There's a particular kind of Saturday that asks for bread. Nowhere to be, the kettle on, the radio playing something quiet in the background. The dough does most of the work, which is the trick of bread baking that nobody quite tells you. You're not really making it. You're keeping it company while it makes itself.

A cottage loaf is two rounds of dough stacked one on top of the other, the smaller crowning the larger, pinned together with a single push of the finger straight down through the middle. The shape used to be everywhere. It's vanished now from supermarket shelves because it doesn't fit a plastic bag and won't go through an automatic slicer, which feels like exactly the sort of reason a bread should still exist. Awkwardness is sometimes a virtue.

The dough is plain. Flour, water, yeast, salt. Nothing else. It needs time more than skill, and an oven hot enough to give it the crust it deserves. The first time I made one I wrote in the notebook: 'Two rounds, one above the other. Saturday. The kitchen smells right.' That's still about all there is to say about it.

Eat it that same evening, torn rather than sliced, with cold butter and good cheese and whatever soup is on the hob. There are few better feelings than putting a warm loaf in front of someone and watching them reach for it without asking.