Sue opened the meeting on February 18 by giving a report of the talk she and three other members went to hear at Market Lavington.

It was called Let’s talk about Opera and the aim was to try to promote a greater understanding of opera. Members were then asked to make sure they labelled any plants they were giving to the plant sale, colour and variety, so people know what they are buying.

The design for the banner was discussed. The banner has to be ready for Sue to take to the baton exchange at Hungerford, for the centenary celebrations.

Ideas were village hall, watercress, river and ducks, we desperately need some more ideas.

Jane Kew ran through the forthcoming events.

The new Denman catalogue is out now and there are a lot of new courses on offer.

Liz then ran through the financial report, which is good.

Our speaker was Jack Kennedy, who has been baking bread for 40 years and gave lots of tips to the bread makers in the audience.

He suggested that if you wanted to use live yeast you could always ask at your local supermarket that had a bakery and you would be given some. He said that he preferred to use dried yeast as he considered it to be foolproof, and this started an interesting discussion amongst the bread makers.

He then passed around loaves that he had made with different types of flour, these went down very nicely with the cheeses for the competition. We had to guess the names of five different English cheeses.

Our next meeting, the AGM, will be at Broad Chalke Village Hall on March 18 at 7.30 pm.