Back to the real spirit of the blog: good food on a very tight budget. Obtained a copy of Jack Monroe’s new book, Cooking on a Bootstrap, and started with recipe no. 1: “basic white” bread. The recipe is as simple as one can get, even simpler and cheaper than my previous bread post.

Cooking on a Bootstrap – Basic White Loaf

Ingredients:

• 400 g plain white flour.
• 1½ level teaspoons dried yeast.
• Pinch of salt.
• 250 ml warm water.
• Teaspoon of oil.

What to do:

Mix the flour, year and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Add the water, stirring everything together to make a dough.

Knead the dough for 10 minutes. Jack suggests rubbing a teaspoon of oil onto the palms of your hands first, and it does work well, stopping the fresh dough sticking to you.

Let the dough rise under a tea-towel for 1 hour, then into the over at 180°C for 40 minutes.

The result is an uncomplicated plain white loaf, which, including electricity and washing-up, cost about 40p a loaf using a mini-oven, or 4 pence per thick slice. (Baking it in a large, high wattage oven would, of course, raise the cost by 10p or more.)