My Passion with Pete Camponi: Rise above temptations of fast food with daily bread

When I was five, I used to watch my grandma in awe as she effortlessly mixed flour and water in a bowl and, as if by magic, this gloopy, brown mixture transformed itself into a delicious loaf of bread.

As a child, one of my hobbies was making mud pies. I used to enjoy mixing soil and water and then moulding it into various shapes, but I soon grew out of that when I discovered yeast. It was so exciting watching your creation double in size but the best thing was the great smell. In my opinion, bread making is the grown-up version of making mud pies and I've been in love with it ever since.

My grandma, the old-fashioned Yorkshire woman that she was, taught me everything I know about the fine art of bread making, and her enthusiastic approach towards home cooking with fresh, local produce, must have influenced my mother, who used to be a cook at my

old school.

Both my grandma and my mother's food never tried to emulate restaurant cuisine; they were good, honest dishes made for sharing with friends and family in the home, which is now mirrored in my cooking.

Bread making is something I left home with in the mid-1970s when I studied advertising at Manchester Polytechnic.

My housemates and I weren't your typical group of students who survived off beer and fast food. At the start of each week, we all contributed 5 to the shopping and created culinary delights such as chicken wrapped in bacon, and risotto, all of which were accompanied by my infamous home-made bread.

I've been baking bread all my adult life and a week seldom passes that I don't make some sort of yeast-based creation. For a breakfast treat at the weekend, I add pecans and walnuts to the bread, and one of my favourites is a Mediterranean loaf, which involves buying a jar of sun-dried tomatoes and mixing in with chopped olives and the oil from the jar; this makes a fantastic side dish.

Bread making comes in particularly useful for dinner parties or family occasions as I bake rolls finished with poppy seeds to accompany salads or soups, or a large, flat ciabatta and place it in the centre of the table.

My attitude to life is reflected in my bread making. Life's far too short to measure and worry about all the imperfections, so I just throw it all in a bowl (I've never used a bread making machine in my life), and let it do its own thing.