…the morning after.

OK I’ll ‘fess up now that DM and I have been furtively watching “The Great British Bake Off”. It’s the first and only reality TV show we have watched other than the sublime “Come Dine With Me” which, even after all these years, is still “must watch” TV for me. Although they are both ostensibly cookery programmes, they couldn’t be more different. The GBBO is about craftsmanship, whereas CDWM is about showing off.

This week’s show, for anyone who doesn’t watch the GBBO was about bread making. Now I’m a committed bread maker as anyone around these pages for a while will know already. In recent times, I’ve become more and more transfixed by two things – fresh yeast and slow rise.

I know there are lots of folks who’d say “why bother with fresh yeast” when the dried stuff is easier to find and easier to use. Neither of these objections to the real deal are really true in as much as one of our national supermarket chains (Morrisons) sells fresh yeast (no really, it does, it’s in the chilled cabinets next to the chilled ready-made pastry) and I find it just as easy to use. I don’t bother with any of that old-fashioned stuff like creaming it and mixing it with lukewarm water. I just crumble it between my fingers into the other ingredients and let the dough programme on the bread machine do the rest. For anyone with a thing about tactility, there is nothing like fresh yeast to get your fingertips going!

For months now I’ve been making a weekend treat of spiced, fruited bread rolls for our breakfasts. I mix the dough in the machine while I’m cooking Friday night's supper, then I roll it out thinly, spread raisins that have been soaked in water all over the dough, roll it up, give it a quick knead to distribute the fruit then cut the dough into 16 pieces about the size of a large walnut. They get (roughly) shaped, placed on a buttered baking tray then put into plastic “tents” where they remain, on the work surface, overnight. Notice (because it’ll prove important) the space between each roll on the tray when they go into the tent!

When I come down stairs on Saturday morning I switch on the oven while making the tea and letting out the dogs then the rolls come out of their tent, get put into the hot oven and baked for a mere 10 minutes. The house is filled with the scent of sweet, spicy bread and we get to enjoy our first cup of coffee of the day with hot buttered rolls straight from the oven. The surplus rolls go in the freezer for next weekend.

I doubt they’d meet Paul Hollywood’s exacting standards but for me they’re a perfect start to the day.