DadTalk

The Family that Bakes Together

Baking together – and especially making our own bread – brings us all closer, says the French baker Richard Bertinet

Baking together – and especially making our own bread – brings us all closer, says the French baker Richard Bertinet.

His three children know all about real bread. Jack, nine, Tom, six, and Lola Maude, three, can tell a decent sandwich from the filled layers of pappy, additive-laced squares sold in most shops. If you ask them, they will tell you that they prefer sourdough to sliced white, which many parents would say makes them fairly unusual.

But their father, who is French, believes that all children would say the same if they were given the choice between real bread and what he calls the "bread-type product" with which we fill our supermarket trolleys. For millennia, bread has been the most fundamental basic of the human diet and if we get our bread right, Bertinet believes, the rest will follow. He even believes that it can bring parents closer to troublesome teenagers.

The surest way to learn about nutritious bread, Bertinet says, is to make your own. He's talking about getting your hands doughy, not turning blindly to a bread machine: "Those bricks can be as bad for you as white sliced." And he is a huge enthusiast for kitchen activity en famille. "If your children are uncommunicative, baking together breaks the ice. It changes the routine. And to make and eat your own home-made pizza or breadsticks – it's not a chore, but really positive."

To read the rest of this story including an easy bread recipe, check out the Guardian