(which can be turned into a wide variety of seriously good things to eat)
Learn to make bread. Honestly. Not only is it about a hundred times better than the bought stuff, but people are impressed out of all proportion to the amount of effort required.
In a large bowl, mix together:
2 cups of warm water (warmer than tepid, cooler than a hot cup of tea)
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of yeast
Leave for 10 minutes or so, until it froths up, and then add:
4½–5 cups of plain flour
1 teaspoon of salt
a slop of oil
Knead to a smooth dough. (A breadmaker or a mixer with a dough hook makes this really easy, but if you don’t have either, mix the ingredients in the bowl until they stick together, tip the dough out onto a clean bench top dusted with flour and knead for a few minutes by hand.) Leave the dough to rise somewhere warm for about half an hour, then turn into one of the following:
Cottage loaf Put a greased casserole dish in the oven and then heat the oven to 200°C. Whip out the hot casserole dish, sling in the ball of dough, make a couple of artistic-looking slashes across the top, dust lightly with flour and bake for 40 minutes. Comes out with a lovely chewy crust.
Foccacia Roll the dough out to cover a greased baking tray, sprinkle with your choice of oil/crushed garlic/chopped rosemary leaves/grated parmesan/caramelised onion and cream cheese/sea salt/anything else you fancy and bake at 180°C for 30 minutes.
Pizza base Heat the oven to 200°C. Divide dough into 4 and roll each portion out thinly, to cover a greased oven tray. Cover – not too thickly; less is more with pizza toppings – with toppings of your choice and bake for 10 minutes.
Calzone Merely a fancy term for a pizza that you fold in half like an apple turnover before baking. Bake as for pizza.
Dinner rolls Divide dough into 12 portions and roll each into a ball. Place them on a greased baking dish, not quite touching, brush them with beaten egg for a high-gloss veneer and bake at 190°C for 30 minutes.
Bread sticks Divide dough into 12 portions and roll each into a long skinny tube. Brush each one with oil and roll in grated cheese for extra delectability. Arrange them 5 centimetres apart on 2 greased oven trays and bake at 190°C for 20–30 minutes.
Pita pockets Divide dough into 8 portions. Roll each portion out into a thin circle and dust with flour. Heat your oven as high as you possibly can and bake 2 pockets at a time for 3 minutes on an oven tray lined with baking paper, then flip them over and bake for another 3 minutes. They puff up beautifully.
Bagels Divide dough into 8 portions. Shape each one into a ring and leave to rise for half an hour or so. Toss 4 at a time into a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes, then fish them out, line them up on 2 greased baking trays, brush them with beaten egg and bake at 180°C for another 25 minutes. Dense and chewy and delicious.
Camping cheesy buns Take a small lump of dough, flatten it slightly, fold it around a smaller lump of cheese and cook it for 5 minutes a side on the hot plate of a barbecue. Very popular with children, and, for some reason, tastes 40 times better than it would if baked in the oven.
