From working as a photographer in the early 90s he found pastry and breadmaking a much better fit. His first book “Baking With Passion” (1999), won Guild of Food Writers’ Cookbook of the Year. His next, the breakthrough sourdough book “The Handmade Loaf” (2004) was awarded Observer Newspaper’s “20 best cookbooks" in the last two decades. Short & Sweet (2011), won Andre Simon Cookbook of the Year. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines across the globe.
You get even more texture and crunch if you use our special knobbly crispbread rolling pin known in Sweden as a Kruskavel, the perfect easy-to-use tool for the very best crispbread.
Now there are three ways you can tweak this very easy recipe.
The first way used in the basic here uses baking powder and oil to give you a combination of speed, lightness and a tender crunch. And if you like, you ... Read more
A slab of golden bread dough, full of flavour, topped with an outrageously thick layer of meltingly soft onions, criss-crossed with anchovy fillets and olives. Now I’ve called it “classic” but let’s not get started on what that actually is. Some French cooks like the onions gently caramelised, some want them utterly blonde; some want the flavour kept pure and simple while ... Read more
It’s common today for millers to tell you about the way grain is grown and the accreditation they have for making the claims they do – such as Soil Association, Organic Farmers & Growers, Red Tractor, for example – as many of us do care about how grain is grown, the pesticides and herbicides used, and how this affects agriculture, the land and biodiversity.
Increasingly, the issue of ... Read more
Here you have a rich butter cake recipe with a delicate soft crumb, suited to layers cakes and loaf cakes as the texture is somewhere between a pound cake and the more delicate genoise sponge. Very easy to make, and a great cake to wake up and suddenly choose to make as you don’t need to have butter at a soft room temperature. For more on the unusual technique used here see below at the end ... Read more
Freshly-milled wholemeal flour - using our range of BakeryBits UK-grown grains and our Mockmill home tabletop flour mill - gives these pasties a brilliant bold flavour, one bite and I thought “this is the way a great pasty is meant to be”. More strictly a turnover than anything related to a Cornish pasty, the name has stuck over decades and - for this particular filling - the ... Read more
A classic pub-style hot meat pie, with chunks of beef and mushroom in an ale-rich pan gravy. The beef for the filling is tossed with a dry mix of spices, brown sugar, sliced onion and wholemeal flour, which holds all the rich juice from the meat as it cooks. Really important to bake it at a low temperature in a sealed container: my way is to wrap it in a non-stick paper, then in foil tightly, ... Read more
A wheat flour-based sauce has been shown in trials to give a more pleasing flavour – what food tech people call mouth-feel – for savoury food, compared to sauces thickened with cornflour or other starches that are better suited to sweet dished. So that old-fashioned pan gravy my mother would make for Sunday roasts was the way to go, and still my favourite.
By browning the butter ... Read more
A classic, simple pie that is easy to adapt. Though it’s a roast chicken pie you can replace the chicken with cooked firm fish, or a vegetarian alternative like cooked Jerusalem artichokes and carrots, you can get very inventive here and still get a great pie.
You’ll need one of our 20cm (9 inch) Chicago Metallic pie plates, plus our Stainless Steel Flour Dredger (for dusting the ... Read more
Packed with flavour and a gentle flaky texture (not the super-high rise made with white flour) this is a very buttery rich pastry with a great wheaten flavour and a gentle honey sweetness. Perfect for savoury and sweet pies, pasties and sausage rolls. Freezes very well, just thaw in the refrigerator before rolling.
makes enough to line and top 2 large pies, to fit our Pie Plate 9" (20.2cm)Method
... Read more
Very useful for pies, savoury Danish, on any pastry or dough that needs a layer of a creamy filling that won’t add too much fat or oil. I use it when I’m making cheese and leek croissants out of day-old baked plain croissants: split them in half lengthways, spread some of this sauce over the cut surface on both halves, then top with grated cheese and leek.Method
Whisk the flour and ... Read more
These are great everyday soft rolls that taste perfectly plain and straight-up, nothing brioche-like about them, even with the small amounts of different ingredients added in. The extra ingredients beyond flour, water and yeast all help to somewhat imitate the “improvers” bigger bakeries add to get the same soft light result, but easier to get hold of for the kitchen or small bakery. ... Read more
There are times when want the heartiest, chewy, jaw-aching crust on my bread with a slightly waxy, vaguely dense crumb (open-texture optional), but other times…well, I like bread a little more insubstantial.
In a world once filled with cotton-wool bread, in days gone by (ok, the 1990s), I used to long for the sturdy muscle of a great sourdough, laced with rye and wholewheat and felt sad ... Read more
Get one of our very sturdy finger roll tins, known as a USA Pans, Finger roll, Hot Dog, Bun tin, and make these great bread rolls extra-soft and light with just a smidgeon of cooked potato, cream, milk and butter.
Makes ten large finger rollsMethod
Have the cooked mashed potato ready and leave to one side. Put the water in a mixing bowl and whisk in the yeast until dissolved. Then beat in the ... Read more
A very simple, utterly delicious rich mocha chocolate cake with a great coffee flavour thanks to Brazier's Altitude House Blend coffee, and an intense chocolate flavour. I've baked this in our Chicago Metallic Unglazed Professional Sponge Cake Tin (20cm/8-inch diameter), especially good as it's 5cm (2 inches) deep so it can bake a generous thick layer of cake easily.Method
Line the base of a deep ... Read more
Get the flour you want with a Mockmill
Bespoke milling is the hottest must-do in artisan baking today, and a Mockmill - a home tabletop electric grain mill - allows you to mill exactly what you want when you want it, giving you the ultimate control over the final grains – what millers call the grist, as in the saying “grist for the mill” – that will become your flour.
... Read more
Every month I’ll get a message from someone crying out in desperation “HELP, my sourdough starter isn’t working”. Or that’s not bubbly, and occasionally the worry that it might have died altogether. On the latter it’s fairly unlikely that you have every killed it, these yeast and bacteria that make your starter are pretty hardy and just need a few comforts in life to keep them happy.
... Read more
If you put wheat flour, water (and some salt, if you like) in a bowl, mix it well, roll pieces of it thin and cook it on a hot metal bakestone you’ll get one of the earliest forms of bread, what’s known as unleavened flatbread. Easy to make, utterly delicious: today there are many people who make and enjoy this bread pretty much the way it was made hundreds of years ago. Perhaps the flour ... Read more
Does this happen to you? You make a cake, or see a cake on a café menu, get very excited about what it will taste like… then drat, you find the cake flavour is underwhelming, lacking the spark and oomph you thought it would have based on its description. You, or the baker at the café, might have used the very best, finest, or dare I say it, most expensive ingredients but still it tasted flat. ... Read more
