THE BENEFITS OF BAKING YOUR OWN

Folic acid aside, making your own bread is a brilliant thing to do, and it’s not a hipster monopoly – it’s what ordinary people have done, all over the world, for thousands of years. Homebaked bread has a number of health benefits, both mental and physical. It’s a fun and fulfilling craft.

Having first made my own loaf of bread about 50 years ago – and millions more over 25 years as a full-time village baker – I still get a kick out of taking a loaf of bread out of the oven.

By making your own bread, you can control an important part of your diet, and avoid the ultra-processed loaves that you might find in supermarkets. Most of these are made with highly refined flour that’s been stripped of important nutrients plus a host of opaquely described additives and processing aids.

Serving up your own nutritious, filling, homemade bread can take pressure off both your belt and budget. There is an important connection between gut health and mental health and we can get the diverse good bacteria we are missing by using more wholemeal flour. You need to ferment your dough for several hours to get all the benefits, one of which is a doubling of the amount of natural folic acid.

Choosing your own bread flour also lets you buy from agroecological farmers.

Home-made bread needs only a few ingredients: flour, water, yeast, perhaps a little salt – and time, of course. Real bread ferments well while you’re busy doing other things.

Home-baked bread can also be economical. About a third of shop-bought bread is wasted before it’s eaten. But nobody who bakes their own bread is going to throw it away – if you make your own bread, you’re going to love it and look after it like a newborn, because it’s something precious that you’ve made yourself.

Andrew Whitley, founder of the Real Bread Campaign, as told to Claudia Rowan