Bread is good for you

Toast, sandwiches, bagels, naan, wraps, pitta…whichever way you butter it, bread is a splendid invention.

A slice or two contains many of the vital elements that fuel our bodies through the day, supplying B vitamins, calories, fibre, protein, iron and minerals. Knead we say more?

So keen are we on bread here at Bedruthan that we've organised a bread-making break especially for those of you who want to learn the art of leavening, kneading and fermenting.

The course is taught by Tom Hazzledine, aka Baker Tom. He started bread-making at the age of six, mixing up flour and water in the bathroom sink with his brother and baking it in the family oven. “We made a hell of a mess,” says Tom.

Now he bakes more than 200 organic loaves a day at his shop in Truro, and supplies Jamie Oliver’s 15 restaurant just down the road from us at Watergate Bay.

Tom’s been working hard to change bread’s bad wrap. His aim is to encourage people to rediscover bread in all its glorious forms and flavours, and to realise that bread can be good for you as well as delicious.

He believes industrially-made bread may be behind many of today’s wheat intolerances. “Supermarket bread has no real crust, so you don’t chew it properly,” he says. “Chewing triggers the enzymes needed to fully break down the bread in our stomachs.”

Tom makes a mean carrot, mustard and thyme bloomer, not to mention a fantastic foccacia and his Guinness and black treacle bread won the 2008 Royal Cornwall Show best new product award.

Tom is passionate about bread and loves running his master classes. “I help people produce better bread using their own oven and things they’ve probably got lying around already.

“Things like water sprays to create steam, garden tiles as pizza stones and terracotta pots instead of tins.

“Bread should be like any other food: you regularly make it yourself at home and get it from a restaurant or bakery when you don’t have time or fancy something special.”

Bedruthan’s Bread Making Break runs from the 5th to 7th of November and costs from £297 (£60 course fee).

http://www.bakertom.co.uk