W is for wheatgerm

Occasionally, when I go to see my boyfriend's parents and the weather's good enough, I get to go down to Secretts. It's a little pick-your-own place near Guildford and, unfortunately, it has a little shop attached.

I say 'unfortunately' because I don't seem to be able to walk out of it without buying some random crap that I never knew I wanted in the first place. Brazil nuts in dark chocolate? Check. A can of Thai soup? check. Ras-el-hanout, cinder toffee, wheatgerm? Check, check, check.

And it's this last ingredient, wheatgerm, that I'm using here. I bought a packet a while ago, remembering I saw it used in a recipe I fancied cooking. I then forgot which recipe it was, and had to go scrabbling through my cookbook stash to find something with wheatgerm in.

Step forward the Soda Bread recipe from the Terre a Terre cookbook.

I've made soda bread before, but always with this stripped-down recipe from Xanthe Clay on the Telegraph site. The Terre a Terre recipe is a bit more involved, with molasses, honey (which I subbed for agave) and wheatgerm.

There's a lot to love about soda bread - no kneading time, no rising, and you've got a loaf of bread ready in around an hour. There's a lot to love about Terre a Terre's recipe in particular, with a more complex flavour than I'm used to.

Not having cooked with wheatgerm before, I couldn't say if that's what pepped up the flavour, or if was the mix of wholemeal and plain flours, or even the blackstrap molasses, but either way, it tasted pretty darn good with a whack of pâté on it.