It hardly seems possible how much time has passed since the dark days of lockdown. 

Four years ago this month we were coming to the end of the notorious "Eat Out To Help Out" initiative, which had the good intention of supporting the hard-pressed hospitality sector, but which was known in the scientific community by the rather less complimentary nickname of "Eat Out To Help The Virus."

We should never forget just how scary those times were, with many people concerned for the wellbeing of loved ones, fretting over whether they would still have a livelihood once it was all over, and struggling to home-educate their children while getting to grips with the new world of working from home.

But at the same time, this was a cloud (a very big one, to be fair) with a silver lining. 

Neighbours became important again; we could take our one hour’s exercise along streets which were mercifully free of traffic; and – mostly – people’s kindness and community-spirited natures came to the fore.

It was a grim time for restaurants, but it did make us focus more on the food we cooked at home. 

And perhaps the foodstuff which really saw an explosion in popularity was homemade bread.

I mention this because this month has been designated (by the Real Bread Campaign, a sort of crusty CAMRA) "Sourdough September," in a bid to remind us of the advantages of properly-made, real bread. 

I say "properly-made," because the vast bulk of the loaves we consume in this country are not. 

Back in the 1960s, the British Baking Industries Research Association, based in Chorleywood in Hertfordshire, came up with a new, cheat’s way of making bread, which didn’t require the time and effort that traditional baking needs.  Chorleywood bread now accounts for 80 per cent of all the loaves baked in the UK, and can justifiably be designated an ultra-processed food.

Not only does shortening the proving time remove much of the flavour of the bread, it could well have created an epidemic of gluten sensitivity among the population. 

Gluten is a protein found naturally in grains, and during traditional long fermentation (which is what is happening during the proving process), the live culture of yeast and bacteria feed on these proteins, turning them into compounds which we can absorb with relative ease.

An academic study published in 2007 showed that when wheat bread is thoroughly fermented, the gluten levels fall by 99.99 per cent.

Meanwhile, the last 50 years have seen an explosion in people with real or perceived sensitivity to gluten (as opposed to Coeliac Disease, which is a serious autoimmune disease, and which thankfully afflicts less than one per cent of the population). 

Could our love affair with cheap and nasty Chorleywood bread have anything to do with this, I wonder?

By contrast, real bread, and especially sourdough, requires a natural fermentation process, which not only enhances the flavour and texture of your loaf, but also offers potential health benefits by improving digestibility and nutritional content.

Proper sourdough has to be made with live fermented cultures (which help the glutens develop), and not with baker’s yeast – which rules out many of the "sour-faux" loaves masquerading as the real thing in supermarkets, which often contain both baker’s yeast and certain "flour treatment agents."

Thankfully, even if you don’t have the time or inclination to make your own, there is now a growing number of artisan bakeries in Norfolk which will sell you a proper sourdough loaf. 

Inevitably it’s a bit more expensive than the mass-produced pap, but it is infinitely more delicious, and better for you. 

Making real bread takes time, and that has to be reflected in the price.

Of course, time is what so many people had more of during the pandemic, stuck as we all were at home. 

It is true that we have less time now normality has returned, but we are also much more aware of the health concerns surrounding ultra-processed foods. 

So perhaps making our own bread should be one habit we retain from those dark lockdown days.