Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives

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The recipes are amazing hence the Christmas presents! I too found baking therapeutic as a teenager. My passion was making fudge. There is a fudge recipe in this book. I think beating the fudge to help it to set properly helped with my anxiety. This wasn’t mentioned in this recipe but we are all different. Swap 250g of the strong white bread flour for wholemeal flour. This results in an earthy loaf that makes you feel like you’ve been working in a field all day. In a mixing bowl, stir together the raisins, sultanas or mixed dried fruit and garam masala (and the cranberries if you want). Add the tea bag (English breakfast is fine, but earl grey adds a really nice fragrance) and pour in enough boiling water to cover. Set aside to steep for at least 15 minutes or overnight.

Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives: Kitty Tait

I chose this book because on the surface, it is about anxiety and depression, something I suffered from at a similar age to Kitty. I am always interested in how people cope with a mental health issue especially when you are still in your teens and in full time education. However, there is so much more to this book. Kitty is a strong woman with a wonderfully supportive family who not only allow her to recover in her own way without worrying about her schooling but help her every step of the way. It was a brave move for her father to give up the job of teaching to become a baker in partnership with his daughter. It is clear he knew he had no option. He writes about his amazing journey in this book and Kitty writes about hers. It doesn’t surprise me how much support this family received on their journey including from teachers at Kitty’s school. Lay the dough rectangle on the work surface with a longer side facing you. Brush the surface of the dough with the melted butter, sprinkle with the sugar and cinnamon, then lay the apple slices on top. The Orange Bakery, especially, has developed a cult following. An artist called Biddy who makes work about “anything that’s dead”, describes it to me as the heartbeat of Watlington. When I’m hanging around the shop, a man with his toddler son tells me, unsolicited, that the Taits make the best bread in the world. When I tell Kitty that later, she replies: “Well, I did pay him. Money well spent. The boy, actually, was the expensive one.” I think that bread, just like Dad, will always just be a part of me Kitty Tait For the first time ever, I experienced a world I could be totally part of. This was a world in which my anxiety played no part.” Serving suggestion Cut thinly, toasted and spread with a scraping of horseradish sauce, some smoked salmon and a couple of thinly sliced cornichons.Also I really like the form of the book, it being set up through Kitty's and Al's alternated writing, interspursed with pictures and drawings. A very lovely book to look at as well. The recipes are exiting, I don't know where to start first. Perhaps the marmite comfort loaf? I love marmite, such a shame it is not so big here in NL (I want marmite twiglets!!) I think it’s a testament to the recipe writing that the first one I chose to make was The Comfort Loaf – a white bread with marmite in. Considering I cannot stand marmite – like, I dislike it with a passion – this is quite the credit. Marmite is still not my thing – and I did have issues getting the bread out of the tin (my mistake) – just the smell of it coming out of the oven made me smile. There are some photographs scattered around the recipe section of the book, but the first half contains little sketches which I believe are done by one half of the baking team Al. They’re not necessarily professional drawings but they have their own charm. They’re simple and quirky but express what they’re meant to. It means they don’t overwhelm the text but instead complement it. Kitty and Al make a good team, and four years of 5am starts have done nothing to dent that. They have carved out their spaces in the operation – “I’m anything cheese-related,” says Al. “The cheese king is here!” – and have a closeness that not many fathers share with their teenage daughters. “When I got depressed and when I was dealing so badly with anxiety, you were the one who really, really understood,” Kitty tells Al. “And that’s because you’d also gone through depression, but you really listened. And I think because my brain was so fragmented, when it rebuilt, you were just kind of part of it. Most teenagers don’t have that as much, because they move away, but you’re not just my parent any more, you’re part of me. You’re my best friend, and you’re also my business partner. And you’re also just, like, my partner.”

Breadsong by Kitty Tait, Al Tait | Waterstones Breadsong by Kitty Tait, Al Tait | Waterstones

We are,” agrees Kitty, who has inherited her father’s vivid red hair and blue eyes. “We’re called the Tiny Taits.” Place a damp tea towel or shower cap over the rim of the bowl and leave in a cosy draught-free place to prove for hours – overnight is best. Like the fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a carriage, time transforms your scrappy, dull dough into a bubbly, live creature of its own, although I think I’d prefer the pumpkin over the carriage.After much reading, I finally reached the recipe section. I am not much of a baker, to say the least but I did think I might have some success with what looks like the easiest bread-making ever. The miracle overnight white loaf was as easy as it could possibly be. All it takes is time. Having mixed and proved the dough, it baked easily and came out a golden colour and had a terrific hollow tapping sound underneath which I have read is the sound you want when bread baking. Kitty is clearly very focussed and determined and before long their small home was filled with an industrial oven and other bread making paraphernalia with flour dust everywhere. Within a year of so Kitty and Al had opened The Orange Bakery in their village of Watlington near Oxford and one day Al realised that he was no longer a teacher but a baker. This is part memoir, part cookbook. The first part is written in two hands, between Kitty and Al (the father), describing their journey to help Kitty overcome her anxiety and their journey with the bakery as well as the two seemed to come together. I really loved reading this memoir and was totally obsessed by it (I read it over two days and probably also dreamt about it at night). Radio 2 has a lot to answer for; every time they feature an author on their Sunday morning show, I HAVE to go and buy it, and this was no exception.

Breadsong - How Baking Changes Lives - The Frugal Flexitarian Breadsong - How Baking Changes Lives - The Frugal Flexitarian

It evoked such a smell and image of freshly made bread that I had to pause reading it to make my own loaf so that I could continue reading with some warm fresh bread with an inch of butter melting slowly into it. It reminded me why I love baking bread so much. Line a deep baking tray with parchment paper. Place the dough slices cut-side down on the tray, spacing them 1cm apart. Place a damp tea towel over the top and leave in a warm place to prove for 40-45 minutes, or until doubled in size. Once your dough has risen and is bubbling away, tip it on to a lightly floured work surface. Remember it’s alive so the greater respect you show the dough with gentle handling, the more it will reward you and the better your loaf will come out. Gently shape the dough into a ball – a well-floured plastic dough scraper really helps here – making sure there is a light coating of flour all over. Much of the book is about baking and a career change but family life is described - the importance of Christmas, family dogs, meeting other families such as a wonderful family living in Copenhagen. Halfway through the resting time, preheat the oven to 210C fan/gas mark 9 or as high as it will go. Put a large cast-iron casserole dish with a lid and a heatproof handle into the hot oven for 30 minutes to heat up.

About the contributors

Breadsong is the first book from Kitty and Al Tait, the daughter-father duo that run The Orange Bakery in Watlington. It charts Kitty’s battle with depression and anxiety that saw her leave school and withdraw from her family, and the salvation she found in the simple act of baking bread with her dad. The first half of the book is Kitty and Al telling this story and the second half is full of recipes designed for the beginner baker. I read the whole book, but will try to star baking from it this weekend. So keep in mind that it this isn't a review of the accesibility of the recipes in it and yet I am not too worried seeing how accesible and original they are, sometimes quirky. When I first took this book out of the library I tried some recipes and made the decision not to buy shop bought bread anymore. I make bread every day now. I made my own sourdough starter and made a loaf that tasted better than any bread I had previously eaten. I really wanted this book and managed to find a copy that wasn't too expensive. I felt disappointed that the book was half filled with 'the journey' and I didn't want this part but bought it for the recipes. The second half is full of the recipes we saw being developed during the bakery's journey. As I read through, there were some I made a note of, hoping the recipe would be there (the Comfort and the Albert in particular) - and they were! There are also some amazing flavour combinations that I can't wait to get my teeth into. The instructions are clear, and I liked how the recipes worked together as a collection - using bases covered earlier on to develop different flavours and bakes, for example. Place the shaped dough on a sheet of parchment paper, cover with a damp tea towel and set aside in a warm, cosy place to rest for 1 hour.

Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives: Kitty Tait Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives: Kitty Tait

Kitty Tait at work in the Orange Bakery in Watlington, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Observer Kitty laughs to break the emotion. “Partner in crime!” she says in a sarcastic voice, before turning serious again. “And I love that.” And writing about it, I didn’t realise how emotionally exhausting it was going to be,” she goes on. “There’s all this trauma that I’d just pushed down and moved on from that I had to work my way through again. And that was really painful, but also really good because, at the end of it, I understood, not why I got ill or why I struggled, but I became immensely proud of myself. Beforehand, I’d felt really ashamed of my mental health: the times that I couldn’t get out of bed or the times when I just had to scream. And writing about it made me realise my mental health wasn’t my fault and it never really was. And there might be other people who might feel ashamed of their mental health.” Starting at one long edge, roll the dough into a tight log. Using a sharp knife or length of thread, slice the dough crossways into 12 equal slices, each roughly 2cm wide.The first half of Birdsong recounts how The Orange Bakery came to be, including Kitty's mental health struggles that led to her being introduced to breadmaking. I found the split father and daughter narration to be really engaging, with a good blend of (sometimes stark) emotional reality and humour.