CHRIS RUNDLE

MAKING YOUR OWN BREAD COULDN'T BE EASIER, SAYS CHRIS, AND MAKING SMALLER ROLLS IS EVEN SIMPLER

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WE had quite a few concerns when, after scouring most of Devon and Somerset for a suitable retirement home, my nephew and his wife finally settled on premises in one of the highest and remotest villages on Exmoor.

How, we wondered, would they cope with the abrupt change of surroundings as they swapped a frenetically paced life in Sussex commuterland for a part of the country where they’re still marveling at the invention of the light switch.

There was the language barrier, for one thing, the thinner atmosphere for another. In the end we needn't have worried. They have both slipped into the rural lifestyle like a foot slipping into an old, familiar sock. They throw themselves into village activities, do classes for this and that, and have already laid down the first two courses of bricks on their way to becoming pillars of the community.

My nephew has even gone native to the extent of starting to make his own bread, filling the cottage with the alluring aroma of baking loaves as would have been a normal, everyday feature of life in it a couple of centuries ago.

But he is but one of a growing army of converts to the cause. Yet another who has stopped and read the lengthy list of ingredients on a white sliced wrapper and concluded that a couple of hours spent kneading, shaping and baking every week is far preferable to slow poisoning, as well as far more gratifying.

There are signs, indeed, that the home bread-making revolution is gathering pace, partly as a result of the growing disquiet about ultra-processed foods, fuelled most recently by Chris van Tulleken’s book Ultra-Processed People - and if you haven't read it then do so.