Daily Bread

Katrin and I have grown very depressed about the state of supermarket bread. The loaves are always too damp, prone to mould and require heavy-duty toasting. Unpleasant! Googling “easy brown bread loaf” yielded this excellent recipe—one of the simplest breads I’ve ever made, with a good crust and sturdy yet springy crumb. Perfect for sandwiches, ideally the open-faced variety: try sharp cheddar with quince chutney, or cream cheese, sliced tomatoes and caramelised onions.

(I also recently tried Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread, but this one was far and away the winner—mostly because you don’t need to futz around with preheating dutch ovens or wait 12 hours for the dough to rise.)

Very easy brown loaf
Adapted from Lindsey Bareham in The Times

1 tbsp mild vegetable oil
1 tsp honey (or brown sugar, or molasses)
10g dried yeast
425ml warm water
225g whole-wheat flour (Josephine Mill)
225g white bread flour (Eureka Mills)
1 tsp salt (Khoisan Trading Co.)
13 x 20 cm loaf tin

Generously oil the loaf tin. Stir honey into 150ml of the water, then add the yeast. Leave several minutes to grow foamy. In a big bowl, mix together flours and salt. Create a well in the middle, add the yeast water and the plain water, and quickly stir to make a sticky, wet dough. Do not knead; simply scrape into the prepared loaf tin. Allow to rise for 1 ½ - 2 hours, or until the dough has risen almost to the top of the tin. Half an hour before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 220C. Place inside the oven and bake for 50 – 60 minutes, until the top is dark brown and the base sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack. Make sandwiches galore.

Our first recipe: Banana cake with a cinnamon-sugar crust

Bananas obviously aren’t regional, but they are in season and by my (admittedly slapdash) calculations, this cake turned out 55.5% regional. Since this blog is about making gradual changes towards sustainable eating, halfway seems like a fine place to start.



You don't have to be a cross between Marie Curie and Harry Potter to turn eggs, flour and sugar into something gloriously edible. This is particularly true of banana cakes, which are among the most stable of baked goods—it’s unusual for them to crack, fall or rise wonkily (the technical term), and they tolerate a fairly wide range of oven temperatures. They’re also the perfect solution for the spotty, neglected bananas haunting your fruit bowl.

The first time around, I overfilled the pan; as the cake rose, a large quantity of molten batter escaped and dripped all over the oven, filling my apartment with the unappetizing aroma of a culinary Krakatoa (or Eyjafjallajokull). No matter—the cake was still wickedly scrumptious and disappeared in fifteen minutes flat.

Banana cake with a cinnamon-sugar crust
Adapted from Orangette

Regional ingredients included: cake flour from Eureka Mills, Fair Cape plain yogurt (you might be interested in The Aspirant Locavore's review of their Durbanville farm), regional honey from Divine Foods and olive oil from a friend's farm. I've since acquired some super-local free range eggs (thanks Jess!), but I'm still on the lookout for bulk honey and regional canola oil to bring down the cost.

This cake has a very light texture and the banana flavour is relatively mellow. If you’d prefer a more pronounced banana taste, you can swap out the yogurt for an extra banana.

A word on pans: I’ve used the traditional 8 x 10 loaf tin, which takes about 55 minutes to bake, and the overfilled bundt pan was done after 50 minutes. If you have two 8-inch round cake tins, you could use those; they shouldn’t take much longer than 25 – 30 minutes (I’m going to try this soon and report back). Use what you’ve got and keep an eye on the oven.

1 ½ cups (270g) cake flour
¾ cup (130g) sugar (I've used both brown and white)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
¼ cup (60ml) plain yogurt
¼ cup (60ml) honey
½ cup (125ml) vegetable oil
¼ cup (60ml) water

2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180°C. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt, baking soda and powder. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, mashed bananas, yogurt, honey, oil and water. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined (overbeating will give it a gummy texture).

Pour the batter into your greased pan—if you decide on a loaf tin, I’d recommend lining it with a single sheet of parchment, with the paper hanging over the edges, so that you can pull the cake out in a single motion. Stir together the sugars and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over the batter. Pop it in the oven; it’s ready when a knife or skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave it on a rack until completely cool. Share with friends.