Half a loaf may indeed be better than none, but in many a baker's shop today you'd be forgiven for wondering. The Chorleywood process - the infamous bakery method which introduced the world to the joys of industrialised sliced white bread as cheap as chips - has a lot to answer for (even if it does make good cheese toasties). Luckily, real bread with a crisp crust, firm crumb and deep flavour, is increasingly available from bakers who understand it is the mysterious product of time, effort and skill, an ancient alchemy of proving, leavening and spores. Above all, they know good bread is slow bread, it's a process that can't be rushed. It takes time for the staff of life to prove, mature and ripen - generally overnight

A good baker will bake on the premises or close by - nothing beats the aroma of freshly baked bread, as the supermarkets well know (and who trick our tastebuds by spraying artificial aroma around the bread counter). They will buy their flour from a reputable mill, stone-ground, unbleached, untreated; they will rely on their 'mother' (the piece of dough left over from the previous baking to add to that day's batch), and bake in a wood-fired oven, or its nearest equivalent. There will be a choice of flours to combine into a variety of breads: rye, wholewheat, white, sourdough, spelt. Toppings and flavourings will include seeds - sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, poppyseed. The shapes will be a geometric pleasure: square and oblong, circles and plaits, spirals and domes, shiny round brown buns, floury torpedo-shaped rolls.

In Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, the baker and cake-maker are frequently one and the same. We also have a whole class of sweet and semi-sweet teatime treats that fall somewhere in between, from Chelsea buns to currant teacakes, buttermilk scones, muffins and crumpets. The cake-maker merges into patissier, with a range of cakes that have put the Great into Britain - fruitcake and Victoria Sponge, gingerbread and fruit pies. As the confectioner climbs the ladder of skill, you will find fragile gateaux layered with butter cream, luscious chocolate extravaganza, delicate puff pastry horns filled with fresh cream and more. Butter-rich, spun sugar, complex structures, iced and decorated with fruit and flowers, the art of the pastry-maker triumphs in the wedding cake, an elaborate, multi-tiered affair resplendent with ornate elaboration. On the best day of your life, it means you can have your cake - and eat it, too.

Clarissa Hyman