When I retired from scientific publishing, people asked me what I intended to do with my time. I've been baking my own bread in a bread-maker for many years now, and so I told them that I planned to take up proper, oven-baked bread making.

When I told them this, a friend recommended the Delia bread recipes. I had just bought some seeded brown flour, so this simple recipe seemed like a good place to start. Note that it's a simple wholemeal recipe, so the seeds no doubt threw things off a bit.

I only had a small loaf tin, so I used half measures. And my inexperience showed -- I had problems getting the amount of water right. I overdid it the first time, and had to add a tad more flour. And then some more water, because there was flour sticking to the sides of the mixing bowl. And then some more flour again. I think perhaps the dough consistency I ended up with was somewhat less than ideal...

But it ended up alright: