A Shock for Mom

“Mick Hartley is a warm and entrepreneurial man from South Wales.” This is going to come as a bit of a surprise particularly to my Mom back in our home city of Birmingham but also to friends who think of me as being a spiky chancer currently living in North Wales. Few weeks back a […]

Gertzkrautenbrot

Isn’t it fantastic when the sun comes out after this dismal winter. This is the fifth day of clear blue skies – even makes your bread looks happy. Anyway, you know how it is with busy people. Gert – I bake bread for his restaurant – told me about two years ago he had a […]

Pizzabrot

It was the birthday again on Sunday and we had a pizza brunch party. Unlike the big “retirement” party last year when the guest list was planned weeks in advance I had no idea who had been invited because I just told people as and when I saw them – no email address list or […]

Negativity 2: Positivity 16

We had a bit of unpleasantness on the blog a couple of days ago. I’ve always answered people’s questions as honestly as possible regardless of whether or not they’ve bought my books. But someone popped up and asked about the problems s/he was having with recipes from two top-selling books by other authors. That strikes […]

It’s Alive!!!

This is for Marcus whose starter has been in the fridge for a month, looks a bit sad and he thinks it’s dead. Of course it’s not. These pictures first appeared on Mr Lepard’s forum (remember that?) in 2009. My wholemeal spelt starter had been at the back of the fridge for at least three […]

The Vision Thing

Hugely busy here with courses and things which I’ll probably get round to telling you about. But how about a bit of mysticism to be going on with. You will be aware the Bethesda is alive with Celticity – it crackles and sparkles in the atmosphere even on the dampest of days. When the mist […]

New Bakery

I’m sort of having a really good time at the moment although it’s just a wee bit busy. Firstly, Chris Brown, someone else who did the Microbakin’ course with me a few months ago, contacted me to say he’s in the second week of production. He’s just got the first pages of his new website […]

Low Carb Pizza

It’s true. Since the “Repeat Offender” post I reduced the weight of the base to 400g. For this diameter and style of pizza ( Deep Pan Pesda) this seems to be the optimum weight. Same dough, same method as before (about 15 mins high in the oven about 5+ on quarry tile hearth on bottom […]

Plaudits #98

I’m being a bit overwhelmed at the moment by people saying Nice Things about the books. Yesterday brought two more such emails. Alwen said of Bethesdabasics, “Your book has been in constant use since I bought it nearly 2 years ago, it’s excellent.” But Louise, who hasn’t even read the book, came up with a […]

Repeat Offender

Of course baking is all about theft, some forms of which are more acceptable that others. At one end of the spectrum it’s nice to be able to say “We all learn from each other” and to acknowledge where ideas come from. To adopt this line you also have to contribute something from time to […]