With the obvious exception of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott I gave up having heroes a long time ago. When it comes to bread baking anyone serious should be working consciously or instinctively towards developing their own style so inspiration is one thing, heroes quite another. Here’s my inspiration: One Sunday morning in 1999 or 2000 I […]

After ten annual events, how do you describe a baking weekend? Every combination of bakers interacting with dough has been photographed a hundred times so that background items are needed to identify the year and location. This year we were in Twickenham which, compared with previous rural venues is kinda weird. Getting a bus followed […]

Sunrise: This started off as a joke, making a bread of beetroot, buttermilk and cheese – beetroot is a bit of a cliche. But it came out really well. Not only that, it came out about the most beautiful loaf I ever made. The colours were so amazing I nearly phoned a friend who is […]

Or “What’s in a Loaf II” – haven’t finished “What’s in a Loaf I” yet. No it’s not Merguez sausage. It’s the dreaded beetroot. Why, I hear you ask? Well, one, because I was surprised to see that people still seem to think it’s meaningful to have red bred (Bodnant Welsh Food still trot it […]

The other week this was Med Bread (see previous post). But tomorrow we are going down to Brum to see my Mom and her current favourite bread is a soft spongy, seeded thing from Aldi. So, out come the red onions and in goes a five seed soaker. I could slice it and put it […]

Med Bred aka Pain de Cannes. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s not a tin loaf  … It’s a French pun. What’s a French pun? Je ne say quoi …

“Never eat anything bigger than your head” – B Kliban

Hey, we might be rustic: but we can also do shiny:

Pane Pugliese – rustic or what. None of yer poncey flour, tap water at 66%, 50 minutes at 250C.

For several years my main concern was knocking out and selling as many loaves as I could from my little kitchen. These days things are a little more leisurely which is just as well because my knees are pretty well fucked from running up and down stairs with sacks of flour, boxes of dough, full […]