Just like seemingly all the other middle class people with access to an oven, flour and yeast in these straightened times, I’m trying to learn how to bake a handmade loaf (mainly, I do the first knead in my Thermomix), as opposed to one that’s been made in our trusty bread machine. We had an interruption (I love the French phrase; en rupture de stock ) of a few weeks in our strong flour supply while they were repackaging the 25KG bakers’ bags but all seems relatively normal now.

I’ve been following Sophia Handschuh’s excellent bread masterclass but the heat and humidity of Hong Kong pose different challenges, which I’m trying to overcome. Instead of it being difficult to find a warm enough place to leave it to prove, generally, yeast blows itself out too quickly here, a party animal in a wildly-floral shirt at 8pm, ebullient and totally up for it, then drinking too many Martinis too quickly, becoming overexcited and passing out in a sticky mess on the sofa by 10pm. To counter this I’ve taken to doing the first prove overnight in the fridge as a matter of course, which does let the flavour develop. Sophia recommends halving the quantity of yeast if you’re doing this. I’m not sure whether that’s a good idea for me or not and I’ve a little nervous to try it.

I shape and second prove with the air conditioning on too, lest it gets an ebullient second wind. I even managed to perfect my scoring technique this time, but as usual I fell at the final jump, while transferring the fragile uncooked loaf from its scoring plate to the Dutch oven. I think I’m just going to have to use a flat oven tray next time and slide it across. Still, baby steps. Apart from being lopsided, it looks OK.