Ruby Tandoh placed second on The Great British Bake Off in 2013 as the show's youngest-ever contestant. She entered food media suddenly, writing a baking column for The Guardian and contributing to a London-based food magazine, and she has published four cookbooks over the past decade. She investigates how new food media shapes eating habits, focusing on viral online recipes and sensory descriptors like "crispy, crunchy, creamy, chewy." Her forthcoming book, All Consuming, is a cultural history of changing appetites. Baking remains central to her practice; recent home cooking includes toad in the hole, an apricot tart, and a seed cake, and she celebrates simple loaves like soda bread for restorative breakfasts.
Yesterday, my friend Oliver, a baker, presented me with a crag of nut-brown soda bread. Soda bread is a simple art - no yeast, no waiting around, just the instant and violent reaction of baking soda and acid. The result is a tenderhearted brute of a loaf: forbidding crust around a soft, sweet-smelling crumb. In a world of micromanaged sourdoughs and brioche buns, it has gravitas.
This is how it came to be that this morning, I have the first good breakfast I've had in weeks. Instead of the punitive granola that I never should have bought in the first place, I tear a fist-size chunk out of this loaf and warm it in the oven, then pry it open and daub it with salted butter and raspberry jam.
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