Proving Baskets – 65p

Suddenly, at this late stage in my baking career, I find myself in need of extra 500g proving baskets. You think flour is hard to get hold of in the midst of the pandemic? You want to try proving baskets. After the best part of a day chasing round the net trying to find baskets […]

Simple Baking

This is mainly aimed at users of the Sourdough UK Facebook group many of whom are new-comers to sourdough and are clearly confused by conflicting advice. This is a Pain de Campagne (white sourdough) I baked yesterday. It is the simplest but most perfect of breads. The method: I fed my starter the night before. […]

Messing Around with Pizza

Deep pan pizza or focaccia? Don’t really care. It’s fun to play around with. You can even eat it. I tend to knock up 1600g of 80% hydration dough and put it in the fridge for at least a couple of days. Then I have pizza dough available when I want it and the rest […]

Gertzkrautenbrot II

I used to bake for our good friend, Gert, who very unfairly died last year back in the Netherlands (full story here). One reason he was fun to work with was every week his menus changed countries and even continents and the bread was supposed to reflect that week’s culture. Amongst his papers he found […]

Lyn Isherwood's Corn Bread

Always handy to have a few tricks up your sleeve. Our neighbour Steffi did a bit of shopping for us now Coronavirus has driven us old-and-underlying indoors so I offered to make her some bread. Was a little surprised at the face she pulled until I discovered gluten was having a bad effect on her. […]

Me and Osian

What can you say? This is Osian 18 years old, ‘A’ Levels coming up and about to take on the world. Ran a bread course for him last weekend. What stops you in your tracks (and makes you feel very old) is that he can remember coming with his parents to collect bread and having […]

Flying Start to 2020

A minimum of publicity before Christmas has brought me seven courses to arrange in the next few weeks for lucky people given course vouchers by partners and family. Done one already this week, another starting in two days – how am I going to fit in my self-assessment tax returns in time? With the exception […]

Pizzafest

Impromptu pizza brunch two days after Christmas. Traditionally we wander up to the Hopewell family early evening Christmas Day. Couldn’t do it this year so a couple of days later we dragged them down for a pizzafest. This was total improv based on what we had in the house. Fortunately this included dough in the […]

Rebooting the Bake

As you probably picked up, for the past several months I have been suffering with leg ulcers which are now finally nearly healed. Had to stop baking for customers and running courses. But I’ve been pain-free for weeks now and running out of excuses. I suppose what I’m doing is limbering up because, as I […]

All I Want for Christmas …

… is a bread course, what else? In the past several months we have run bread courses for a retired french horn player/orchestra manager, a Baptist minister, two garden designers, a pizza restaurant owner, a sea salt entrepreneur, two intensive care nurses, a retired teacher, a machine driver in Penhryn Quarry – to name but […]