Pain de Seigle sur Levain

Interestingly enough, I have been told by at least one French person that it should be “aux levain” but “sur levain” is what the book says. This is for Nils and Jeremy who have given me, or made available for theft, so many rye recipes this year. Nothing much I can tell these boys but […]

Two Brothers

When the great canine in the sky was dishing out musical talent s/he stopped at my ears. Fortunately my Mom, who is a good classical fiddle player, can recognise musical talent (and its absence) in children from a very young age – with nine kids she had plenty to practice on. So, whilst I was […]

Thanksgiving – thank Dog that’s over

Ah, these customers – they make you work hardest when you’re at your tiredest. Just starting a well deserved week’s rest before the Christmas rush but before we finish we have to do a Thanksgiving bake for our American customers. So for specials we do Thanksgiving Bread, New York Rye and Orange & Cumin Flatbread. […]

Conwy Feast 09

The Conwy Feast is the biggest food festival in North Wales and took place a couple of weeks back. We were asked to do “something” – Sue knows one of the organisers who wanted to include a literary element to the festival – a chill-out tent with sofas and stuff and people reading extracts from […]

Gallette de Pommes de Terre (et son Omelette)

In the Patatas Pobres recipe below the idea is to turn the potatoes occasionally to stop them forming a cake and so that they brown unevenly. It produces fairly inelegant (but delicious) clumps. In this recipe, from one of Elizabeth David’s French books, the object is to form a cake which is evenly browned on […]

Box-baked Bread (for Big G)

Here’s a picture of bread I baked in France in 2007. Can’t remember what the bread was or what was in the boxes

Pollo al Ajillo & Patatas Pobres

Reader, I survived peeling 5lb of potatoes at a time as a child and lived to love cooking. One of my all time favourite cookery books is Penelope Casas’ The Foods and Wines of Spain which, unlike a lot of other titles in the Penguin Cookery Library range, has not been reissued. There ain’t no […]

Le Veritable Histoire du Rock’n’Roll

My life is complete. When we were in one of the world’s great bookshops, Mollat, http://www.mollat.com in Bordeaux in September I spotted a rock’n’roll compilation of four CDs. No point in dragging that home from here, I thought – get it in the UK when we get back. In the event, it hadn’t been released […]

Yr Ardd Fadarch Focaccia

During Year 1 of Bethesdabakers Professional the weekly format was a set number of regular breads – Pain de Campagne, Mick’s Classic Sourdough, Wholemeal Wheat, Wholemeal Spelt, Pain de Seigle sur Levain, Multigrain, 5 Seed, Baguette – plus a Special which changed every week. At the start of Year 2 the best thing I did […]

Where We’re Up To

What I really want is an independent UK oriented bread forum where serious bakers (of any standard or experience) can communicate with other bakers. But the only way this is likely to happen is if I do it myself and I don’t have time or the technical knowledge to do this, so I’ll do what […]