food & Drink


water that you leave to go off, it starts to bubble, it’s full of yeast and bacteria, and if you neglect it, let it just fizzle out and fade over time without feeding it, or taking proper care of it, it will just not produce good bread.”


What mistakes do people always make?


“People say, ‘My loaf has just fallen apart into this wet pancake’. But almost always, even if you think your problem is completely unrelated, it’s down to the starter; your starter isn’t active enough. You just need to feed it more and feed it better.”


Do you name your starter?


“Absolutely not. If the starter’s not going well, or it’s really, really faded, you should just get rid of it; you shouldn’t have any sentimental attachment. Tere are people who have starters that are hundreds of years old and like to boast about this. But that doesn’t actually make any better bread.


“Starter hotels even exist. People will drop off their starters to other people to look aſter when they’re on holiday. You don’t need to do that. Just stick it in the fridge, it’ll be pretty resilient, and then give it a couple of feeds when you get back.”


Feeding it sounds quite complicated… “If you try and feed it every day, you’re just going to forget; you’re setting


yourself up for failure. Te key is actually to


keep it dormant in the fridge and only when you need it, take it out. Feed it with far more flour and water than is in the starter, and you’re gonna have a good loaf. Your starter should always at least double in size before you use it. And if you stick to that, you will not go far wrong.”


How oſten do you bake bread?


“I make bread two to three times a week, two to three loaves at a time. So we get through a lot of bread. I’ve been making the focaccia and my staple, the country loaf [in the book]. It’s mostly white, with a bit of rye or oatmeal in there to give it some earthy crunch.”


What’s your go-to toast topping?


“Peanut butter and banana on toast – I think it’s my number one at the minute. Peanut butter and jam – mostly involving peanut butter, to be honest, or scrambled eggs on toast. Anything that involves breads, I am pretty much for.”


When did you initially find yourself drawn to brewing beer?


“I did get into it as a student. One of my friends happens to be a UK champion homebrewer, and so he introduced me to this idea that homebrew wasn’t just something that


Why is it worth the effort of brewing your own?


“My first homebrew pint, I opened up, it fizzed everywhere and tasted sour, infected with the wrong sort of bugs – probably that had got there from my sourdough starter, actually. But the first taste of my first proper homebrew – which was an oatmeal stout in a 500ml Samuel Smiths bottle, with the remnants of gold foil around the top – I popped the cap and there’s this amazing hiss, and that hiss and that first bottle, there is no feeling like that in the entire world, it is awesome. Ten you pour it and it’s black with a head that almost looks like a pint of very nice Guinness. And you taste it, and it’s just so much better than any Guinness you have ever had.”


How straightforward is brewing?


“Like a sourdough, you’ve got to follow these scientific steps to get really, really good results, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it is possible.”


tasted dodgy, brewed in these big plastic buckets with little airlocks, that bubbled on top and was always sour, or the bottles were exploding.”


PROPERTYMAIL / 37


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