This loaf can be made – start to finish – in under 2 hours and so is a god-sent recipe for impromptu meals.

I always use wholemeal flour from Lurgashall Mill, just a few miles away. It is good to search out local flour mills whenever you can: generally the quality – -and the prices – are great!

Ingredients (1 loaf)

• 300 ml warm water (~40degC)
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast (or 15g of fresh yeast)
• 1 tablespoon runny honey
• 125 g strong white flour
• 140 g wholemeal flour
• 100 g rolled oats (not instant oats)
• 40g mixed seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, linseed, poppy: you choose!
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt
• 10g butter

Method

1. In a large bowl, sprinkle the yeast onto the warm water and stir until the yeast dissolves. Stir in the honey and set aside until the yeast blooms and swells a bit – 5 – 10 minutes.
2. Mix in the flours, oats, mixed seeds and salt and stir very well. Allow to relax for a few minutes.
3. Grease a loaf pan generously with the butter. Turn the dough into the tin, cover with a clean, slightly damp cloth, and set in a warm place for 60 minutes, to rise.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C, with a rack in the middle. When ready, bake the bread for 35-40 minutes, until golden and pulling away from the sides of the pan.
5. Remove from oven, and turn the bread out of the pan immediately. Let it cool on a rack so it doesn’t steam in the pan.

Serve warm, slathered with butter. Heaven.