A trinity of breads

Meltdown-causing soda bread. It was alright in the end.

Baking seems to have become a theme of this lockdown – when we can get hold of flour that is. Instagram is full of sourdough starters. I have a theory that this is partly a comfort thing, and partly to do with baking – and cooking in general – being something we can still have a measure of control over, when everything else feels out of our hands. More on this later. I am not making sourdough, as it feels like enough responsibility keeping myself and my husband healthy, without having to worry about a sourdough starter as well.


I have however, been making various other types of bread – at least since the farmers market started supplying flour. Let us begin with a cautionary tale of ingredient substitution. I decided to make soda bread. Requiring neither yeast nor specific bread flour, this should/could be a good lockdown bread. The version I made pre all of this comes from The Sportsman cook book (The Sportsman is a gastro pub extraordinaire near Whitstable in Kent), and features a long and chef-y list of ingredients, including treacle, and two different  types of flour. However, as I’ve made this before, I had these in the cupboard, and as we were supposed to be going to The Sportsman next week, this would be the next best thing. There was one problem: a major ingredient of soda bread is buttermilk, which I can’t get hold of. It seems to have vanished from supermarket delivery listings. But another soda bread recipe I looked at said if you add lemon juice to milk, hey presto, you get buttermilk, no other adjustments required. Did it work? Reader, it did not work. When I added the buttermilk, instead of a nice dough, I had a wet, sludgy mess. At this point, I had a bit of a meltdown, because, well, I am not the calmest cook at the best of times, lots of things are shit right now, and baking is one of the things give me an illusion of control (see above).


When I calmed down, I decided to try and fix it. I added some more flour. And then some more. And then some more. And just before I ran out of the right type of flour, it came together as a recognisable dough. And in the end, it was the closed approximation to what it actually served at The Sportsman that I have ever managed. I should probably learn to cook more calmly, but I am not convinced that a global plague is the best catalyst for self-improvement.

Look at that crumb...

If you have made it this far, I will reward you with my very reliable flatbread recipe. It’s in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg, and goes like this (this makes about 8 flatbreads – if you don’t need/want that many, the dough freezes extremely well):

Mix 250g each of plain and bread flour with a generous pinch of salt, and a teaspoon of dried yeast. Then add 325ml of water and a tablespoon of olive oil, and bring together to form a (quite sticky) dough. Knead for 5-10 minutes, depending on how energetic you’re feeling – the dough will get less sticky as you knead.  Put the dough in an oiled bowl and leave to rise for two hours, then knock back.

At this point, I usually divide the dough into four portions and freeze it. Each portion will make two decent sized flatbreads, or one pizza base. To cook the flatbreads just divide up the dough, roll out to desired thickness (you will need flour for this), and cook – I use a griddle pan, but a fairly solid frying pan should also work.

I make these flatbreads so often, they have never felt special enough to take a photo of, so here's one I used to make arayas, from an earlier post.

The last of baking trinity is a bit more exotic – saffron breads from Sabrina Ghayour’s Bazaar. They’re a version of traditional Persion bread, according to the recipe intro. This is a no-knead recipe but I did knead the mixture a little bit, which I think made for lighter end result. As they require saffron, bread flour and milk, I’m not sure how good they are for the confined kitchen, but sometimes it’s good to make something which is more like the time BC (Before Corona). Incidentally, for something which might be more useful, it’s worth checking out Sabrina’s website, where she’s posted a series of three-ingredient recipes, including a flatbread that requires neither bread flour nor yeast.

Saffron bread

PS Is this the longest post we’ve had on here? Feels like it might be. Well done to anyone who’s made it this far!