I used to bake for our good friend, Gert, who very unfairly died last year back in the Netherlands (full story here). One reason he was fun to work with was every week his menus changed countries and even continents and the bread was supposed to reflect that week’s culture. Amongst his papers he found […]

Always handy to have a few tricks up your sleeve. Our neighbour Steffi did a bit of shopping for us now Coronavirus has driven us old-and-underlying indoors so I offered to make her some bread. Was a little surprised at the face she pulled until I discovered gluten was having a bad effect on her. […]

What can you say? This is Osian 18 years old, ‘A’ Levels coming up and about to take on the world. Ran a bread course for him last weekend. What stops you in your tracks (and makes you feel very old) is that he can remember coming with his parents to collect bread and having […]

A minimum of publicity before Christmas has brought me seven courses to arrange in the next few weeks for lucky people given course vouchers by partners and family. Done one already this week, another starting in two days – how am I going to fit in my self-assessment tax returns in time? With the exception […]

Impromptu pizza brunch two days after Christmas. Traditionally we wander up to the Hopewell family early evening Christmas Day. Couldn’t do it this year so a couple of days later we dragged them down for a pizzafest. This was total improv based on what we had in the house. Fortunately this included dough in the […]

As you probably picked up, for the past several months I have been suffering with leg ulcers which are now finally nearly healed. Had to stop baking for customers and running courses. But I’ve been pain-free for weeks now and running out of excuses. I suppose what I’m doing is limbering up because, as I […]

… is a bread course, what else? In the past several months we have run bread courses for a retired french horn player/orchestra manager, a Baptist minister, two garden designers, a pizza restaurant owner, a sea salt entrepreneur, two intensive care nurses, a retired teacher, a machine driver in Penhryn Quarry – to name but […]

Continuing with Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pan Pizza: Garlic Lovers’ Italian Sausage. Experimenting with baking pan pizza in cake rings. My patent spreadsheet dough calculator tells me I need 135.7g for a 6″ ring and 377g for the 10″ (after reducing his quantities by a third). The dough has been maturing in the fridge for a […]

Now that my ulcerated leg is nearly better I need a new baking plan. I’m not going back to 40+ large loaves at a time and I’m abandoning the mixer – hauling out kilos of dough from floor level is gut-wrenching. So I’m experimenting with baking 10 loaves per week, just one dough instead of […]

A little token of thanks to the vascular nurses at Ysbyty Gwynedd who, along with the local nurses, have been treating my leg ulcers. Should be my last appointment with them today although the Bethesda nurses will have to put up with me a little longer. The local health authority may be in a state […]