I love breakfast. Which is a funny thing considering I barely get a sniff at it on any given day except Sunday. Maybe it’s just the idea of breakfast that I love. Pancakes and bircher muesli and banana bread, pots of tea, home made marmalade, boiled eggs with toast soldiers, bowls of blood oranges and strawberries - these are the things that do a paisley swirl in my mind when I imagine breakfast. A far cry from the fresh aloe vera puree and ginger carrot juice that head up the ‘function over form’ menu each workday. All is not lost when you can make a breakfast that manages to last all week on said Sunday though. That’s how the singular, consoling aroma of spiced bread baking in the oven came to fill the farm house this weekend. I know food isn’t intended to be therapy, but could we say that if it did cross that line, the therapist would smell like my kitchen did on Sunday. I’m doing my very best to avoid an “Old Spice” pun here.

Actually I should back track and say it was mostly my foodie friend, Hillary’s, fault. He’s the one who rang me to let me know our favourite health food shop was closing down, and the only joy in that was that everything was half price. I didn’t quite run, but it wasn’t far off that ridiculous fast walk I used to do round the oval in my Little Athletics days. I returned with quite a haul. Laden would be the word. But all good. Literally. Organic, biodynamic, wholegrain goodness.

So, four different flours hit the bench for breakfast, ready for a pretty-good-for-you Spiced Bread, aka Pain D’Epice. Normally based on rye flour, I thought it would be a great springboard for some of the flours I’d yet to play around with from my spoils. That, and the fact that this is delicious fresh from the oven, like cake, and then toasted and spread with marmalade or really good organic butter, for a numbers of days’ breakfasts to follow. It struck me as I was standing in a warm haze of mace and star anise, this would be a lovely Christmas gift to make ahead of time too. But it may be too early for that kind of talk. Here’s my slightly grainier version of Flo Braker’s French classic...

Good & Spicy Breakfast Bread

1 1/2 cups organic wholemeal spelt flour

1 1/2 cups organic rye flour

1/2 cup organic millet flour

1/2 cup organic barley flour

2 1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp ginger

1 1/2 tsp mace

1/2 tsp salt flakes

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp anise seeds

55g organic unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

1 cup organic honey

Zest of 1 wax free orange

1 1/4 cups organic milk

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

This recipe was for a 23cm loaf tin but I used 2 smaller ones as per the picture because that’s all I had. It’s a pretty robust recipe so really any tin choice you make should work. Grease and flour your tin/s.

Using a wooden spoon, stir together the flours, spices, bicarb and salt, set aside. In a separate large bowl use a fork or whisk to beat together the butter and honey until smooth, then beat in the egg. Add the milk and don’t panic when it looks like the last thing you’d ever photograph for a blog.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in stages, incorporating the two before adding more of the dry ingredients, so things don’t turn lumpy.

Tip into your prepared tin/s, and bake for about 35 minutes if using 2 smaller tins, or about 50 minutes if working with one larger loaf pan.  Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool completely on a wire rack.

This is also fantastic on a cheese plate or used as part of another dessert like bread and butter pudding or apple charlotte.