Bloomer

I can't help feeling unreasonably proud of today's bread. This is a bloomer, characterised by the diagonal slashes across the loaf, which are decorative (and would be more so if I'd got the distance between them uniform) and help the dough rise tidily.

At Blackheath Farmers Market one of the bread stalls serves something called a London Bloomer, with six slashes. They claim this was introduced during the war, and the slashes divided the loaf into seven portions, to see you through the week. This must be nonsense. Without preservatives etc this bread will be rock hard by Wednesday.

Bread-making can become an obsession, as the number of blogs about it shows. I don't think I'm becoming obsessive, but I will just note that this loaf is stone-baked, with steam, using Allinsons Seed and Grain flour.