Back in the late 1970s there was a bread strike and housewives had to make their own or do without. To me this was the best thing that could have happened because I’ve never looked back.
I was just about to leave school and beginning to really take an interest in what was going on in the kitchen. I could make a batch of scones, bake a simple cake and knock up what has become a signature dish in my household, Beef Stew, but that was about it. My bread at that point was so heavy if you fed it to the ducks on the park lake they’d sink.
My older brothers had many friends who had motorbikes. One of them in particular, Alan, known by the nickname ‘whiplash’, wore old leathers and oily jeans, had straight black hair half way down his back with a thin leather thong tied around his forehead, not a pretty sight. But one of the sweetest people you could meet, such a gentle character and fantastic with kids, nothing like his quite menacing appearance.
We were aware Alan was a Baker, working in a small bakery. After a conversation between him and my mother about the bread strike one evening, he suggested he showed her, and subsequently me, how to make bread. Although concerned about his not so hygienic appearance the need for a decent loaf was so desperate, she agreed quite enthusiastically.
He arrived at the house a different person, scrubbed up and raring to go. He even brought a gift for both my mother and me, a well seasoned antique small loaf tin each. It is one of the prized possessions of my kitchen and my mother’s, she has even said she will bequeath it to me in her will, but I'll not be getting my hands on until then.
These tins are suposed to be over 100 years old, yet only they will know just how old they really are. The bakery they belonged to originally closed down before the war and they were sold at auction. The Turog name continued to compete with Hovis until the 1950s but after WWII tins were made with the Logo in an arched design not straight.
Without using scales he made two loaves by eye. One bag of flour (they were 2lb bags then) straight into the Kenwood Chef bowl, holding back just enough to sprinkle on the bench to work with later. Followed by an old 50p sized (50ps were slightly bigger in the 70s) amount of salt into a cupped hand, a couple of ounces of fresh yeast crumbled into the mixture and added blood warm water, using the machine on to do the bulk of the kneading and subsequently taking the hard work out of the job. When he thought it was ready he put the dough on the table to check by hand that it was right, showing my mother and I how it should look and feel. Then going through the rising process once, knocking back dividing into two and left to rise and finally cooked in a hot oven.
The best bread I’d tasted ever. That was it, so easy Mother and I were hooked.
Now I usually make it by eye, but I have also measured out the basic ingredients for referencing here.
