My kitchen is roughly the size of a large wardrobe. There is one stretch of counter, an oven that runs hot on the left side, and a window that lets in a draught all winter. For a long time I assumed real bread was something other people made. It turns out a small kitchen is no obstacle at all.

Starting the starter

Everything begins with the starter: a mixture of flour and water that collects wild yeast and bacteria from the air and the flour itself. Mix equal weights of flour and water in a jar, cover it loosely, and leave it somewhere that isn’t too cold. Every day, throw away most of it and feed what’s left with fresh flour and water.

For the first few days, nothing much happens, and then things happen too much. It will bubble, smell strange, and sometimes collapse. Keep feeding it. After a week or two, it should rise reliably within a few hours of a feed and smell pleasantly sour, a little like yoghurt. That’s when it’s ready.

A schedule that fits around a day

The secret to sourdough is that it is slow, and slowness is easy to fit around a working day. Most of the time the dough is simply sitting there while you do something else.

In the morning, feed the starter. In the evening, mix it with flour, water and salt in a large bowl. Over the next couple of hours, every half hour or so, wet your hand and fold the dough over itself a few times. Then shape it into a loose ball, put it in a floured bowl, and leave it in the fridge overnight. The cold slows everything down and gives the bread its flavour.

The next morning, heat the oven with a heavy pot inside it. Turn the dough out, cut a line across the top with a sharp knife, and bake it in the covered pot for twenty minutes, then without the lid until it’s deep brown.

Small kitchen tricks

Counter space is the real constraint, so I shape the dough on a large chopping board that lives on top of the hob. The fridge is the most reliable proving drawer you will ever own. And if your oven runs hot on one side, as mine does, turn the pot halfway through baking.

Don’t aim for perfect

Your first loaves will probably be flat, dense, or both. Mine were. They were still better than most bread I could buy, and every loaf taught me something. The point isn’t to make the perfect loaf. It’s to have the smell of bread in the house on a Saturday morning.