Bread & Ice Cream

I was reading about bread today; it's a fascinating subject. Bread is a staple food that we have enjoyed for generations. Everyone has their own preference of bread - white bread, brown bread, black bread, wholemeal or rye bread, french bread, the list goes on.

If I think of the countries that I have visited over the years, the one thing I have noticed is that the bread differs from one country to the next. Just compare France, Italy and Germany for example; the bread in those countries varies enormously as does when it's eaten and what it's eaten with.

In England, bread is most commonly eaten in sandwiches - though ice cream sandwiches don't have bread in them! There's a popular, traditional English dessert called bread and butter pudding. It may not sound exotic but, cooked with the right recipe, it's delicious!

When it comes to traditional foods, bread has to be one of the classics - let's take medieval bread for example. The baking of bread around 600 years ago was taken very seriously and medieval bread recipes were surprisingly varied producing some wonderful sounding breads like pandemain, wastel and clapbread. Back to modern day bread, however ... if you like bread and butter pudding and want to try something a little different, Nigella Lawson has a super ginger jam bread and butter pudding recipe.

If that doesn't get your tastebuds going, then you can always try my recipe for brown bread ice cream. One thing I used to love as a child was eating the occasional strawberry jam sandwich ... I might just try that in a new ice cream recipe! Watch this space :)