Crumbs

Long before I understood what sourdough bread was, or tried making it, I made simple 'tin loaves' like this. If anything is 'typical' British bread, this is it - and that was the case long before the invention of the 'Chorleywood bread process' (CBP} in 1961 led to the large scale industrialisation of bread-making, and eclipsed small-scale bakeries. 80% of bread is now made by CBP

There was an industrial bread-making process prior to Chorleywood: a company called the Aerated Bread Company was founded in the mid 19th century and grew to have 150 city shops and 250 'tea rooms' - the latter were quite a social phenomenon, and popular with sufragettes. The bread was made without yeast at all, by forcing carbon dioxide into the dough. The description of the final product sounds like Mother's Pride at its worst. ABC bread never took over the world like the Chorleywood process has done, and the bread fell out of fashion well before Chorleywood was developed

I make almost all our bread, and about half of it is like this. I use a mix of flours, some of them with whole-grains and seeds in. I also put some sourdough starter in the dough - I think this improves the flavour, but it has no significant impact on the rising of the dough, because its shy, wild yeasts are completely dominated by the commercial bread yeast that I add. I also add some oil - 3 tablespoons in this loaf - which some bakers regard as heresy. Possibly even more controversial, I kneed the dough in oil, rather than in dry flour, which certainly adds even more oil to the dough

This is a '500 gram loaf'. Bakers know that this means that it is based on 500g of flour, not that it weighs 500g. In fact, the addition of all the other ingredients almost doubles it - this one is 930g. A yeasted tin loaf is 'quick' bread by my standards. I started this at about 1.30pm, and took it from the oven at 8.30pm. Chorleywood will turn flour into a sliced, cooled, packaged loaf in 3.5 hours

I do not entirely disparage CBP bread; it enables the use of flour with lower protein content, which means more locally-grown wheat and less imports - also a lower use of nitrogen fertiliser. CBP bread is a perfectly edible food, produced at low cost. I prefer the taste of mine, and I think it's more digestible. I do not claim, however, as traditional bakers did when resisting the competition of aerated bread, that the alcoholic fermentation that makes the bread rise means it contains gin