I am a disciple of John Seymour (1914- 2004), the original ‘bread-winner’. His writing style captured the hearts of sedentary city-dwellers in the 1970s, pining for a wholesome self-sufficient lifestyle of the sort that has resurfaced today among off-grid smallholders. Living, as we do, 15 minutes from a Waitrose, should guarantee a degree of nutritional contentedness. Not so. We maintain that it is impossible to buy a decent loaf there. Yes, there is pane Pugliese from Italy, sourdough from San Francisco and German pumpernickel, but perhaps it is asking too much of a supermarket to supply an English artisan loaf. On market days, a baker from Poland sets up his stall and profits from those leaving Waitrose without the staff of life. His loaves sell at eye-watering prices – and he saw us coming. In an aspirational market town, whose school produced the next Queen of England, you don’t get...
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