Setting pulses racing: the Reading scientists perfecting broad bean bread

Prof Donal O’Sullivan, Prof Julie Lovegrove and Prof Paola Tosi with a loaf of broad bean bread. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

It’s creamy-white in colour with a deep brown crust. It has a mild floury taste but with a moreish salty tang. It crisps up nicely in a toaster, and it’s the perfect accompaniment to butter, jam or hummus.

This is bread – but not as you know it. Scientists at the University of Reading are finding ways to make British diets far more nutritious and sustainable by stealth, replacing the soya flour, and some of the wheat, with broad beans – also known as faba or fava beans.