those strange silhouette illustrations of Mr. La Plume and his pals.

Hang on - where are we going with this? Well persevere for a few more sentences and I will get there. There once was a little book by Peter Mayle called “A Year in Provence”, it was funny, irreverent and sold about 10 gazillion copies to Americans and Europeans who fancied the delectable, gastronomic life offered by the Provence countryside – no foodie could resist. Well he is back, Peter that is, and this time it's “Confessions of a French Baker”, a diminutive tip and recipe book that evokes the good old times of the 1950's as it shares the secrets of the traditional French baker.

This little book is a delight. You won't find any lewd confessions of high jinks at the bakery here though. What is does do is take you into the baking room to witness the birth of a loaf and like a virtual midwife, helps you understand the whole messy process along the way. It's a bit like making sausage – you almost don't want to know how some of these loaves are made.

The book is very focused, baguettes, boules and batards, plus plenty of variations. It's a hands on recipe book, with plenty of stories, anecdotes and hints. You can literally smell baking bread as you read it. The “Frenchness” of it somehow adds to the overall charm and as always, Mayle makes everything French seem just a nudge short of paradise.

I am not sure that it can turn the average person into a master baker, but it has a go. The recipes are clear and the instructions straight forward. The authors include many tips and hints about bread making that you would not get from a simple recipe. I loved the “windowpane test” - to see if you have kneaded your dough enough you stretch a golf ball sized chunk until you can either see through it or it collapses. Somehow the word windowpane sounds like a translation from the French.