Bread

I live with someone who is allergic to yeast. This is a relatively recent discovery, a mystery solved through long trial and error that now feels like the scientific breakthrough of the century. Cutting out yeast has solved the mystery of the overblown hangovers, the mystery of the inconsistent energy levels and many, many more, and has generally just improved everything – the scientific breakthrough of the century, like I said.

The unfortunate consequence of this (all of the most important discoveries have their downsides) is that we no longer eat bread – him because he is allergic to it, and I because it makes him jealous and I feel bad. I don't really mind this in general (after all, Novak Djokovic went gluten-free and then won three consecutive Australian Open titles, which has to be an endorsement of some kind) but it has led us on a strange quest to discover as many yeast-free alternatives as possible.

This has mostly involved tortilla wraps (there is now no end of things we can achieve with a toasted tortilla), but yesterday I finally got round to baking soda bread, which as it turned out was the most satisfying yeast-free option yet. It looks, smells and acts like bread, requires no proving and virtually no kneading and tastes, well, better probably.

I used Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, which can be found here.