Focaccia Dewi Sant

This is the sort of thing you won’t get from other bakers – Focaccia Dewi Sant. Being baked today for my customers, nearest bake to St David’s Day. Leek focaccia with a single red chile to represent the Welsh dragon. I bill it as a “traditional” Welsh focaccia (made up a couple of years back).

A Birthday Present from Phil Joy

“Want a recipe for Apple, Cheddar and Guinness Soda Bread, Mick?” said Phil at my birthday bash in The Old Harkers, Chester, last Saturday. “Is pork chops greasy?” I replied, even though I was still on my first pint of Old Rosie. What a birthday present!

A Glimmer of Light

The famous Oat & Honey. Yesterday for the first time this year sunlight featured in a photograph. This morning it’s grey and wet.

Move Over Jamie Oliver

The first printing of my book, Bethesdabasics, has completely sold out. Jamie needn’t worry quite yet – the print run was only 100 copies – but I feel pretty pleased with that. As well as the UK, there are now copies in Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Holland, New Zealand and the USA. This is what Chefcdp […]

This Bakers Life No. 277

On the eve of my 64th birthday senility raised its ugly head or at least gave me a hard stare over the parapet. I have a spread sheet calculator that works out quantities for the day’s bake, so the ingredient weights for each dough are detailed on a printed worksheet. The weight of starter for […]

A Real Baker

Azélia wants to know why I say I’m not a real baker? One of my talents is annoying people – I don’t have to try, it just comes naturally. I think there is a lot of bullshit talked about baking and particularly sourdough baking and I have a habit of saying so. Where can you […]

2nd Generation

This will worry some of you. There are two of us. The bread bug has spread to the next generation. This is one of my nephews, Tobias, who was bought a copy of Bethesdabasics by my youngest sister, Helen, and is now producing sourdough. Might have some way to go but not bad for a […]

Mixing It

It’s a paradox. Because I’m basically a lazy person I do lots of hand kneading. I have a spiral mixer which is pretty good with 14K of dough but not so good with 4K. It’s got a fixed bowl and at the end of the day I hate getting down to clean the thing. In […]

Just add water …

While we’re doing snippets, try this. Imagine the scenario. You are a smart young thing wanting to impress. You have an important dinner party coming up at the weekend and need to knock ’em dead. If only I knew how to make my own sourdough, you think, that would show them. Then on the shelves […]

Sweet Things

I’ve been just a bit busy and now when I’m not baking I’m doing my tax returns. So here’s some pix to keep you going. I don’t do a lot of sweet things but: My Christmas bread was a Brioche Provencale, followed at Epiphany by Mexican Three Kings Bread: And this week, Oren, the restaurant […]