Pane Pugliese

Here’s one I baked earlier. In 2004 actually – and then rewrote it in 2007: One of the most influential bread books of recent times (I have to be careful saying that – it was first published in 1985) is Carol Field’s The Italian Baker. It’s the sort of book you could spend a lifetime […]

Bara Surgeirch

I’m doing a little series of Welsh related breads for my customers this Autumn. The first one was Nina’s Watermill Loaf which I suppose is Danish given that Nina’s Danish. But she put it together in Bethesda using flours from Felin Ganol so that counts. This week is Bara Surgeirch – Sour Oatmeal Bread: – […]

Busiest Week of the Year

Two weeks ago I announced the quietest week of the year. Well I was wrong – last week was with a mere 33K of dough. This week the school holidays are over with a vengence and I baked my age in kilos – 64. It’s too much – 4.30 a.m. start, last customer 9.00 p.m. […]

Fast Food?

It’s always struck me that the most common “fast” foods are neither easy nor quick to prepare at home – I mean prepare properly, not take out of the freezer. Take fish and chips. Deep frying is an art and a dangerous art at that especially when, like me, you use a wok as a […]

Felin Ganol Wholemeal

Today’s lesson is taken from Page 18 of Bethesdabasics (ISBN 978-0-9570134-0-7 The PArtisan Press 2010 £12 – but then you have already bought a copy) – Wholemeal. I’ve always used white starter to leaven my wholemeal – not as policy but because I can’t be bothered to keep a wholemeal starter. Anyway, the 11% or […]

Quietest Week of the Year

That’s what the last week in August, running into the bank holiday, is. Orders down by a quarter to a third while customers try and squeeze the most out of the last of the summer holiday. Given that, an awful lot seems to have happened. End of the previous week I did a sourdough demo […]

BVM (Bethesda Virgin Mary)

It was only a mini baguette made from a bit of left-over Normandy Rye Cider dough, but when I came to cut it for my ‘umble baker’s lunch, there it was: the face of the Bethesda Virgin Mary (the Laughing Virgin) staring straight back at me. Put me right off. I had beans on toast […]

Matt’s Gummy Bottom

Matt sent me this problem. Baking Nina’s Simple Danish Rye he sometimes gets a gummy bottom like this: Further more, he says sometimes, when he bakes two loaves, one is gummy the other is fine. He gives the dough 45 mins bulk fermentation in the mixing bowl + 2-3 hours proving in the tin. Then […]

Danish Peasant Loaf

What a lucky boy I am – I have Nina Holm Jensen to supply me with all the Scandinavian recipes I need. And she’s clever. The Swedish Rye she posted on the Bethesdabakin’5 blog here was transformed by her into Danish Peasant Loaf in the couple of weeks after she went home by the addition […]

Starter Page

In March 2007 we went to France for three months during which time I wrote my big book, The PArtisan Baker. Maybe it will see the light of day, maybe it won’t. Since then I’ve been concentrating on smaller books that I can have printed and publish myself. Bethesdabasics is doing well (in my modest […]