I LOVE bread. I know it’s an obvious thing to say – I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I didn’t love bread.

You put a load of flour and water together with a bit of yeast and salt, give a good old mix and a knead, leave it for a while, pop it in the oven and, before too long, you have something delicious to eat.

It smells fantastic and tastes even better. One of humanity’s greatest discoveries, up there with fire and the internet.

There is, however, a second miracle that can happen to bread. It’s what happens when you pop it under a grill or into a toaster. It’s the miracle that we call toast.

Who doesn’t enjoy toast? Can you think of anything as comforting as a couple of rounds of toast and a pot of tea? It’s the ultimate ‘don’t worry, it will be alright’ food. Had a bad day at work? Here’s your toast. Boyfriend issues? Toast. Your team lost again? Never mind, here’s some toast.

You can do so much with it: plain butter, jam, lemon curd, marmite, marmalade, honey, chocolate spread and many other inventive toppings. Older folk will remember toast with dripping on it. I’ve recently got back into jam. Nothing better.

We always say with our bread that the first day it will be fine, the second day it will be fine and then the third day use it for toast (however, many of our customers assure us that it doesn’t normally last until the third day but is gone well before then). Older bread can be given a new lease of life by toasting it.

We’ve done a lot of testing of new recipes recently. A black olive sourdough made an appearance at Keswick Market the other week. It sold out fairly rapidly. Raisin and walnut sourdough will be doing the rounds shortly too. It will complement our yeasted variety.

We are also continuing to develop our range of rye breads too as well as developing vegan enriched dough breads. There’s always lots to do. We never really stop.

As they say, keep calm and carry on toasting. Nothing wrong with that as a way to approach life. Should pop it on a T-shirt.