Hallot, etC.

In France in May we made our annual pilgrimage to Mollat, Bordeaux ‘s great bookshop and, as usual, headed straight to the cookery section and homed in on the bread books. This is what was available this year. Right at the moment they seem to be going in for massive volumes of the Complete Book […]

Deep pan Moussaka?

Why not? Have left-over lamb from Sunday lunch, obos in need of using, pizza dough in the fridge. Seems obvious … Peter Reinhart method. Press out dough in baking tray, sprinkle with little chunks of cheese (cheddar). Prove for about three hours during which time make a tomato sauce, saute obo cut in smallish cubes, […]

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 […]