Sean Wilson Bread Sauce

If you have been keeping up with the media recently you would be forgiven for thinking that Coronation St was only good for producing people who managed to get embroiled in and cleared of sex abuse charges – by my reckoning the current tally is four. However it would be unfair to label the soap as such because it also features people who are famous for acting. In my previous life as an actor I had the pleasure of working with a couple of smashingly talented former corrie actors in a one off drama for the BBC – there are clips online and whilst I’m self absorbed enough to mention them, I’m not self absorbed enough to include a link.

Anyway sex abuse and acting isn’t the whole story, Coronation St also brought Sean Wilson to public consciousness and being a versatile chap he put acting behind him and started to make cheese. I haven’t yet tried his cheese, but I hope to soon and will report back in due course. Sean also created a bread sauce packet mix which is stocked exclusively in B&M for the bargain price of 29p. Sean proudly tweeted about it here stating it was part of his Signature Range, but for all my internet searching I have yet to find any other products that feature in this range thus making it a range of one thing and therefore not a range at all.

Bread sauce for all it’s apparent simplicity is a tricky thing to get right, it can end up just being hot milk with soggy breadcrumbs and lacking any flavour at all, or at the other end of the scale it can be gloopy gruel with an overwhelming blast of mouth numbing clove. There is a fine line to tread when it comes to the texture of bread sauce, it ranges from sloppy baby sick to lumpy porridge, with perfection sitting somewhere close to lumpy porridge. All that is to say, that as a product in a packet it is not easy to get right, but then if Sean has mastered cheese, bread sauce shouldn’t be too tricky.

The packet says “We have sourced the very best, clean ingredients possible.”.  I did a double take – they have sourced “clean ingredients”! Is it just me or is that a really odd thing to stress? I mean I’m all for hygiene and keeping away from filthy, disease riddled ingredients but I’ve never bought a product before that has felt it necessary to highlight the fact they only use clean ones. They also go on to say “… we believe we have brought you the easiest and the best Bread Sauce available today!” which is quite a claim, so being safe in the knowledge that the sauce was not only clean it was also the best it was time to get cooking.

The bread sauce is very easy to make, all you need to do is mix the stuff in the packet with half a pint of milk, bring to the boil, simmer for 1 -2 mins and serve. The sauce had a decent texture sitting a good few notches above baby sick, but resembling Ready brek more than adult porridge, but sadly that is where the positives end. It smelt of onion rings and the flavour was overwhelmingly of onion flavouring coupled with an unwelcome sweetness. There was no hint of clove, bay or pepper and it was a one dimensional pan full of milky coloured gruel that I was going to let nowhere near my delicious roast chicken.

Why when the cheese making was going so well for Sean, did he allow his name to be put to this stuff I have no idea and if I do ever find any other products in the signature range I won’t be in any hurry to try them.

Sean Wilson Bread Sauce 29p for a 40g packet

3/10