I've been a bit under the weather lately, so I've spent the last week applying the best folk remedies my mother can recommend: soup and fruit juice. But with all this soup, I'm constantly left wondering if I might be eating too much bread.

As far as I'm concerned, you can't have soup without bread. I think this is something to do with my overwhelming lack of patience. Soup's too hot? Don't bother waiting for it to cool down! Dip some bread in it and eat the pleasantly warm soup sodden bread lump you've just created, as you would a ball of papier mache were it so delicious.

I'm willing to admit it's a little uncouth, but it's a guilty pleasure. Like dunking a biscuit in your tea, except more savoury and with a spoon permanently on hand in case you drop something in the steaming liquid. I'm sure I'm not the only one. The real problem is that I've entirely lost track of exactly how much bread is acceptable.

Once, a single slice of white was satisfactory. Then the soup would have cooled enough to consume the remainder with the spoon, as it should be. Then I got a bit too adept at the art of bread dunking, and two slices were required to reach optimum temperature. Over time, I got used to the side of bread, and it didn't seem right to eat soup without it. And so yesterday, I found myself getting through an entire foot long roll, at one point realising I'd run out of soup and was just shovelling bread into my mouth. With the spoon.

I know I need to cut back. I know I should limit myself to an amount of bread that will be outlasted by the soup that is ostensibly the body of the meal. I need to choose a limit and stick to it, even if I have to wait a while for the remaining contents of my bowl to cool to a bearable level. But I'm at the point where I don't know what that limit sould be. So I put the question to all of you, oh internauts, just how much bread is enough?

If we can get this problem solved, we might be able to move on to the far more troubling question of whether or not the bread should be buttered.