Will the weather cool down sufficiently to take out the cake tins and baking sheets and get into practice for all the holiday baking on the horizon in a few weeks’ time?

Certainly by November, I am usually in the mood for baking. This week I have included a recipe for bread, as well as for basic bread dough. Some might see this as coals to Newcastle, given the abundance of excellent bakeries in Malta and Gozo, but it is such a useful recipe, with so many variations, that even the most creative commercial baker might not be able to keep up with the bread-based recipes you can produce from this simple blueprint.

St Clement’s feast day is on the 23rd of this month and St Catherine’s Day is on the 25th. Both St Clement, patron saint of blacksmiths, and St Catherine, patron saint of lace-makers, used to be marked by the offering and eating of small cakes, particularly in rural areas of Britain where such practices always continue long after they cease in towns and cities.

These were not elaborate confections: simply a piece of the dough kept back from the bread-making, which was enriched with sugar, egg, butter and dried fruit. This was then shaped into small rolls and baked, the Cattern cakes not unlike Danish pastries.

Oranges and lemons are only connected to St Clement’s through the nursery rhyme, but it made me think about some simple citrus-flavoured cakes using the same mixture as for madeleines.

Surprise anyone who has a birthday that week with a basket of rolls, some orange marmalade and a jar of lemon curd. Alternatively, you might offer a bottle of Orange Muscat dessert wine and a box of glacé citrus fruit – more than guaranteed to brighten up a November day.

Persuade your local baker to sell you some raw dough, if you do not feel like making a batch using the recipe below, to produce this moreish bread. It is good with soup, or at teatime with herb cream cheese, potted chicken livers or mushroom pâté as a prelude to the cakes and biscuits.