Wholemeal flour, the whole grain milled as finely as possible with all of the outer bran and inner germ intact, is one of the best white flour improvers I know of. If you want a rich wheat flavour, or a slight moistness in the crumb, or a richer colour to the crust, then spooning in a little wholemeal flour – no matter whether it’s milled from rye grains, barley or wheat – takes the flour from bland to bold for little effort.

When I write recipes, I do my best to limit the number of ingredients used and keep using the same basic ingredients (plain flour, unsalted butter, caster sugar) so you don’t have a cupboard full of barely used ingredients. Though I sometimes think, “you know, you could get an even better result using XXX”, I then imagine about the situation when you don’t have a selection of supermarkets at your doorstep, and some readers work themselves into a state when I suggest that a great cake or loaf might benefit from a higher grade of ingredient than their local corner shop stocks. As one reviewer of “Exceptional Breads” wrote on amazon.co.uk “The ingredients are too high brow for me here in the country, I’m never going to be able to get ’00 Italian flour’ or the like in the shops here abouts”. And there are readers overseas who want to bake the recipes and might have difficulty getting some ingredients. So I keep it simple.

On bags of flour in UK supermarkets the words “strong white” and “plain” – and occasionally the ridiculous “strong plain” label courtesy of Waitrose, doing their bit to discourage all home baking – is emblazoned on the packs as if it meant something. Now when I write a recipe and in the ingredients ask for “strong white flour”, all I mean is go and buy a bag of flour labelled “strong white” and use it. If you push me, I‘ll explain that in the UK, strong flour is typically flour for breadmaking, and plain flour is flour for cakes and biscuits. But to be really honest, the truth is much more complex as I frequently use plain flour for bread recipes, and strong white flour for cake recipes.

Listening to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning I was overwhelmed by the news that President Obama’s healthcare reform looks like it will be passed. If you’re reading this in the US you might not be aware of how supportive many of us around the world – in countries that have some government healthcare available – are with your move to make individual healthcare for 35 million Americans a reality.