Craig Brown: Can Genius gain a slice of Scotsman café action?

AT FIRST glance Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne's Genius loaf passes the sight test: a dark well-baked colour, nicely risen, nothing to suggest that it is not your standard loaf. It has a good malty smell and feels relatively light.

Sliced, it reveals a decent crust and a fluffy, oat-coloured interior. Tellingly, the bread seems less substantial in texture than a standard loaf.

Then there is the taste test. In the mouth the bread is more "scone-like" and less dense than you would expect from a loaf, but still moist.

It has a strong malty flavour, with a very slight potatoey aftertaste – a clue to one of the main ingredients of the loaf – but overall it's quite tasty.

Certainly if I was to be served Genius in a restaurant, while I might notice that it was not your usual loaf, I would not be sending it back.

Indeed, a more general taste test among the Scotsman staff produced a broadly positive reaction, though there were comments about the texture. However, none said that they were moved to replace their gluten-based loaves with it.