Its strange that when, when in life, you think you've just got the measure of doing something well another person comes along and shows you a way to get much better results from your actions. A few weeks ago I raved about the making of bread and how much I enjoyed it. Well, when the village all came together for a garden party to celebrate the wedding of Kate and Wills we all brought a dish for the buffet. On the table was some beautiful bread: Crisp rustic crust, full of flavour and oh so much better than you could buy in a shop.

We enquired as to who the producer of this bread was and as it happens we know the gentleman concerned (henceforth, known as the Bread Machine) very well.

The beautiful wife arranged for us all to get together and bake bread -I learned so much.

My dough is now much wetter, I always make a starter of flour, sugar, water and yeast which I leave for a few hours. I've even started using real yeast (you can actually buy this on Amazon!)
In short My bread making has gone from strength to strength - I even made Croissants the other day and now the beautiful wife won't hear of having any "shop bought" breakfast snacks!