Rough Hewn

Some breads are just so physical it’s like they’ve been ripped from the landscape. From this moraine-like material … … comes a boulder-like loaf – the mighty Black Bean, Jalpenos and Coriander bread. And yet, look how light the crumb is. This is the runt of the litter (do boulders have litters?) made from left-over […]

Rank Hovis

Someone who recently did a course with me forwarded a Tweet from Alex Gooch about a Rank Hovis powdered sourdough – “Rank Hovis ‘powdered sourdough concentrates’. RANK is the word!! 15g of yeast per kg in a bakers yeast free loaf? Tossers” and a few followers added suitably self-righteous comments. This is what strikes me […]

Welcome to New Readers

Where would I be without the Real Bread Campaign? Prior to last week’s guest appearances by those big city cee-lebs Chris and Duncan, this little country blog not worthy of a mention on the Campaign site, used to clock something between 25-100 people each day depending on how active my posting’s been. Since then bakers […]

2 Campagnes

Another little experiment. As part of his bakerlauriate course, Garth was set some homework. He mixed and fermented a couple of doughs overnight and brought them in the next morning to shape, prove and bake. One of them, a pain de campagne made with flour from Walk Mill near Chester http://www.walkmillflour.co.uk/, looked very slack and […]

Behold My Buns

We do like our little experiments at Bethesdabakers. In the past, in the interests of science, we have baked our starter and developed a sourdough bread flour mix (just add water). Yesterday I needed some instant burger buns and, as you know, this is a yeast-free zone = baking powder and soda. So I kneaded […]

The Real Real Bread Complain

The Real Bread Campaign has become a fact of life in the small world of serious bread making. According to the website it was set up by Andrew Whitley and Sustain. I should say that I have nothing against any of the people involved, but it seems to be automatically assumed that it must be […]

Real Bread Complain

This blog is shortly going to return to being positive – I’m just removing some crap from my brain and then we’re going back into creative mode. I know my stock-in-trade is cynicism, sarcasm, facetiousness – but right now I’m feeling angry. I keep having a little pop at the Campaign for the Real Bread […]

One For Jeremy

Over on http://www.stirthepots.com Jeremy himself seems to be stirring again after his August slumber (finished the book yet Jeremy?). On the face of it, he’s a pretty regular guy – I mean he’s got a bit of a thing about bikes and I’m sure you’re familiar with Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman but apart from […]

Les Ambassadeurs

Funny old game, init? Several weeks ago we had a day trip to Liverpool – that wonderful Catalan restaurant and deli, Lunya, was restocking my books. Had a wander round TKMaxx looking at cheap flameproof ceramics when I spotted a book called Bread Revolution reduced from £18.00 to a fiver written by the people who […]

Bread Psychology

Last Sunday we had two couples of really good, long-standing friends round for lunch and I did a lot of work on an Axis of Evil Middle Eastern meal mostly drawn from Claudia Roden’s fabuloso “Arabesque”. We saw her in discussion with Michelle Roberts at the Bath Literary Festival a few years ago – boy […]