Baking can be done with a few simple ingredients, so it's about simplicity and nostalgia - people are reminded of their childhood.

Baking is therapy.

Civilisation was built around wheat, around people settling down and not being nomadic. Baking is one of the oldest professions.

A sponge is quite simple. You weigh ingredients, mix, and put it in the oven. With pastry, you manhandle it, shape it, fold it. You have to be involved with it; there is more jeopardy, more risk. But it's like making a casserole. There's a flurry of activity to begin with; then it's about leaving it to rest.

Get digital scales because, for baking, balance scales just aren't accurate enough: it's all in the weighing up.

There's something clean, simple, and even detoxifying about a loaf that contains nothing more than the best stone-ground, whole-meal flour, salt, yeast and water.