"With Kirstie in the kitchen, the nation may as well hang up its oven gloves because, as I often remark through a mouthful of Kipling crumbs, it’s far easier to see the strange beauty of a collapsing clafoutis through the magnifying prism of a television screen"

As erstwhile property guru Kirsty Allsopp joins the television baking brigade in an episode of Kirstie’s Handmade Britain, Guardian blog contributor Felicity Cloake is bemused at the number of baking shows currently gracing our screens

"I don’t think anyone sees themselves as being in a declining industry. We’re not talking the steel or car industry: it’s challenging, but quite dynamic. And we still get through 5m-6m sliced loaves every day. It’s still very much part of our (British) DNA"

The FoB’s Gordon Polson puts up a stout defence for the industry against the notion touted in a recent FT article that the bread industry "is crumbling".