Milk Bread

Never mind panic buying of fuel, step into North West London today to witness panic buying of matza. Passover begins in 5 days and observers of the festival are stocking up as if they were about to re-enact the bit where the Jews wander in the desert for 40 years. Passover is only 8 days, I say confidingly to the woman in front of me in the queue, her trolley stacked so high with Rakusens that you can't see past it. Maybe, she says wearily, but in those 8 days I will be called on to feed the 5,000. Something about all this Passovery brings out the rebel in me. I have bought only 2 boxes of matza, because of course I know that the supermarkets will still be selling the evil stuff throughout the festival. Maybe even at half price. Meantime watching people cart it away by the truckload gives rise to an urgent desire to eat bread, loads and loads of it. Bread is the anti-matza. Actually anything that does not have the taste and texture of cardboard is the anti-matza, but bread is its special antithesis. We can't have it for 8 days. So it's what I crave, right now, even before privation sets in. And not just any bread. Warm , buttery milk bread, recipe taken from Dan Leppard, a man who knows more about the stuff than I ever will and whose recipes are a work of both science and art. So. Straight home, up to my elbows in flour milk, syrup, butter, salt and oil, and all the effort produces a loaf smelling tantalisingly like your childhood memory of teatime sandwiches. In less than an hour, the loaf is history. So is the butter. And the honey. And the Nutella.