Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

The quote above (from Matthew 6) provides food for the soul, however real bread is more than soul food - in all it's varieties it has provided sustenance and joy for generations. As you can see at right, the kids at the Longhouse Rumah Lidam in Sarawak sure enjoy it.

Shortly after we bought Crystal Blues, Ley (having read mountains of cruising books), decided that bread making was a must-have boat skill. Back home in Williamstown she had access to a great range of the Simply No Knead bread making products - so, armed with bread flour, black bread tins, yeast, bread improver and the bread making bible, she started baking.

Ten years later that skill is providing great bread for our table, and is also a valuable social tool, allowing us to share a craft that is creative, beautiful and downright tasty with friends and acquaintances.

Wherever we travel, people want to know how to make real bread - not the sugary fluffy preserved stuff served up by many modern bakeries. So bread baking lessons have become a regular occurrence aboard Crystal Blues, and more recently ashore here in Thailand. At right (above) is 18 year old Charlotte Harris Neeve, obviously pleased with her new skill, baking on board last year.

This past year, Ley has taught our Thai neighbour Kaew to bake (top left), along with Filipino friend Maryanne (at left), who is housekeeper to our friends the Stonhams in Singapore. More recently it was Maryon from SV Nimbus II who tackled the task and ended up looking very happy !

For the real bread recipe that everyone seems to love, click here.

Haven't got an oven ? Too hot on board for baking ? Then try this recipe for English Muffins (or bread rolls) cooked easily in a pan on the stove top - just click here. And if you really love your pizza (like we do) you can have fun with our favourite piza recipe - we've even cooked these on the BBQ - just click here. Links for all these can also be found in the recipes section in the column at right.