How to bake your own bread. The most important ingredient is imagination. Making bread is a creative act. Like sex, walking, breathing, eating, talking, giving birth.

The baker is an artist - or used to be before the arrival of Slimmy Groppo Instant Tastee Slice up Nice n Easy White as a Whiteman tasteless bread. All flour mentioned in recipes is 100% wholemeal organic flour. It's easiest to use wheat flour to make bread though try all sorts and see how you like it. Experiment. Improvise.

So here we go. How to make two different sorts of bread.

1) CHAPPATI This is the simplest sort of bread to make. Take a cupful of flour. Mix well with water and a bit of salt, until it makes a fairly dry dough. Get your frying pan. Add your oil to the frying pan. Heat. Roll out dough fairly thinly into a shape that'll fit your frying pan. Fry on both sides until good and brown and crisp. Eat with anything you like - plain, butter, salad, honey, cheese etc. By varying initial ingredients and consistency of dough and amount of oil in frying pan an infinite range of chappati shapes, textures and tastes possible. Chew well and may you have many joyful hours of chappati making.

2) WHOLEMEAL BREAD This is what most people mean by bread. Three pounds of flour in a large bowl. Add salt, honey, nuts etc. Take two ounces of yeast (1oz = 2 tablespoons dried yeast). Put yeast in a bowl with half pint of warm water (yeast likes water to be at blood temperature). Stick your finger in the water to test that it's not too hot or too cold. Also teaspoonful of brown sugar or honey. This is for the yeast to feed on. The yeast should be left in a warm place for 20 minutes or so until it has a good frothy head on it. Then ... add yeast and approximately 1½ pints water (warm) to flour etc in bowl.

Mix long and well with hands. Add half cup of oil. Mix, knead and thump until the dough is a good even consistency and fairly dry. (All kneading should be done on a flat wooden surface - kitchen surface). Add more flour or water as needed. Leave dough in a warm place and cover with a damp cloth. Go away. Come back two hours later and the dough will have doubled in size - if it hasn't then either you got sold a bum lot of yeast or you killed the poor beastie by using too hot or cold water.

If bread has risen and all is going according to plan then knead bread again for about five minutes. Take three 1lb baking tins. Divide dough into three equal pieces. Knead each piece for a while. Oil tins and put dough in tins. Cover tins with damp cloth and leave in warm place until dough rises just over top of tin. Light oven at Mark 6 (400 degrees F). Put bread in oven. Bake for about 40 minutes or till bread is brown and crusty. Stand bread on end to dry for an hour.

May your bread making be happy and joyful and may all your loaves be tasty ones.

A few things to mix in when making bread. Mixed spices, herbs, dried fruit, bananas (very good), oat flakes, cooked rice, milk instead of water (or half 'n half), caraway seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, try out anything you think would taste good.

In the last issue of Muther Grumble I said that I would get together a few addresses of wholesale food merchants. Here are three that I know to be reliable and good value for money:

S Mayall and Son, Lea Hall, Harmer Hill, Shrewsbury. Good organically grown wholemeal flour, cereals etc. They deliver by road.

Allinsons Ltd, Queen's Mill, Aire Street, Castleford. Organic food and cereals. Deliver by road.

York Wholefood, 98 Micklegate, York. Supplies organic vegetables when in season. You have to collect yourself.

Both Allinsons and Mayalls deliver free of charge for large orders.

As I mentioned in a letter in this issue we are trying to get a shop together where we will sell flour etc at cost price. Until then if you want to score a small quantity of rice or flour come to see us and we can probably supply you with what you need.

Finally a good paperback has been around for a while on organic gardening. Called the 'Basic Book of Organic Gardening' and published by Pan. It's very good and probably the only book you need to start growing organically. It costs 75p and I know that Ultima Thule still has a few copies.

Peace, joy and liberation for all beings.

Gordon