REFORM MP Lee Anderson likes to share pictures of his breakfast on social media. Often a full English awash with proper English fat. Fitting for a man who resembles a sausage squeezed into a suit.

Anderson usually goes for the Culture War Full English special to bolster his fatty patriotism.

This raises questions. Does he like a full English because of the name or because it’s basically his party’s manifesto? In future will we all have to post pictures of our fry-ups just to keep our passports? Will my bowl of porridge see me banished?

Whatever, last week Anderston posted a picture of the bread accompanying his bacon. This set him off on one – “Lad behind the counter tried serving it on some fancy artisan sourdough. Proper British white sliced only, mate. None of that hipster nonsense.”

Of the responses Anderson received, many leavened with language, this was perhaps the most satisfying – “Sourdough is very tasty. Lee Anderson is a f****** moron. Both statements are true.”

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a hipster is “someone who is aware of and influenced by the most recent ideas and fashions”.

Whereas Lee Anderson is influenced by a greasy nostalgia that sits like lard on soggy toast. And why did he cite white-sliced bread? Perhaps, er, simply because of its whiteness. His party does seem to be anxious about everything white.

I like the occasional full English as much as the next heart attack survivor who’s been advised not to eat too many. Not being a patriotic dunderhead, I also like a continental breakfast, especially if a good baguette cuddles up with apricot jam and unsalted butter. And if I had a soul, I might well sell it for an almond croissant.

But as a fully indentured bread bore and home baker, I also know that white sliced bread is made with low-quality wheat, assorted additives, too much yeast, all mixed and baked quickly to produce squidgy slices of nothing.

Proper sourdough contains only water, flour and salt. That said, mine doesn’t always work out, so sometimes I add a pinch of yeast. This saves us from loaves you could use to build your own drystone wall.

Sourdough is just an old way of baking, raising bread without industrial yeast. Other techniques include saving a piece of dough from a yeasted loaf and using this to start the next batch, or getting things going with beer that’s live in the bottle.

Anderston could have pointed to other British bread, from split tin loaves to wholemeal, from the cottage loaf to Scottish baps. But no, he went straight for the lowest common denominator in the bread aisle.

If that last sentence sounds snobby, I’ll put up a floury hand by way of apology. Yes, white sliced bread will feed the family and that’s an important consideration, even if supermarkets sell it at unrealistically low prices.

If you can stretch to anything better, go to a local bakery. York is full of them, from the Haxby Bakehouse to Bluebird Bakery to CS Sourdough to the Black Wheat Club. All will sell you a fine sourdough loaf. Or something else good, and their shelves wobble with pastries and buns and other flaky delights.

Such bakeries can be found around the country, whether run by ‘hipsters’ or just by people who devote themselves to making the best bread possible. Britain today can be proud of its bread. You can even buy decent enough sourdough at the supermarket (alongside some horror story faux-dough loaves).

Good sourdough bread is made slowly and with care; it tastes lovely and is better for your digestive system than those gluey slices of processed bread wrapped in plastic.

If the pushing of white slice bread is mostly down to supermarkets, then Lee Anderson himself is the product a of a three-for-one deal at the politics supermarket. He’s gone from Labour to Conservative to Reform, all without adding anything healthy to his plate.

Footnote: white sliced bread is almost certainly not served at the long posh lunches Lee’s boss Nigel enjoys.

 

HERE’S another bread story, thankfully free of politics, that caught my eye. It appeared on the Cornwall Live website, complete with obligatory pun in the headline – “Mum knead-deep in homemade bread after Facebook post went bonkers.”

Emily Roots put out a light-hearted social media post in January 2024 when she was seven-months-pregnant. She said she was going to sell homemade loaves from the window of her Cornish cottage, even though she’d never baked a loaf in her life.

Locals in the small village of Tywardreath, near St Austell, were so keen on the idea, that the panic-stricken 31-year-old had to give herself a crash course in breadmaking.

Before long, hordes of locals bought loaves from an unassuming table covered by a gingham cloth. And now Emma runs the Village Bakery, and her loaves are found at the Eden Project.

“I’d never done sourdough and I was kind of intimidated by it, so I started with focaccia and the village went crazy for it. There were queues down the street,” Emma told Cornwall Live.

Just a word of warning, Emma. If you see a sleazy bloke in a bulging suit wanting bread for a fry-up, point him to the nearest supermarket.