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and seem to cater for every conceivable preference. But are these real choices?
    The world’s seeds and plant breeding programmes are dominated by a handful of global corporations, as is the trade in key food commodities. Four supermarket chains account for the majority of retail sales in the UK. Yes, these companies compete against one another. But they do so from within a single monolithic view of how the world should feed itself. Standardisation in the name of ‘efficiency’ and cost reduction has led to increasing dependence on just a few varieties of key crops and methods of processing. Over 80 per cent of British bread is made by the ultra-fast, additive-dependent Chorleywood Bread Process. Much of the rest, particularly in the supermarkets’ in-store bakeries, uses a similar range of chemical and enzyme additives in the process known as activated dough development. For most consumers, ‘choice’ between breads is meaningless because they are all made in essentially the same way.
    Meanwhile, advertising keeps alive the illusion of choice. It emphasises minor differences between brands or varieties and keeps very quiet indeed about what really goes into, or is left out of, our daily bread.
    Not surprisingly, disappointment with the bland character of overprocessed food is fuelling a growing outrage at the food industry’s lack of transparency and cynical exploitation of farmers, process workers and consumers. People are realising that the undoubted convenience of processed food comes at the expense of any sense of control over our most basic nourishment. If the food industry won’t tell us what is really in our food, how can we make sensible choices, let alone feel that we are doing the right thing for the health of ourselves and our families?
    It is time to take matters into our own hands. One way of fighting back is to refuse to buy foods produced in ways we find unacceptable. Making bread at home enables us to take control of a significant part of our diet by choosing exactly what goes into it. But if this control is to be real, we must first define what wholesome, nutritious and digestible bread really is. Simply to imitate commercial loaves is to accept the industrial food agenda.
    My aim is to show that making good bread is not difficult.

One step at a time
    Many people think that baking bread takes too long. It is true that to make a well-fermented loaf takes quite a while. But it doesn’t need to take much of your time – i.e. time that you may not have or feel you cannot spare. Breadmaking is a sequence of relatively short actions interspersed with periods of waiting. Here are the stages involved in making a simple loaf and the amount of time that each takes:

     
    So all it takes is half an hour or so of your time. This can be spread over 4, 12 or 24 hours, depending on the method you use and the other demands on your time.
    The important point is that a pressured lifestyle doesn’t have to entail rushed bread. Forget the claims of bread machines that promise a loaf in little more than an hour. If fermentation is involved, for reasons of nutrition and flavour that only the slow baker can appreciate, the longer the better.

The simple life
    There is only a handful of basic breadmaking methods. Don’t be misled by books that boast prodigious numbers of recipes; many will be no more than small variations on a theme. Be inspired by new ideas by all means, but do not be intimidated by the apparent size of the task ahead. Baking is easy once you understand what is happening at the heart of it.
    ‘When there is a conscious sensuous pleasure in the work itself, it is done by artists,’ wrote William Morris 1 . ‘Artisans’ do not reject the appropriate use of machines but they decline to be dominated by them. They gain satisfaction from intimate contact with the materials of their trade and from direct involvement in the whole process from flour to baked loaf. The feel of soft, warm dough under the