Over the last couple of weeks I’ve become a little bit obsessed with baking my own bread. I think this is partly due to re-runs of the Great British Bake Off and partly because I’m trying to start making things that are better for me – baking cakes is brilliant but doesn’t help with my diet and I seem to have stalled at a size 12 🙁

It started badly due to a typo in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a domestic goddess. The recipe stated a tablespoon of salt. A TABLESPOON! Now I haven’t made bread for a while but even so if I’d been using even a 5th of my brain that should have rung alarm bells. Apparently though this is what happens when you have kids, you stop paying attention and accept what’s written at face value. In fact the other day I got in the car to drive to the corner shop (it was raining) and automatically drove halfway to the supermarket before I even realised what I was doing. The bread did actually rise though by rights that much salt should have killed the yeast but was definitely inedible. The next couple of loaves were better – I slightly overcompensated and put almost no salt in before getting it right but ended up with yummy bread in a pretty plaited shape (above). Not perfect but very tasty. Tonight I was in a hurry so didn’t plait the loaf – instead it’s round(ish).

The kids have loved baking bread and the ex-science teacher in me has loved talking about the yeast making bubbles in the bread so it gets bigger. My husband is getting homemade bread for his sandwiches everyday and keeps winding me up that we’ll be living the Good life pretty soon.