Author: Dan Lepard
Dan Lepard
BakeryBits baker and food writer
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.
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TwitterBlue pea and beetroot puree
This is essentially a great delicious hummus (though the word hummus strictly means chick pea), reminiscent of the flavoured varieties I’ve eaten in Beirut. Here I’ve used beetroot but I’ve also tasted it with pumpkin, sweet potato, and even one made with sorrel-like leaves known as fresh Lebanese Za’atar (the same name but different to the popular dry seed mixture). The ... Read more...Root vegetable fritters
These crisp vegetable cakes are flavoured with dill, lemon and onion are a great substitute if you’re looking for an alternative to crab or fishcakes. The texture is light and delicate, with a crisp outside. Roll them in some breadcrumbs so they shallow-fry without sticking: perhaps even your own home-made breadcrumbs from your baking. Serve these with a dollop of tartar sauce on our soft ... Read more...Golden carrot burger buns
Fresh carrot juice gives these buns a rich golden colour, extra flavour, and sweetness, and helps to keep them soft for several days. You could use other vegetable juices here, like tomato, beetroot, or a mixture, and a home-juicing machine makes this very easy. Otherwise, you can often buy fresh vegetable juices at the supermarket.
But the heart of these delicious buns is the flours used, and a ... Read more...Recipe: 100% Emmer bread with pumpkin seeds and black barley malt
Ok, here’s the lowdown on getting great bread from Emmer or Einkorn flours, the heritage grains that have an undeserved reputation for being tricky souls that won’t behave themselves.
In truth, we bakers are the problem when it comes to unusual ingredients. We have a tendency to obsessively search out these curious flours, then complain to the moon and back when they don’t behave like ultra... Read more...Review: Ankarsrum Assistent Food Mixer
Tested: The Ankarsrum® Assistent Mixer, get the best price and find out more about it here.
Summary: beautiful to look at and easy to use (no steep learning curve, no idea why some reviewers say this)
Recipe tested: Dark Malt Focaccia
Notable: straightforward mixing, quiet motor, very easy to add ingredients, cleaning the easiest ever.
Opening the box
The Ankarsrum Assistent arrived ... Read more...Soft Ginger Cake with Rye, Wheat & Oats
A rich, soft, spiced traybake that is absolutely packed with stoneground flour, rolled oats, and shreds of marmalade peel. It’s also not too sweet so perfect for a mid-morning slice of ginger cake. The combination of stoneground rye flour with wholemeal wheat flour, and just a little roller-milled white flour, gives you the perfect balance between a flavour-rich cake as well as a light delicate ... Read more...Newsletter: Be Inspired by South & East Asian Baking
It's Lunar New Year on 1st February 2022, and we're beginning the Year of the Tiger. Will this be a courageous and active baking year for you?
Happy Lunar New Year, bakers! At BakeryBits we wish you every success in the Year of the Tiger, which sounds already like an auspicious and exciting year. We've got a super-packed newsletter for you this week, fantastic interviews with bakers around the ... Read more...Saffron Spring Onion Garlic Bread Rolls
A fragrant golden garlic bread with layers of buttery spring onion through the saffron dough, using a traditional East Asian roll shaping technique to create flower-like rolls that your guests pull-apart when you serve it. The technique it uses is for shaping a Chinese flower roll, or 花卷 (pronounced Huājuǎn): a small, steamed bread traditional in Chinese and East Asian ... Read more...Newsletter: The Best Bread to Eat With Marmalade
It's toast-time at BakeryBits and we want you to get adventurous about the flours you use for the bread you bake: so many possibilities
As bakers we get very focused on what goes in our bread, wanting the best flour (BakeryBits probably has the best selection of great flour online), the finest sea salt (yes BakeryBits sells a range of salt too), but often we are less interested in what goes on it... Read more...Dark Malt Focaccia
With its caramel coloured crumb and an open bubbly texture, this malted focaccia is relatively easy to make by hand but super-easy with a machine. Here I mixed this in the Ankarsrum Assistent with the dough hook attachment and scraper, but the IGF Fornitalia spiral machines would work equally well. The flour used, Mulino Marino's excellent Organic Type "0" Manitoba Flour gave it an extra-crisp ... Read more...
