It’s your bread and butter

Is there anything better than homemade bread and butter?

If you think not, then you’ll appreciate Bread & Butter by baker Richard Snapes and chef Grant Harrison - it’s both a cookbook, and a cultural and historical look at two of our most fundamental foods. We’ve grown incredibly used to sliced white, largely because “it tastes like cake”, says Richard, when “real bread should only be flour and water and a little salt.”

The 90-100 sourdough loaves he sells a day, though, are the epitome of real. However, ask him about the age of his sourdough starter (wild yeast) and you’ll be treated to a wry eye-roll.

“I have a bee in my bonnet about starter stories,” he says, incredulous at the bread world’s penchant for putting ancient ones on a pedestal.

Of his signature field loaf, a versatile plain loaf loaded with wheat, he says: “It’s really nostalgic. It smells like a field of harvested wheat after it’s rained.”

Bread & Butter: History, Culture, Recipes by Richard Snapes, Grant Harrington and Eve Hemingway is published by Quadrille, priced £22