can reach dizzy heights from a skilled home baker. But whichever one chooses, however skilled or not, here and now the home-baked loaf is invariably better on many levels than bread which is purchased.