Otherwise known as ‘Paul Hollywood is a genius!’ I got a little bit obsessed by The Great British Bake Off in the summer. I may have all the books. I may also have a chocolate teacake mold, (this one’s pretty good – De Buyer 1961.01 Moul ‘ Flex Silicone Baking Mould – 6 Hemispherical Cakes )
which were SOLD OUT within about 3 hours of a particular episode going out, but that’s another blog post.

For Christmas, I was given Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake . This book is amazing and I could look at it for hours (which I have done). The pictures are beautiful and everything is very easy to follow. I like to bake, but I’ve never really baked bread (save for a slightly manky plaited loaf at junior school), but with visions of homemade bread rising all over the place and that lovely smell… I decided to give it a go.

It was all a bit spur of the moment so I didn’t have most of the ingredients to make proper bread with yeast but I had the right things to make good old proper soda bread.

I mixed everything up, shaped it (alright yes, pretending I was on the Bake Off) and whacked it in the oven. And it came out looking like actual bread!

Amazed is not the word. It also tasted pretty damn good and as you have to eat it quite quickly, within a day or so, we had it with a very tasty breakfast tea and the next day as the toast bit in cheese on toast with homemade chilli jam. Delicious!