Emma Bridgewater's captivating recipe for a happy family life: food, passion, work, love.' Meg Rosoff It's toast-time at BakeryBits and we want you to get adventurous about the flours you use for the bread you bake: so many possibilities...

Well being the devil I am I love Wiltshire lardy cake and marmalade, and also with butter spread on it. I’ve had friends say “are you actually insane and want to have a cardiac arrest” and I say “yes I am, this is my most delicious sin”. Honestly, it’s a rare treat that I get in Wiltshire and if you can find one of the few and possibly last bakeries still making them, you must try it. Also marmalade on Aberdeen Rowies for sure, as I’m from Scotland. Just warmed in the oven, split in half and slathered with butter and marmalade, absolutely one of the loveliest things ever. English muffins and crumpets too are a delight.Scatter the breadcrumbs on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until pale golden, turning them a few times with a spoon. Leave to cool. Meanwhile, tip the syrup into a pan and stir in the marmalade and ginger. Heat gently until the mixture is warm.

Now it does have big holes through it, and the marmalade can fall through. But the holes in our sourdough are not too big. Some sourdoughs have huge holes but ours are just right I believe. We try to keep a balance because we have some customers who love the holes and others who say they can’t butter their toast, “there’s not enough butter-to-bread ration because of the holes”, hehehe. Things like this. But I think we’ve found the balance. Ian & Dominique Pediani, owner-bakers at Big Bear Bakery, Glasgow, one of the top viennoiserie and retail bread bakeries in the city, making sourdough pastries, sweet treats, savouries, and sourdough bread.

Scrabble Tools

Yes I do eat marmalade. I have a neighbour at our shop named Paul who’d make marmalade every January and give me a pot. And then, only about a year and a half ago, I added it to my butter pound cake recipe and it was delicious, I loved it. But the best bread to eat with marmalade has got to be sourdough. It’s light – well, mine is, our “Brixton Sour”– it’s full of flavour, and I think it carries marmalade really well. I make our sourdough with a mix of white, wholemeal, rye and spelt, so it’s got a wholesome flavour but it’s a high-hydration, so it’s really light and makes great toast. In 2014, HTE had a funny turn. Maybe it just needed a better toaster. In retrospect, its insistence on using the grill to make toast was perverse. Grilling toast requires an untenable hawk-like attentiveness to catch it at its optimum doneness in that infinitesimal window between “still bread” and “carbonised Pompeii relic”. HTE is reconciled to the toaster as the realistic compromise: the Keir Starmer of kitchen appliances. Line the chilled pastry shell with a circle of baking paper (scrunch it up and open it out again so it fits nicely) and some ceramic baking beans (uncooked rice works well too). Bake the pastry shell, on a baking tray, for 20 minutes, then take the paper and beans out and bake for a further 10 minutes, until lightly golden.