My Tai

MY TAI A drink concocted to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the death of my niece Tai, killed by a drunk and drugged driver in New Zealand. (The name is obviously stolen from the famous cocktail Mai Tai – rum, Curaçao liqueur, orgeat syrup, and lime juice – but then everything about this drink has […]

Burnt Rump Pizza

Been messing around with Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pan Pizza book for a good couple of years now so I’ve reached that nice stage where I don’t have to to think too much about the basics. Mix a batch of my 80% hydration dough a day or two before baking and ferment in the fridge. 400g […]

Start with the soda bread …

This is how you do it: Black Velvet in one hand, big, 1 kilo slab of soda bread in the other. Bubbling pan of Guinness Beef Stew on the stove, spuds and cabbage ready for the Colcannon. The bread started life as Waterford Soda Bread in Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf published 20 years ago. […]

The Unintended Focaccia

I have lots of experience of dealing with my own mistakes. I was mixing dough for a pizza and, despite using my trusty spreadsheet calculator, ended up with nearly two and a half times the intended amount – spreadsheets are only trusty if you put the right numbers in. What should have been 5 x […]

Making Rye

Never really understood why people are so wary about baking rye or why there’s such a mystique attached to the process. A basic 100% wholemeal rye is so simple to make. The mystique increases when it comes to rye starters which should be ancient and shrouded in secrecy. For over 20 years I nourished a […]

St Valentine’s 2024

Thought this one was pretty good – 1K Brioche de Provence, the fruit soaked in a good whack of Navy rum. BUT … you know I’m always raving about Bethesda’s food hero Carrie Rimes – not just a BBC Food Producer of the Year, but THE BBC Food Producer of the Year, producing fabulous cheese […]

Coppice Blend

Couple of weeks past, Rick and Maggie bore gifts up from darkest South Wales: about a kilo each of TyT, Torth y Tir – grain from a group of South Wales farmers – Felin Ganol milled Maris Wigeon – and milled Coppice Blend. Coppice Blend is very interesting because it is grain that has been […]

Real Bread Campaign?

A couple of weeks back The Real Bread Campaign advertised a baking event in London with a list of the speakers taking part. They posted this on the Micro Bakery Connection Facebook Group. Never having hidden my low opinion of the Campaign I replied “Funny, my name doesn’t seem to appear on the speakers […]

Epiphany 2024

5th January, 12th Night. Down come the decorations and into the oven with Rosca de Reyes (Three Kings Bread) ready for Epiphany today. Formula here.

Four Baguettes

Well, four baguettes was the intention. Mixed the dough yesterday morning for 4 x 200g bags. Should have shaped and proved about 2.00 p.m. and baked about 5.30 p.m. which was about the time I thought maybe it should be put into an induced coma in the fridge because Life had intervened. 440g is the […]