By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking. See facebook.com/bakermike001

DID you ever notice those Turog bread signs around Keighley and surrounding villages when you were growing up, until the mid-seventies?

I suppose it depends on your generation.

The independent bakeries were assigned and licensed to make Turog loaves, using Turog flour supplied by the company Spillers.

The firm promoted its Turog bread with large wooden signs outside shop windows, a real slice of history.

Turog brown flour was launched at the turn of the century and was one of the main competitors to Hovis for “healthy’’ brown bread, until the mid 20th century.

The Turog brown flour company was a forerunner of all healthy choices we have today, and was a family name.

How it jumped into bread is probably because Turog was linked with health and vitality.

Turog bread was a very popular brand throughout the Yorkshire Ridings and across the north-west of England.

It was baked in small loaf tins with its name embossed on both sides of the tin.

I do believe there was also a Turog badge that was worn by bakers and staff in the shops, with every baker having a Turog plastic scraper in his back pocket.

The bread had a paper band around it once baked saying “Your daily bread gives you stamina, energy and vigour”.

I fondly remember mum buying me a penny Turog loaf to gnaw on in my pram.

The aim was to keep me quiet after visiting the baby clinic at Victoria Hall.

Turog bread was promoted as the “staff of life’’ because it is a very basic food that supports life.

Today we have a wonderful choice of breads, far more than we had back in the day.

I personally would go back to handcrafted loaves again.

Spillers the millers were taken over by Allied Bakeries, one of the top three bread producers in the UK today.

I remember making Turog bread as an apprentice baker.

I had a big plastic bottle of molasses ‘black treacle’ on top of the bread mixer.

The molasses was added to the mixture each morning for great colour and to give it an intense bitter-sweet burnt caramel flavour, while it also added moisture to the bread.

My recipe will hopefully take you back in time with a not-too-shabby version of a Turog bread.

RECIPE

YORKSHIRE TUROG BREAD

Yields 2x400g loaves

Ingredients:

500g (18oz) wholemeal spelt or stoneground wholemeal flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons black treacle

320ml (11floz) warm water

20g (3/4oz) fresh yeast or 7g dry yeast

Method:

1. In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, salt and black treacle.

2. Mix together the yeast and warm water and add to the mixing bowl to form a rough dough.

3. Empty the contents of the bowl onto a floured work surface and knead well for 10 minutes until springy, cohesive and tacky dough.

4. Return the dough to the mixing bowl, cover with a tea towel and allow to prove somewhere warm till double in size.

5. On risen well, divide the dough in two, shape and

place into greased 1lb bread tins.

6. Leave to prove again till double in size before baking in a hot preheated oven 220C/200C fan/Gas 7 dusting over the tops with a little flour.

7. Bake the loaves for 35-40 minutes until a good crust has formed and the loaves sound hollow when tapped on the base.